Tableau Desktop vs. ThoughtSpot

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month per user
ThoughtSpot
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
ThoughtSpot is an Agentic Analytics Platform for enterprises where users ask data questions using natural language and get answers with AI. Code-first for data teams and code-free for business users, ThoughtSpot can handle large, complex cloud data at scale.
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (25-1000 users)
Pricing
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
Editions & Modules
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Thoughtspot Analytics - Pro
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (25-1000 users)
Thoughtspot Analytics - Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
Considered Both Products
Tableau Desktop
Chose Tableau Desktop
Both power bi and Tableau Desktop has its own pros and cons. Microsoft power bi is best to work with Microsoft products. however for fast connection with diverse range of integration with data sources Tableau Desktop is best. if you are cost sensitive power bi is best option …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau is more flexible than these - I liked Qlikview old version a lot but have not used the Qlik Sense etc new ones. Tableau user logic is harder to understand than Looker Studio. However it's more trust worthy. Connecting internet sources to Tableau Desktop is much harder. …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is older and just better overall. It has more capabilities and is more useful to have. I don't think you could have Alteryx as a standalone product like you can with Tableau Desktop. You'd want another bi tool.
Chose Tableau Desktop
We used to use products from the Google family in parallel. After migrating to GA4, we use Tableau much more.
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop has a more easy to use drag and drop interface and is easier to learn. It also allows greater customization of charts than Power BI. However, Tableau Desktop costs more than Power BI which is bundled into our Microsoft contract at no additional charge. Power BI …
Chose Tableau Desktop
The visualizations are far and away more powerful and it is more user friendly than Power BI. It would take 3-4 times as long to create the types of reports in Excel that I can create in Tableau Desktop and there are a slew of ways I can present the data in Tableau Desktop that …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Can handle large amounts of data
Chose Tableau Desktop
It has a better user interface compared to Microsoft Power BI. The Tableau integration process is quite simple and clear with the third-party application whereas Power BI is not easily integrated with other tools and requires a complex process to follow for integration. DAX …
Chose Tableau Desktop
When it comes to pricing, Tableau is kinda expensive but worth it as it has more features, not just features but really useful features that make our work easier especially as a project manager I need to pull up data almost every day in our meetings, and I find Tableau useful …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau can create visually attractive customizable dashboards than can quickly by drag-drop while in power bi we can create simple dashboard. Power bi support lesser data source while in Tableau there is a lot of options
When we talk about data handling tableau is a clear …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is clearly one of the best in the business. It has incredible capabilities, and many features are extremely useful. The intuitiveness of the dashboards and the graphical nature of the visualizations are widely used features and super helpful. One of the other …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop provides some state of the art feature and capabilities that are just awesome. Its support, online blog, and tutorials are better than its competitors. That was the best selling point for me.
Chose Tableau Desktop
With Tableau Desktop, it's easy to create a report in the context quickly. It allows for the seamless management of the data sources, which is convenient for the data users. Because it is simple to use, it is
Chose Tableau Desktop
It does have a lot of potential when using Microsoft other technologies - in integration/Embedded, Visuals and connectivity to data sources. Advanced analytics is also smooth when working on python/r scripts. Automated insights are better in Tableau/Alphaa AI. NLG/NLQ - …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau offers a lot of educational content, and for a limited time, we were able to use paid educational content for free, so we are very satisfied.
Chose Tableau Desktop
For complex data visualization, Tableau Desktop shines. Even though it uses highly granular databases, it has a powerful engine that can process large amounts of data quickly and produce high-quality charts. It has the broadest range of APIs and is extremely simple. The …
Chose Tableau Desktop
We decided to use Tableau Desktop as that's fairly standard in the industry, it is being taught in college, and is widely known. Tableau Desktop is nice, but in my opinion, it is VERY expensive. Unless you are really making money off of decisions, then your ROI is going to be …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Using Tableau Desktop, we have found it the most actionable and user-friendly application ever. It has the broadest range of APIs and is exceptionally user-friendly. It can handle a large amount of data and produce smooth charts quickly. For data geeks, this is the ideal stack.
