Tableau vs Metabase

by Gralio Feb 03, 2025

Tableau and Metabase offer distinct approaches to business intelligence. Tableau provides a powerful platform for advanced analytics and visualizations, while Metabase focuses on simplicity and accessibility for a broader range of users. The choice depends on your specific needs and budget.

At Gralio.ai we help to simplify your decision-making process by offering detailed, side-by-side software comparisons like this one, to help you confidently choose the tool that aligns with your business goals.

This comparison was created by analysing 4478 reviews and 60 websites, saving 1 day, 1 hour, 22 minutes of reading.

Tableau

Website LinkedIn Twitter

Metabase

Website LinkedIn Twitter

About

Tableau is a popular data analytics platform that helps businesses make sense of their data. It offers powerful, user-friendly tools for visualizing data, creating interactive dashboards, and sharing insights across your organization. Tableau is suitable for companies of all sizes and is known for its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, even for non-technical users. It allows you to connect to various data sources, analyze information visually, and discover trends to make better business decisions.

Metabase is a business intelligence tool that makes it easy for anyone in your company to analyze data and create reports, even without technical skills. It connects to your existing databases, allowing you to build interactive dashboards and visualize data without writing code. Metabase offers a user-friendly interface with features like a visual query builder and pre-built dashboards. It's available in both free open-source and paid versions, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. Metabase prioritizes ease of use and accessibility for non-technical users, empowering teams to make data-driven decisions.

Summary

Main difference

Tableau stands out with its robust data visualization capabilities and advanced analytics features, making it suitable for complex data projects. Metabase excels in its ease of use and affordability, particularly beneficial for smaller teams or those new to business intelligence.

Relative strengths of Tableau (compared to Metabase)

Superior data visualization and dashboarding capabilities with a wide array of chart types and interactive features.
Stronger analytics tools for in-depth data exploration and advanced calculations.
Broader range of data source connections and integrations.

Relative weaknesses of Tableau (compared to Metabase)

Higher cost, especially for larger deployments or advanced features.
Steeper learning curve due to its extensive functionalities.
Can be resource-intensive, requiring more powerful hardware for optimal performance.

Who should use Tableau VS. Metabase

Tableau is a powerful data analytics and visualization platform ideal for medium to large businesses across various industries. Users love its intuitive drag-and-drop interface and powerful visualization tools, enabling data-driven decision-making. However, some users find the pricing high and the trial period too short.

Metabase is a user-friendly business intelligence tool ideal for small to medium-sized businesses in various data-driven industries. Users praise its intuitive interface and ease of creating reports and dashboards, even without technical expertise. However, some have noted performance issues with large datasets. It's a good option for companies looking for an accessible and affordable BI solution.

Best for medium and large businesses.
Suitable for most industries, including Healthcare, Finance, and E-commerce.

Best fit for small to medium-sized businesses.
Ideal for industries like Healthcare, Finance, E-commerce, Retail, Education, and Hospitality.

Tableau and Metabase features

Supported

Partially supported

Not supported

Type in the name of the feature or in your own words tell us what you need

Analytics dashboards

Supported

Tableau allows creating interactive dashboards and charts for data visualization.

Supported

Metabase allows creating and sharing interactive dashboards and charts.
Drag and Drop Interface

Supported

Tableau offers a drag-and-drop interface for creating visualizations and dashboards.

Supported

Metabase supports drag-and-drop for dashboards, but not for editing visualizations like pivot tables within dashboards.
Community Support

Supported

Tableau offers community support with resources, training, and a forum.

Supported

Metabase offers community support via a forum and documentation. Formal training is separate.
Interactive charts and graphs

Supported

Tableau allows the creation of interactive charts and graphs, with features like filters, drill-downs, tooltips, and dynamic updates, facilitating data exploration and visualization.

Supported

Metabase allows users to create interactive charts and graphs with drill-downs, filters, and tooltips. It offers both pre-built drill-through actions for query builder questions and the ability to customize click behavior for SQL questions to link to other dashboards or URLs, providing flexibility for user exploration.
Data Visualization

Supported

Tableau offers a wide range of charts and graphs, including pareto charts, stacked bar charts, line graphs, area charts, dual-axis combination charts, Gantt charts, and bullet charts, making it easy to visualize data.

Supported

Metabase allows to visualize data using charts and graphs. It supports variety of chart types including bar charts, line graphs, pie charts and more. Charts can be customized and embedded. The platform can also suggest chart type automatically.
Interactive dashboards

Supported

Tableau allows incorporating interactive elements like filters, drop-down menus, and interactive tooltips. Users can drill down into data, use filters, parameters and custom calculations. It supports actions such as filter actions, highlight actions, and URL actions for dynamic interaction.

Supported

Metabase allows creating interactive dashboards with features like filtering data, drill-through actions for exploring details, and customization options for dynamic updates.

Qualities

Value and Pricing Transparency

-0.78

Strongly negative sentiment

No data
Customer Service

+0.47

Rather positive sentiment

No data
Ease of Use

+0.71

Strongly positive sentiment

+0.78

Strongly positive sentiment
Reliability and Performance

+0.14

Neutral sentiment

-0.5

Rather negative sentiment
Ease of Implementation

+0.1

Neutral sentiment

+0

Neutral sentiment
Scalability

+0.18

Neutral sentiment

-1

Strongly negative sentiment

Tableau and Metabase Pricing

Tableau offers software in 3 editions: Tableau, Enterprise, and Tableau+ (available through sales). It is unclear if the listed prices are for Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server. All deployments require at least one Creator license. The software is available through a custom embedded analytics plan as well.

