Is Tableau Really Better Than Power BI?
Reactions to using Tableau for the first time; from a Power BI user.
When getting started in data visualization, one of the first major decisions you need to make is what Business Intelligence (BI) tool you want to learn (or at least, learn first). There are approximately 5,678,234,987 BI tools out there, but the two heavyweights are Tableau and Microsoft’s Power BI.
Now, not to overdramatize (but I’m going to overdramatize), but the Tableau vs. Power BI debate is a strongly divided camp. Like the Yankees vs. the Red Sox or Voldemort vs. Potter. There are some dataviz folks, mostly freelancers, who are well versed in both, but everyone has their favorite.
True confessions: when I first started learning about BI tools, I wanted to learn Tableau.
Tableau is cool. Tableau is what everyone is always talking about. Tableau has an Iron Viz competition, for goodness’ sake. I mean that name alone makes it sound badass. To me, Power BI seemed like the lame little brother who was desperately trying to follow in his hero’s footsteps. Power BI could maybe get you what you needed, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.
As fate would have it, because of a series of constraints (namely, budget, and Microsoft-embeddedness in my organization) I got “stuck” with Power BI.