Chose Tableau Desktop
When compared to Power BI, Tableau has a more flexible deployment. You can install the desktop version without having to install the SQL server. Tableau got you covered end-to-end — from collaboration, analytics, content discovery, data prep & access, down to deployment. …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is preferred over other BI software because it allows for more data visualization, storytelling, and dashboards. Microsoft Power BI may be a better option if you need to perform data modeling, however. Tableau Desktop is an excellent tool for nearly all other …
Chose Tableau Desktop
We preferred Tableau over Power BI due to its user-friendly interface and interactive GUI. Since we work with large datasets, we observed that Power BI can deal with only a limited amount of data when compared to Tableau which creates complex visualizations in a time-efficient …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is the most user-friendly and actionable application we have used in comparison to others. It has the best API connection potential along with easy start-up. They seem to always be updating the platform to solve newer problems which help keep my company up to …
Chose Tableau Desktop
We also use Power BI for small projects and teams that can't afford to pay for Tableau licenses. Tableau has more features and is more robust compared to Power BI. They also provide better and faster support compared to Microsoft. It is the standard visualization tool, but …
Chose Tableau Desktop
For databases or types of data that have high granularity and details, Tableau Desktop is better to plot and help visualize every detailed behavior with a great performance. It's engine can process a massive amount of data and generate a smooth chart without spending too much …
ThoughtSpot
Chose ThoughtSpot
I think PBI was terribly slow and clunky. UI was outdated. Solution was expensive for what we needed. ThoughtSpot was worlds different (in a better way).
Chose ThoughtSpot
They’re for different use cases. When I want a dynamic way to quickly obtain the data I need, I’d go with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
It is more flexible and PowerBI, easier work online, and share information with many users. Also the dashboards and beautiful, and the user experience is better. Performance used to be faster.

We use Looker for different use cases but, when it comes to reporting and sharing …
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot's user friendly interface, faster and accurate results, low-code support for building insights and vast availability of native charts, AI powered dashboards helps in faster decision making and helps in driving better business results. The mobile APP that ThoughtSpot …
Chose ThoughtSpot
It is more cost effective when compared to Tableau and more easy to use. ThoughtSpot integrates well with modern cloud data platforms like Snowflake, Google, and Bigquery, making it easy to analyze large datasets in real time. Sync insights into cloud tools. Users can sync …
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot provided a twist on the typical Analytics / report builder interface. The natural language query building is just so much easier to use.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is easy to build charts and it is probably the easiest tool to build things quickly. The quality of the charts is middle if not lower pack compared to others. The dbt integration is wildly oversold and does not add any value.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot can handle large datasets A LOT better.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot was much easier from an end-user perspective. Looker and Tableau allowed for more customization and detailed dashboards.
Chose ThoughtSpot
Thoughtspot is a fairly new tool when compared to Tableau. I'll just list the benefits of each one of threse below -
Tableau -
1. Much more customizable the Thoughtspot
Chose ThoughtSpot
Have not used as much, tried ThoughtSpot out for the first time for evaluation and testing purposes to see if this type of software would be helpful.
Chose ThoughtSpot
we were looking for something which provides self service capabilities and something which very eay to use from users perspective.
Chose ThoughtSpot
I liked thought spot because of the ad-hoc capabilities and their search functionality.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is more powerful of a tool than something like QlikView or QlikSense with the correct training.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is my top choice from the above two as the UI is the most modern and user-friendly as well.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot is the leader in embedded analytics and is much easier to work with massive volumes of data. None of the other tools listed had both of those functionalities, which were most important to us. There are other features that they have such as easier drill down, …
Chose ThoughtSpot
much more extensible and much easier to embed
Chose ThoughtSpot
Compare to Kibana, which was we used previously, ThoughtSpot is definitely better in terms of UI, visualizations, usability, and the SpotIQ/ML components. The only disadvantage for ThoughtSpot is the lack of drill-down function/click-on filters.
Chose ThoughtSpot
The main reason for selecting Thoughtspot was to share reporting with other external vendors and ease of doing business.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We have been using tableau as the enterprise reporting tool and felt sending data to external people had few restrictions hence we tried with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot can similarly generate tables, visuals, and dashboards in Tableau, but in a faster and easier way.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We liked the support we were getting in the sales process (this has continued to be fantastic), I personally knew several people in the company. In the pilot we ran, our devs enjoyed working with ThoughtSpot.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We have multiple BI Applications that are used based on the needs of the different business users.
Chose ThoughtSpot
We selected ThoughtSpot with the promise that it would evolve into a Google search for business insights. To date, it has not gotten close in my opinion.
Features
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
Ratings
2% above category average
ThoughtSpot
7.6
Ratings
7% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.80 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.40 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.80 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
ThoughtSpot
7.7
Ratings
5% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.20 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.70 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.20 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.1
Ratings
3% below category average
ThoughtSpot
8.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Publish to Web7.30 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.90 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Report Versioning8.20 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.20 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.4
Ratings
5% above category average
ThoughtSpot
8.0
Ratings
0% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.20 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.60 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
3% above category average
ThoughtSpot
8.5
Ratings
0% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.80 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.80 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
ThoughtSpot
7.5
Ratings
4% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access8.20 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Mobile Application7.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.80 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
9.0
Ratings
14% above category average
ThoughtSpot
6.5
Ratings
18% below category average
REST API9.20 Ratings5.10 Ratings
Javascript API9.00 Ratings4.80 Ratings
iFrames9.20 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Java API10.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.40 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.40 Ratings7.10 Ratings
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.1
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.4
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
4.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.1
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Tableau DesktopThoughtSpot
Likelihood to Recommend
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
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By using the power of cloud platforms like bigquery or snowflake, ThoughtSpot can deliver performance at scale ensuring that even the largest organization can quickly analyze and visualize data. The ability to seamlessly share live dashboards fosters collaborations, ensuring everyone in the organization is working from the same data source and aligned in decision making.