Plans

User sentiment

Strongly negative

-0.78

See full Pricing page

No data

See full Pricing page

Tableau and Metabase review insights

4456 reviews analysed from and

Users love

User interface with exciting visualisation tools.
Works very well as a BI Reporting Tool.
Seamless Data Integration
The best part about Tableau is the performance and speed which enables me to analyze big data without any slowdowns.

Metabase is user-friendly and easy to use, even for non-technical users.
The interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate.
It's easy to create dashboards and reports with Metabase.
Metabase allows you to write custom SQL queries for advanced analysis.

Users dislike

Some time is slow and have some visualizations flexibilities issues.
The cost is what comes into my head when I first think of Tableau and the collaborations issues as it isn\'t smooth in the desktop version when cimpared to its competitor Power BI
Tableau can be expensive, especially for small businesses or individual users.
The Tableau trial period is too short, If they release the free version with limited features it would be beneficial for students to get hands-on experience.

Metabase can be slow, especially with large datasets or complex queries.
The dashboard can be slow with many cards.
Limited customization options for dashboards and visualizations.
Some users find the visual query builder limiting for complex queries.

Tableau and Metabase Ratings

G2

4.4/5

(2074)
Capterra

4.6/5

(2209)
TrustPilot

1.9/5

(22)
Glassdoor

4.1/5

(18141)

G2

4.4/5

(120)
Capterra

4.5/5

(53)
Glassdoor

5.0/5

(9)

Company health

Employee growth

2% increase in the last year

15% increase in the last year

Web traffic

7% decrease in the last quarter

15% decrease in the last quarter

Financing

July 2022 - $65M

February 2021 - $51M

How does Tableau's drag-and-drop interface compare to Metabase's query builder for non-technical users?

For non-technical users, Tableau's drag-and-drop interface is generally considered more intuitive and easier to learn than Metabase's query builder. While Metabase's query builder offers a visual approach to querying data without SQL, some users find it limiting for complex queries. Tableau's drag-and-drop functionality allows users to quickly create visualizations and dashboards with minimal technical knowledge, making it more accessible for those unfamiliar with data analysis concepts.

Which product, Tableau or Metabase, offers better scalability for rapidly growing datasets?

Tableau offers better scalability for rapidly growing datasets. While both products offer interactive dashboards and data visualization, Tableau's non-functional features score for scalability (0.18) is significantly higher than Metabase's (-1), indicating Tableau is better equipped to handle increasing data volume and complexity. User reviews also highlight Tableau's performance with large datasets as a key strength.

What are the advantages of Tableau?

Tableau's advantages include its market-leading position in BI, its intuitive drag-and-drop interface making it user-friendly for non-technical users, and its broad range of visualization options including pareto charts, Gantt charts, and bullet charts. Tableau also benefits from strong community support and generally positive user reviews praising its performance and data integration capabilities.

What are the disadvantages of Tableau?

Tableau's primary disadvantages are cost and complexity for certain users. While praised for its powerful features and visualizations, the pricing can be prohibitive, especially for smaller businesses or individuals. Some users also find certain aspects of the software less intuitive than competitors, particularly when dealing with complex data manipulations or needing advanced customization. Limited collaboration features in the desktop version have also been cited as a drawback.

Alternatives to Tableau and Metabase

Amazon QuickSight

Amazon QuickSight is a cloud-based service designed to help businesses understand their data. It allows you to create interactive dashboards and reports, ask questions about your data in plain English, and embed these insights directly into your own applications. This means everyone in your company can access and explore data to make better decisions. QuickSight is a scalable solution used by companies of all sizes, aiming to simplify data analysis without needing technical expertise.

Logi Symphony

Logi Symphony is a business intelligence tool that lets you build interactive dashboards and reports directly into your company's software. It connects to your existing data sources to provide visual insights, analysis tools, and self-service data exploration for your team. Logi Symphony is designed for medium to large companies who want to provide built-in data analysis within their own software applications, offering a customizable and secure way to share data discoveries and improve decision-making.

Alteryx

Alteryx is a data analytics platform designed for businesses of all sizes. It offers a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface to prepare, analyze, and visualize data without needing coding skills. Alteryx excels at automating data tasks, helping you uncover insights faster and make better decisions. It's used across various departments and industries to improve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage.

Looker

Looker, a Google Cloud product, is a business intelligence platform that helps you understand your company's data. It organizes your data so you can easily analyze it, create dashboards and reports to visualize the information, and then share these insights with colleagues. Looker aims to provide a user-friendly experience for exploring data without needing technical expertise.

Qlik Sense

Qlik Sense is a visual analytics platform that helps you analyze your company data. It consolidates information from different sources, revealing hidden trends and insights. You can create interactive dashboards and reports to easily understand complex data and share findings across your company. Qlik Sense is suitable for various departments like sales, marketing, and finance, and is designed for mid-size to large companies seeking a powerful, user-friendly analytics solution.

Explo

Explo is a software tool that helps you create interactive dashboards and reports that you can embed directly into your own software product. This allows you to provide your customers with valuable insights into their own data without forcing them to leave your platform. Explo is designed to be user-friendly and customizable, so you can create a seamless experience for your customers that matches your brand. Explo promises fast implementation and offers strong customer support to help you throughout the process.

Page co-authored by

Michal Kaczor

CEO at Gralio

Michal has worked at startups for many years and writes about topics relating to software selection and IT management. As a former consultant for Bain, a business advisory company, he also knows how to understand needs of any business and find solutions to its problems.

Tymon Terlikiewicz

CTO at Gralio

Tymon is a seasoned CTO who loves finding the perfect tools for any task. He recently headed up the tech department at Batmaid, a well-known Swiss company, where he managed about 60 software purchases, including CX, HR, Payroll, Marketing automation and various developer tools.

How are we doing?

Is this information helpful to you? Is there anything we are missing?

Did this help you select your product?

Other issues? Vote & Let us know