HomeBlogPower BI Vs. Tableau: Difference and Comparison
Power BI Vs. Tableau: Difference and Comparison
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Published onAugust 6th, 2022
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The new world of data
visualization is rapidly emerging, and new players are entering the market.
Business intelligence tools play a vital role for any business team. They
provide end users with the accessible collection, storage, and visualization of
several data types. Two of the most outstanding Business Intelligence tools are
Power BI and Tableau. They help you perform data analysis, manipulation, and
visualization to make sense of business data and gain insight. Students,
practitioners, and researchers are often faced with the dilemma of deciding
which tools they should learn or use in their work.
This blog will be
about Power Vs. Tableau, their difference, and their comparison.
Power BI is a
Business Intelligence and data visualization tool that helps you transform data
from various data sources into interactive BI dashboards and reports. It also
provides several software connectors and services.
Microsoft Power BI is
a business intelligence tool that helps you process data from various sources
and provides visualization after cleaning and integration. It also offers an
Adhoc report generation feature that enables data analysis.
What is Tableau?
Tableau is a famous
data visualization and business intelligence tool for reporting and analyzing
large volumes of data. It helps users create charts, graphs, maps, dashboards,
and stories to visualize and analyze data to help them make business decisions.
Data generated by Tableau is easy to understand for marketers of all levels,
thanks to its easy-to-understand formats. One did not need to acquire high
technical skills to create a custom dashboard in Tableau.
Some fundamental differences between Power BI and Tableau
Tableau
” Tableau deploys MDX for dimensions and
measures.
” Tableau can process a massive amount of data
and still offers better performance.
” Tableau has better data visualization.
” Tableau works best with massive data.
” Professionals and power users use Tableau.
Power BI
” Power BI uses the DAX language for column
measurements and calculations.
” Power BI is best for a limited amount of data.
” Power BI offers many data points for data
visualization.
” Power BI is not optimal with massive data.
” Both beginners and experts use Power BI.
Comparison between Power BI and Tableau
1. Based on performance
Power BI is easy to
use. It is faster and works better when data volume is limited. Power BI tends
to drag gradually when processing bulk data.
while
Tableau can process
large amounts of data quickly. It is faster and provides extensive data
visualization capabilities. Tableau doesn’t confine the number of data points
in visualization or enforce row or size limits, so you should have a 360-degree
view of your data.
2. Based on the user interface
Power BI is more
comfortable to learn and has a more intuitive interface than Tableau. Hence,
businesses prefer Power BI over Tableau due to its ease of use and simplicity.
On the other hand,
Tableau is usually used to create customized dashboards with an elegant design
that allows for a user-friendly interface. Both tools have an exemplary user
interface that makes them easy to work with.
3. Based on ease of use
Power BI has the
advantage of the ease of use because it is based on a user interface rooted in
Microsoft Office 365 that most end users are already familiar with.
Tableau provides some
crucial advantages for detailed data exploration and visualization. Tableau
also incorporates natural language capabilities into its software. This helps
in finding solutions to complex problems by better understanding the data.
4. Based on the capacity to process complex data
Tableau processes
extensive data more efficiently than Power BI. Tableau works best when the data
is vast. Tableau is preferred when the use case has a large data store.
Power BI tends to lag
when it encounters extensive data. It lags in performance when there is a large
data store.
5. Based on the functionality
Tableau performs
better compared to Power BI when it comes to data-related questions. This
suggests that the depth of data to work with is much more sophisticated than
Tableau.
And Power BI doesn’t
offer as many features compared to Tableau.
6. Based on machine learning in Power BI and Tableau
Power BI takes
advantage of Microsoft’s enterprise analytics, including platforms such as
Azure Machine Learning, SQL Server Analysis Services, real-time data streaming,
and many Azure databases. It helps to comprehend the data and analyze the
trends and conventions in the data.
On the other hand,
Tableau supports Python’s machine learning features. This allows us to perform
machine learning operations on datasets and forecast data.