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Pros
  • The Visualizations graphics are really good and the color options help in designing attractive charts. They help to convey more information and can be made interactive.
  • You can add filters with offer you to plug and play with values and understand different outcomes.
  • You can drag and drop options while creating charts and dashboards. also it is a very fluid layout.
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  • Beautiful visualizations. The visuals are distinct, clean, and easy to discern from one another.
  • Intelligent querying functionality. When looking to manipulate the data, the search function makes it easy to manipulate the features in the data, along with aggregating them in the way you'd like.
  • Embedding! It has been a smooth process thus far for our product & technical teams to work with ThoughtSpot and bring it into our product.
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Cons
  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
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  • It would be great if ThoughtSpot can add the feature to filter by clicking on visualizations. i.e if I click on a particular data point in the chart if the full dashboard can filter just for that particular data point.
  • Color coding the heatmap with different colors like green to orange to red.
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Likelihood to Renew
Because right now its the best option out there (disclosure: I haven't used Qlikview or some of the other direct competitors of Tableau). The big investment is in Tableau Server not desktop. For the cost of the license of Tableau desktop, its a pretty good deal. You can hook it up to pretty much any data source easily. You can easily share the visualizations with your team/colleagues easily. Tableau Desktop is generally easy to use for business users. But the more advanced stuff is better suited for a analyst or someone with a IT/CS background.
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We have had success with the initial use cases and there are more use cases that can receive return on investment. I don't give it a 10 because other products like Tableau are building functionality that may start to compete in the coming years.
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Usability
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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The tool is easy to use if you know what you are doing and looking for. I know as they work towards improvements and simple language it will become even easier, but as of now they are doing a great job but there is room for improvement.
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Reliability and Availability
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
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it's available unless there is a server or system update etc. sometimes the timing of this is bad (for example during a month end close)
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Performance
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
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It does what it is supposed to. Would be nice to have a bit more insights
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Support Rating
The Tableau Desktop's support team has been very helpful and tend to response very quickly. After all you have paid very premium price for the product and it goes to the services. This makes using the tool much easier for these who doesn't have such experience to get help quickly.
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I give it this meeting because the team is not only help able to help us in the current solutions but also amazing and taking feedback and feeding it back to their development team which includes more products and features into ThoughtSpot
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In-Person Training
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
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inhouse in-person training. Took a bit to long to get the basics.
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Online Training
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
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poor instructions
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Implementation Rating
Time needs to be spent ahead of implementation to make sure data sources are set up and ready. Consultants need to understand the data sources and the goals before setting foot on-site. Installation is easy, learning to use it takes time. The training resources available are great.
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Understand use case and model and design accordingly
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Alternatives Considered
Tableau Desktop is clearly one of the best in the business. It has incredible capabilities, and many features are extremely useful. The intuitiveness of the dashboards and the graphical nature of the visualizations are widely used features and super helpful. One of the other benefits is that both programmers and non-programmers can equally explore and create their own opportunities, and seamless integration is possible.
Read full review
It is more flexible and PowerBI, easier work online, and share information with many users. Also the dashboards and beautiful, and the user experience is better. Performance used to be faster. We use Looker for different use cases but, when it comes to reporting and sharing information, ThoughSpot is much better.
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Scalability
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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Because it is very reliable, inside the situation, we need strong internet connection to access a lot of data but easily never had any downtime except during the upgrades
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Return on Investment
  • Easy to share and manage viewer access on a different level to help identify fraud.
  • Faster report generation, increased revenue, better decision-making, and data storytelling.
  • One-click access to business health and the ability to build/maintain more effective and efficient reports.
  • It's easy to share and even manage access to viewers on a different level, and reports are done in a more visual and storytelling manner.
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  • Time to market ROI is massive vs hiring the full-time dedicated team to build and maintain a frontend multi-tenant SaaS data viz product.
  • It will be interesting to see over time how the advanced features play out in terms of usability and end value, such as Natural Search, which we are very excited about, and the machine learning tools.
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ScreenShots

ThoughtSpot Screenshots

Screenshot of the ThoughtSpot home screenScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the Spotter AI agent that surfaces insights through natural language queriesScreenshot of AI Assist producing SQL in real timeScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the integration with dbt models and metrics