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SAP Crystal Reports vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
SAP Crystal Reports delivers excellent ROI by enhancing ERP reporting and efficiency, with returns exceeding 1000% despite training costs.
Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
Tableau is saving me time, money, and resources, which I would rate as ten.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.9
SAP Crystal Reports support is mixed, with larger clients prioritized, leaving smaller users often relying on online communities.
Sentiment score
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
I have not encountered any problems requiring assistance.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
There should be consistent standards for all users.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Crystal Reports is scalable for medium to large businesses, but smaller companies may find it costly.
Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
SAP Crystal Reports has become more stable since 2013, with most users experiencing improved reliability and performance.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
The application hangs after continuous use due to the buildup of cache.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
 

Room For Improvement

SAP Crystal Reports needs enhanced visualization, integration, and debugging to address interface complexity, performance issues, and compatibility limitations.
Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
If it is closed due to any problem, it should be able to recover where I left off, similar to Excel, which should be a feature for SAP Crystal Reports.
Enabling better practices and testing to enhance data accuracy and efficiency for company sectors.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
 

Setup Cost

SAP Crystal Reports pricing varies, around $500 per license; discounts and free viewing options exist, training adds costs.
Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
A license for 150 users costs around $17,000 USD per year.
Looker is known to be quite expensive.
 

Valuable Features

SAP Crystal Reports offers robust data visualization, extensive data connections, dynamic features, rapid development, and seamless Business Objects integration.
Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
SAP Crystal Reports has had a very positive impact and benefits. It's a powerful tool to design any kind of report if you have knowledge of the database, and it can attach to both HANA and SQL databases.
The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.7%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 20.7%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

MUHAMMAD_IMRAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Crystal Reports enables comprehensive data visualization but requires consistent integration practices for optimal accuracy
SAP Crystal Reports provides a clear picture for customer and vendor orders, showing whether orders are pending and delivering receivable and payable statuses, which allows understanding different scenarios categorically for client needs, ultimately satisfying both customers and clients. The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel, which makes accessing and understanding data from the database easier. The ability to generate different formats facilitates better data analysis, although occasionally advanced features such as workbench center directly enhance the experience. The impact of SAP Crystal Reports' dynamic parameters significantly affects the customization and flexibility of reports, allowing adjustments to parameters based on client needs, such as date, users, and ledger views, ensuring data is correctly collected and formatted according to the client's requirements.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
I believe SAP Crystal Reports could be improved or enhanced because one of the problems I am facing with it is that sometimes it hangs and uses too much memory, which is frustrating. If it is close...
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
My usual use cases for SAP Crystal Reports involve designing reports based on the requirements of the clients and management, such as profit and loss, graphs, multiple reports, sub reports, and das...
What do you like most about SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting.
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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
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. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
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 SAP Crystal Reports vs. Tableau Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.