In the world of Data Visualization or BI, we have two options to adopt; they are nothing but Power BI and Tableau.
In this blog, I’m going to cover Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau, specifically for beginners who have not used data visualization and want to know which one to use.
The topics covered in this blog are:
- What Is Power BI and Tableau?
- Power BI vs Tableau Price
- Power BI vs Tableau Visualizations
- Power BI vs Tableau Data Sources
- Power BI vs Tableau Programming Language
- Machine Learning in Power BI Vs Tableau
- Why Power BI?
- Conclusion
What Is Power BI And Tableau?
- Both Power BI and Tableau are Data Analytics and Business Intelligence platforms. They help you perform data manipulation, data analysis, and data visualization to make sense of business data and draw insights.
- Microsoft Power BI is fairly new in the market and the initial release was available for public download on 11 July 2011. It is not a single software. Basically, it is an umbrella of cloud-based apps and services.
- Tableau Software was founded in 2003 – 10 years earlier than Power BI. In data visualization, it’s also known as the gold standard.
- Tableau is a little bit hard whereas Power BI Interface is very easy to learn.
Power BI vs Tableau Price
- Microsoft Power BI is comparatively economical than Tableau with a free version, a monthly subscription, and a premium subscription which is more costly.
- To use Power BI, users don’t necessarily need a subscription to Office365.
- Microsoft Power BI offers Premium and Pro licenses.
- Power BI Premium is a capacity-based offering i.e. Greater scale and performance, with Power BI Report Server’s ability to maintain BI assets on-premises, latest features for embedded analytics, etc.
- Microsoft Power BI Pro is an individual user license i.e. users interact and read the reports and dashboards that others have published to the Power BI service and also share content and collaborate with other Power BI Pro users.
Source: Microsoft Power BI
- Tableau offers three types of subscriptions i.e. Creator, Explorer, and Viewer for teams and organizations.
- The Creator plan covers the full functionality of Tableau, and costs $70/user/month, regardless of whether the platform is used on-premise or in the cloud.
- The Explorer plan mainly focused on users that want self-service analytics without data cleaning and prepping. It costs $42/user/month if deployed in the cloud, and $35/user/month for on-premise deployment.
- Finally, there’s Tableau Viewer for users that want to work on already-created visualizations. Organizations can install it on-premise for $12/user/month or have Tableau host it for $15/user/month. Note that Tableau Viewer subscription requires at least 100 viewers in order to purchase the plan.
- Note: Tableau offers a 14-day free trial for users who wish to test it before making a purchase.
Source: Tableau
Power BI vs Tableau Visualizations
- Power BI has numerous varieties of visualization options. Power BI lets users design visualizations by asking queries with natural language.
- Tableau offers unbelievable data visualizations with interactive reporting. It has powerful functionality built-in making it easy to create unique visualizations.
- Both Tableau and Power BI allow business analysts to set up cool visualizations that help reduce costs, spot patterns, speed up processes, and develop consensus. However, the Tableau platform allows users to leverage any number of data points for conducting analysis – something Microsoft Power BI doesn’t offer.
![Visualizations]()
Check Out: Our previous blog post on PL-300. Click here
Power BI vs Tableau Data Sources
- Power BI is very capable of connecting to users’ external sources including Excel, SharePoint, JSON, MySQL, SAP HANA, and more.
- When users add data from many different sources the relationships are determined by Power BI automatically.
- In addition, Power BI enables users to connect to Microsoft Azure databases, third-party databases, files, and online services like Google Analytics and Salesforce.
- Tableau Software has access to numerous data sources and servers such as PDF, JSON, Excel, Text File, statistical file, Google Analytics, Amazon Redshift, Cloudera Hadoop, dropbox, google sheets, google drive, and others.
Source: Microsoft
Also Read: Our previous blog post on Microsoft Data Analyst Certification. Click here
Power BI vs Tableau Programming Language
- Power BI supports DAX [Data Analysis Expression] and M language for data modeling & data manipulation. It can also connect to the R programming language using Microsoft revolution analytics, available only for enterprise-level users.
- Tableau integrates much better with the R language. Tableau Software Development Kit can be implemented using any of the four programming languages – C++, Java, C, and Python. By connecting to these programming languages, you can build even more robust visualizations.
Machine Learning In Power BI Vs Tableau
- Power BI takes the advantages of Microsoft business analytics that includes platforms such as SQL Server-based Analysis Services, Azure Machine learning, data streaming in real-time, and many Azure databases offers. It helps to figure out the data and analyze the trends and patterns in the data.
- Tableau supports the features of Python machine learning. This allows us to implement machine learning operations over the datasets and forecast data.
Source: Microsoft
Also Read: What is Power bi? Click here
Why Power BI?
For 14 consecutive years, Gartner has accepted Microsoft as a Magic Quadrant Leader in analytics and BI platforms.
- The Power BI cloud service is highly rich in its capabilities, including an increased set of augmented analytics and automated ML capabilities.
- AI-powered services, such as sentiment, text, and image analytics are available within Microsoft Power BI Premium and draw on Azure capabilities.
- Power BI also integrates with Microsoft Teams, with its 10 million daily active users, which will inevitably further increase Power BI’s reach in the world of remote working.
Conclusion
Both Power BI and Tableau are outstanding data analytics and BI tools with different target customers. Power BI is a great choice for the common employees in a company that are more involved in self-service business intelligence and not necessarily in complicated data analytics. Power BI is also a great option if your company already uses Microsoft products. If you’re tight on budget and don’t need much functionality, go with Power BI.
References
- Introduction to Microsoft Power BI Platform | Everything You Must Know
- Exam PL-300: Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst | A Replacement Of DA-100
- Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate [PL-300] Step By Step Activity Guides (Hands-On Labs)
Next Steps to begin with PL-300 Certification:
In our PL-300 Certification Training Program, we’ll cover 10+ Hands-On Labs. If you wish to start your journey towards becoming a Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate, try our FREE CLASS.
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