Metabase vs Tableau

Overview

Tableau

Stacks1.3K

Followers1.4K

Votes8

Metabase

Stacks928

Followers1.2K

Votes271

GitHub Stars44.4K

Forks6.0K

Metabase vs Tableau: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown document compares the key differences between Metabase and Tableau, two popular data visualization tools. Metabase is an open-source business intelligence and analytics tool, while Tableau is a commercial data visualization software.

User Interface: Metabase has a clean and simple user interface that is easy to navigate. It provides a user-friendly experience for non-technical users. On the other hand, Tableau has a more sophisticated user interface with a wide range of features and options for advanced data analysis and visualization.
Cost: Metabase is a free and open-source tool, making it a cost-effective choice for small and medium-sized businesses or individuals with limited budgets. Tableau, on the other hand, is a commercial software that requires a license or subscription, making it more suitable for larger organizations with higher data analysis needs and budgets.
Data Sources: Metabase supports a limited number of data sources, including databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL, while Tableau supports a wide range of data sources, including databases, cloud services, and spreadsheets. Tableau's extensive connectivity options make it more versatile in terms of accessing and analyzing data from different sources.
Customization: Tableau offers more advanced customization options compared to Metabase. With Tableau, users have greater flexibility to design and customize visualizations, including the ability to create interactive dashboards and apply custom styles and themes. Metabase, while providing basic customization features, may have limitations in terms of design flexibility and advanced customization.
Collaboration and sharing: Tableau provides robust collaboration and sharing features, allowing users to share dashboards and reports with others, collaborate in real-time, and enable data-driven discussions. Metabase, on the other hand, has limited collaboration capabilities and may not be as suitable for teams or organizations requiring extensive collaboration and sharing functionalities.
Advanced Analysis: Tableau offers more advanced analytical features compared to Metabase. It provides users with the ability to perform complex calculations, create custom formulas, apply statistical models, and use advanced visualization techniques. Metabase, while offering basic analytical capabilities, may not have the same level of sophistication in terms of advanced data analysis.

In summary, Metabase is a free and open-source tool with a simple user interface, limited customization options, and basic analytical capabilities, making it suitable for small or budget-conscious users. Tableau, on the other hand, is a commercial software with a more sophisticated user interface, extensive data source connectivity options, advanced customization features, robust collaboration and sharing capabilities, and advanced analytical functionalities, making it well-suited for larger organizations with more complex data analysis needs and budgets.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Tableau, Metabase

Vojtech

Head of Data at Mews

Nov 24, 2019

Decided

Power BI is really easy to start with. If you have just several Excel sheets or CSV files, or you build your first automated pipeline, it is actually quite intuitive to build your first reports.

And as we have kept growing, all the additional features and tools were just there within the Azure platform and/or Office 365.

Since we started building Mews, we have already passed several milestones in becoming start up, later also a scale up company and now getting ready to grow even further, and during all these phases Power BI was just the right tool for us.

353k views353k

Comments

Wei

CTO at Flux Work

Jan 8, 2020

Decided

Very easy-to-use UI. Good way to make data available inside the company for analysis.

Has some built-in visualizations and can be easily integrated with other JS visualization libraries such as D3.

Can be embedded into product to provide reporting functions.

Support team are helpful.

The only complain I have is lack of API support. Hard to track changes as codes and automate report deployment.

