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Alteryx vs Looker vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

Predictive Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alteryx14.0%
Anaplan13.8%
SAP Analytics Cloud12.7%
Other59.5%
Predictive Analytics
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker8.0%
Tableau Enterprise26.6%
Qlik Sense12.2%
Other53.2%
Embedded BI
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise10.3%
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
Other70.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is one of the most complete and great customer service that I experienced with a software company/ecosystem."
"The data transformation feature is the most valuable. The ability to ingest data, visualize data, and transform that data is useful."
"Alteryx is user-friendly and allows easy creation of workflows compared to Informatica PowerCenter."
"The connectors are a very good feature."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"Alteryx effectively visualizes the flow of data and what happens at each stage. I also like that it's a no-code solution. I also like that you can troubleshoot certain parts of the workflow by putting them in a sandbox."
"It allows for manipulation and automation, which has greatly reduced the amount of time required per project."
"The most valuable feature is user-friendliness, as Alteryx can be used by those without any coding experience or experienced data scientists as it has the functionality to embed R and Python scripts."
"The product is easy to use."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"The most valuable feature is the 3D charting."
"The use of a storyboard helps the flow of the data visualisation."
"While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution."
"I believe one of the most valuable features of the solution is trend analysis."
"It gives us a new dimension to the way that we analyse our data."
"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."
"It is a very stable product. It doesn't break."
 

Cons

"The solution is improving continuously. They have, for example, just added automatic insights. If they continue to improve on their overall service offering, that would be ideal."
"Sometimes workflows tend to queue up, and they tend to get canceled for some reason that we don't know sometimes."
"Even when it already includes some AI models, this area could be improved."
"The scalability worries me a lot at the moment because the cost of the solution is high and it is not growing considerably. Unfortunately, we started during early COVID times and because of the economic downturn, all the cost cuttings, and everything, it is not growing as expected."
"Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage."
"There is currently no cloud solution and this would be valuable for many clients."
"They should make the solution user-friendly for nontechnical people by giving specific names to the options."
"It is a little bit pricey."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"Stability needs improvement."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product does not have documented material."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."
"The interface needs improvement as sometimes it is locked, and it takes some time for the visualization and dashboards to load."
"Tableau is difficult to scale because of the cost, which makes it difficult to scale."
"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."
"A strict security measure is needed. I believe it is weak in terms of security."
"With Tableau, when you're dealing with very large datasets, it can be slow so the performance is an area that can be improved."
"I don't have the ability in Tableau to create a tooltip and see the picture of a piece of jewelry or watch that is a best seller."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The desktop platform costs $5,000 per year. It's very costly."
"The price for Alteryx Designer is reasonable but the price for Alteryx Server for universal collaborations is too expensive."
"It's very expensive. I'd rate it a four out of ten in terms of the price. It's great for big companies but not for small companies."
"In order to have designers, and, if you want to collaborate, you have to buy a server. If the designer is $5,000, and if you want a server, you have to pay $80,000."
"There are some implementation services and internal effort costs at the beginning but there is nothing else."
"In my opinion, it's actually quite expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing a two out of ten."
"The price could be better."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"It is cheap."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"I downloaded the solution online for free."
"It is a bit overpriced."
"The price could be higher for the quality of software, so they revised the pricing in this version, and I agree with the price for top version. The top version costs about $70 per month, and the price is cheap for the quality."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"This license is on a yearly basis."
"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."
"Its price is reasonable. Everything is included in the license."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me direc...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, ...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say...
What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If adva...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: September 2025.
869,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.