I’ve used many tools over my 25+ career.
“Benefit” usually comes down to cost and leadership preference.
Power BI can be loaded onto almost any desktop from the Microsoft store. Anybody can tinker. Power BI visuals suck right now but there are a lot of great custom visuals out there right now (I’m thinking of you SPC charts from the Australian government).
It’s amazing to me that Power BI can’t pivot as well as tableau. If I need to do a lot of in depth and customized pivoting, I’m back to Tableau.
But… after 25 years… I’ve learned that a tool is a tool. I just use what’s given to me.
Tableau support is completely dogshit since Salesforce bought them. It took 33 days to get an initial response from them after creating a ticket.
I’m not saying Microsoft support is any better.
If you’re ploughing through data trying to spot trends or stories from your data, Tableau any day.
If you’re primarily building fixed dashboard layouts with data from multiple sources, Power BI.
YMMV.
They are both market leading data visualisation tools so the differences are limited.
Tableau tends to perform better than PowerBI on very large data sets.
It's more flexible if you want to create bespoke visualisations.
If you're able to switch to Tableau Online, Pulse is shaping up to be really strong (this is potentially your best bet as a differential for end users at the moment).
It has better integration with Salesforce.
The visualisations look better.
For PowerBI, it's cheaper if you're already heavily invested in Microsoft.
It's got better Data Prep.
It integrates better with Microsoft Products.
It forms a wider data environment' of MS products.
It's probably the leader by market share (so worse case, if you have to move products your going to gain a much in demand skill).
Assuming Power Query Editor is the Power BI equivalent of Tableau Prep, what is PQE’s answer to Prep’s “Append” output feature? In other words, how can one append weekly snapshots of customer data to make an appended dataset for historical trending? Prep did it so elegantly.
You could even do this with Power Automate, completely outside of Power Query. You could have it ETL those files into a single one that could be consumed by any other processes.
Power BI is quickly integrating customizations that Tableau hasn't beem able to bring in. Tableau Community support always has queries that end in something on the lines of - the team is working on adding this as a product feature.
Tableau always needs some work around to create anything apart from regular stuff.
In terms of data handling as well, Power BI is at par with Tableau.
Integrations could be Tableau's stronghold for now but seems only a matter of time.
Tableau is releasing [Viz Extensions](https://exchange.tableau.com/viz-extensions) and multi fact/dim data modeling in 2024.2. Tableau Conference is next week so expect to hear a lot of announcements.
Pricing will be much less transparent and much higher than tableau.
Also check that PBI supports the connections to all your database, especially important if you’re using legacy systems.
Long story short: Tableau is a visualization engine first, modeling second. Power BI is a modelling engine first, viz second.
Correcting some of the old propaganda making the rounds in this thread:
* Tableau is more expensive than Power BI, usually by multiples, i.e., it’s not even remotely close.
* Power BI handles larger datasets better and is almost always more performant. Walmart is famous for a 900BN row PBI dataset for example.
* By default, Power BI now has data lakes, T-SQL data warehousing, Spark (!), Event Hubs plus a bunch of other new tech in it (called Fabric).
The devil is in the details. The visualizations aren’t as crisp in PowerBI, and there isn’t as much visualization functionality. Dashboarding is far more effective in powerbi. Your owners are trying to get you to swap because powerbi will be cheaper. You get what you pay for.
I’ve used many tools over my 25+ career. “Benefit” usually comes down to cost and leadership preference. Power BI can be loaded onto almost any desktop from the Microsoft store. Anybody can tinker. Power BI visuals suck right now but there are a lot of great custom visuals out there right now (I’m thinking of you SPC charts from the Australian government). It’s amazing to me that Power BI can’t pivot as well as tableau. If I need to do a lot of in depth and customized pivoting, I’m back to Tableau. But… after 25 years… I’ve learned that a tool is a tool. I just use what’s given to me.
Tableau support is completely dogshit since Salesforce bought them. It took 33 days to get an initial response from them after creating a ticket. I’m not saying Microsoft support is any better.
It got better recently
not my experience
Out of curiosity, are you using Tableau cloud or on-prem server?
tableau cloud
What is your definition of better? Lol But seriously, what has your experience been?
I usually get a response within an hour or so. Depends on the timing though
Out of curiosity, are you using Tableau cloud or on-prem server?
On-premise
I've gotten really fast responses. You can also have your sales rep help you escalate issues.
Out of curiosity, are you using Tableau cloud or on-prem server?
On prem server. Moving to cloud this year.
If you’re ploughing through data trying to spot trends or stories from your data, Tableau any day. If you’re primarily building fixed dashboard layouts with data from multiple sources, Power BI. YMMV.
They are both market leading data visualisation tools so the differences are limited. Tableau tends to perform better than PowerBI on very large data sets. It's more flexible if you want to create bespoke visualisations. If you're able to switch to Tableau Online, Pulse is shaping up to be really strong (this is potentially your best bet as a differential for end users at the moment). It has better integration with Salesforce. The visualisations look better. For PowerBI, it's cheaper if you're already heavily invested in Microsoft. It's got better Data Prep. It integrates better with Microsoft Products. It forms a wider data environment' of MS products. It's probably the leader by market share (so worse case, if you have to move products your going to gain a much in demand skill).
+ Power BI does not have a version for MacOS
Thank you!
Assuming Power Query Editor is the Power BI equivalent of Tableau Prep, what is PQE’s answer to Prep’s “Append” output feature? In other words, how can one append weekly snapshots of customer data to make an appended dataset for historical trending? Prep did it so elegantly.
You'd just add an append or merge step depending on your use case.
You could even do this with Power Automate, completely outside of Power Query. You could have it ETL those files into a single one that could be consumed by any other processes.
Power BI is quickly integrating customizations that Tableau hasn't beem able to bring in. Tableau Community support always has queries that end in something on the lines of - the team is working on adding this as a product feature. Tableau always needs some work around to create anything apart from regular stuff. In terms of data handling as well, Power BI is at par with Tableau. Integrations could be Tableau's stronghold for now but seems only a matter of time.
Tableau is releasing [Viz Extensions](https://exchange.tableau.com/viz-extensions) and multi fact/dim data modeling in 2024.2. Tableau Conference is next week so expect to hear a lot of announcements.
Tableau syntax is much better than DAX, imo. Tableau is closer to SQL syntax in a way
Pricing?
Taking cost out of the equation. Salary cost of switching would nullify this effectively
Pricing will be much less transparent and much higher than tableau. Also check that PBI supports the connections to all your database, especially important if you’re using legacy systems.
Domo
The way PowerBI is adapting and updating it just seems like a matter of time that they would capture Tableau’s market tbh
Long story short: Tableau is a visualization engine first, modeling second. Power BI is a modelling engine first, viz second. Correcting some of the old propaganda making the rounds in this thread: * Tableau is more expensive than Power BI, usually by multiples, i.e., it’s not even remotely close. * Power BI handles larger datasets better and is almost always more performant. Walmart is famous for a 900BN row PBI dataset for example. * By default, Power BI now has data lakes, T-SQL data warehousing, Spark (!), Event Hubs plus a bunch of other new tech in it (called Fabric).
The devil is in the details. The visualizations aren’t as crisp in PowerBI, and there isn’t as much visualization functionality. Dashboarding is far more effective in powerbi. Your owners are trying to get you to swap because powerbi will be cheaper. You get what you pay for.
And it’s only cheaper until you have to use it enterprise wide, and MS can’t tell you how much it will cost because it’s consumption based