Power bi vs tableau pros and cons
Pros of Power BI
” Power BI is an affordable tool. Desktop Power
BI is free, you can create datasets, dashboards, and reports for yourself and
share them with your colleagues for analysis, but you have to pay $9.99 per
user per month to share reports in the cloud.
” It is straightforward to use. If you should
have some knowledge of Excel, you can continue using this tool.
” Microsoft comes out with updates for its
software monthly, and so for Power BI. Users can often take advantage of newly
developed features.
” With the help of Power BI, you can access data
from various data sources anywhere, anytime, and multiple times.
” Power BI comes with interactive dashboards,
and users can filter, highlight features, etc., with a single click.
Cons of Power BI
” The desktop version of Power BI is not
compatible with iOS.
” It has a clunky interface full of many icons
that can block the display of reports and dashboards.
” It does not accept a file size larger than 1
GB.
” Sometimes it is challenging to process larger datasets
with complex features because Power BI can fail in these situations.
Pros of Tableau
” Tableau equips with online resources, guides,
training, and an online forum, making the Tableau community more engrossing.
” Software updates in Tableau are easy to do.
” The overall performance of this tool is high
and safe. Tableau can make various kinds of visualizations in one shot.
” A huge quantity of data can be processed using
Tableau.
” Users can incorporate Python or R to perform
complex spreadsheet calculations.
Cons of Tableau
” Tableau does not provide an automatic option
to refresh reports, which increases the manual effort of updating data in the
backend.
” Tableau doesn’t give you version control,
which means you can’t go back to a previous level of data after publishing
reports and dashboards.
” Tableau has a table display limit of 16
columns, so users sometimes struggle to display data for larger tables.
” Tableau has static parameters, you can only
select one value with a parameter, and whenever the data changes, these
parameters are updated manually and not automatically.
Certification
Certification will
add a stamp of excellence in a specific technology to your portfolio. It shows
that you have invested significant time and effort in learning the technology
or skill set and have taken full advantage of it.
Additionally,
certifications will help you achieve a significant salary increase compared to
a non-certified candidate. You can expect a 30-70 percent increase in your
income if certified in a specific technology such as Business Intelligence.
Power BI certification
Below are some Power BI certifications that will help
you advance in your career:
1. Exam 1.DA-100:
Microsoft conducts
the DA-100 exam for data analysis with Microsoft Power BI certification but does not provide any training course to qualify for the
exam. To pass the exam, you must thoroughly understand the basics of Power BI,
its components, and how to connect data from various sources and visualize and
run queries on other datasets.
2. Exam 70-778:
Explore and visualize
data with Microsoft Power BI. Exam 70-778 equips you to create custom
visualizations using Power BI Desktop, configure desktops, and deploy models to
Power BI web applications.
Tableau Certification
Even in the Tableau
Desktop certification suite, we have several options based on your
understanding and expertise of the tool.
Tableau Desktop Qualified Associate (TDQA)
” It is advised for people with at least 5
months of hands-on experience using the tool, and someone who comprehends the
basics of SQL and databases, joins, and standard Data Analytics terminology
(Even if you have no previous Tableau experience but are willing to learn, you
can get certification).
” Price: $250
” Time limit: 2 hours
” A score of 75% is required to pass this
certification.
Tableau Desktop Certified Professional:
” Recommended for people who have significant
experience with Tableau Desktop. More than 9 months of experience is needed.
Unlike the TDQA, this certificate includes practical solutions, written
response, and Tableau desktop creation/saving solutions.
” Price: $600
” Time limit: 3 hours
” Grading and Assessment: Hand-graded based on a
detailed scoring rubric
Conclusion
In this blog, we have
seen the difference and comparison between Power BI and Tableau. In short, we
conclude that Power BI is a business analytics service provided by Microsoft
that can analyze and visualize data, extract statistics and share them between
different departments in your organization. In contrast, Tableau is a powerful
Business Intelligence tool that manages data flow and turns data into
actionable information. It can create a wide variety of different
visualizations that present data and interactively demonstrate insights.