230k views230k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Tableau	Metabase
Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.	It is an easy way to generate charts and dashboards, ask simple ad hoc queries without using SQL, and see detailed information about rows in your Database. You can set it up in under 5 minutes, and then give yourself and others a place to ask simple questions and understand the data your application is generating.
Connect to data on prem or in the cloud—whether it’s big data, a SQL database, a spreadsheet, or cloud apps like Google Analytics and Salesforce. Access and combine disparate data without writing code. Power users can pivot, split, and manage metadata to optimize data sources. Analysis begins with data. Get more from yours with Tableau.; Exceptional analytics demand more than a pretty dashboard. Quickly build powerful calculations from existing data, drag and drop reference lines and forecasts, and review statistical summaries. Make your point with trend analyses, regressions, and correlations for tried and true statistical understanding. Ask new questions, spot trends, identify opportunities, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.; Answer the “where” as well as the “why.” Create interactive maps automatically. Built-in postal codes mean lightning-fast mapping for more than 50 countries worldwide. Use custom geocodes and territories for personalized regions, like sales areas. We designed Tableau maps specifically to help your data stand out.; Ditch the static slides for live stories that others can explore. Create a compelling narrative that empowers everyone you work with to ask their own questions, analyzing interactive visualizations with fresh data. Be part of a culture of data collaboration, extending the impact of your insights.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 44.4K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 6.0K
Stacks 1.3K	Stacks 928
Followers 1.4K	Followers 1.2K
Votes 8	Votes 271
Pros & Cons
Pros 6 Capable of visualising billions of rows 1 Intuitive and easy to learn 1 Responsive Cons 3 Very expensive for small companies	Pros 62 Database visualisation 45 Open Source 41 Easy setup 36 Dashboard out of the box 23 Free Cons 7 Harder to setup than similar tools
Integrations
No integrations available	PostgreSQL MongoDB Amazon Redshift MySQL Microsoft SQL Server

What are some alternatives to Tableau, Metabase?

Superset

Superset's main goal is to make it easy to slice, dice and visualize data. It empowers users to perform analytics at the speed of thought.

Cube

Cube: the universal semantic layer that makes it easy to connect BI silos, embed analytics, and power your data apps and AI with context.

Power BI

It aims to provide interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards.

Mode

Created by analysts, for analysts, Mode is a SQL-based analytics tool that connects directly to your database. Mode is designed to alleviate the bottlenecks in today's analytical workflow and drive collaboration around data projects.

Google Datastudio

It lets you create reports and data visualizations. Data Sources are reusable components that connect a report to your data, such as Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google AdWords and so forth. You can unlock the power of your data with interactive dashboards and engaging reports that inspire smarter business decisions.

AskNed

AskNed is an analytics platform where enterprise users can get answers from their data by simply typing questions in plain English.

Shiny

It is an open source R package that provides an elegant and powerful web framework for building web applications using R. It helps you turn your analyses into interactive web applications without requiring HTML, CSS, or JavaScript knowledge.

Redash

Redash helps you make sense of your data. Connect and query your data sources, build dashboards to visualize data and share them with your company.

Azure Synapse

It is an analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives you the freedom to query data on your terms, using either serverless on-demand or provisioned resources—at scale. It brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.

Periscope

Periscope is a data analysis tool that uses pre-emptive in-memory caching and statistical sampling to run data analyses really, really fast.

Related Comparisons

Metabase vs Tableau: What are the differences?

Introduction

User Interface: Metabase has a clean and simple user interface that is easy to navigate. It provides a user-friendly experience for non-technical users. On the other hand, Tableau has a more sophisticated user interface with a wide range of features and options for advanced data analysis and visualization.
Cost: Metabase is a free and open-source tool, making it a cost-effective choice for small and medium-sized businesses or individuals with limited budgets. Tableau, on the other hand, is a commercial software that requires a license or subscription, making it more suitable for larger organizations with higher data analysis needs and budgets.
Data Sources: Metabase supports a limited number of data sources, including databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL, while Tableau supports a wide range of data sources, including databases, cloud services, and spreadsheets. Tableau's extensive connectivity options make it more versatile in terms of accessing and analyzing data from different sources.
Customization: Tableau offers more advanced customization options compared to Metabase. With Tableau, users have greater flexibility to design and customize visualizations, including the ability to create interactive dashboards and apply custom styles and themes. Metabase, while providing basic customization features, may have limitations in terms of design flexibility and advanced customization.
Collaboration and sharing: Tableau provides robust collaboration and sharing features, allowing users to share dashboards and reports with others, collaborate in real-time, and enable data-driven discussions. Metabase, on the other hand, has limited collaboration capabilities and may not be as suitable for teams or organizations requiring extensive collaboration and sharing functionalities.
Advanced Analysis: Tableau offers more advanced analytical features compared to Metabase. It provides users with the ability to perform complex calculations, create custom formulas, apply statistical models, and use advanced visualization techniques. Metabase, while offering basic analytical capabilities, may not have the same level of sophistication in terms of advanced data analysis.

Metabase vs Tableau

Overview