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TIBCO Spotfire 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
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
Sentiment score
6.6
TIBCO Spotfire boosts productivity through reduced maintenance and enhanced analysis, justifying its cost with aligned organizational adoption.
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
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
Sentiment score
7.1
TIBCO Spotfire customer service is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, with ratings ranging from 7 to 9 out of 10.
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.
TIBCO's support, especially for integration products, is swift.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
Sentiment score
7.3
TIBCO Spotfire offers strong scalability, supporting large datasets and real-time processing, though setup and updates may pose challenges.
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
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
Sentiment score
6.6
TIBCO Spotfire is reliable but may face stability issues with complex tasks, dataset size, and improper real-time data integration.
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.
There are no significant stability issues as long as the product's capabilities are understood and not overly pushed.
 

Room For Improvement

Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
TIBCO Spotfire struggles with customization, user-friendliness, data integration, and requires enhancements in training, support, and mobile functionality.
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.
TIBCO Spotfire and ClickView need improvement in scheduling, which is critical yet lacking in quality.
 

Setup Cost

Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high yet competitive, offering value with comprehensive features despite challenges in transparency and negotiation.
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.
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high, particularly in traditional markets like Turkey, impacting market penetration.
 

Valuable Features

Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
TIBCO Spotfire excels in interactive visualizations, real-time analytics, and seamless integration, praised for handling large datasets efficiently.
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.
TIBCO Spotfire integrates with R and Python, offering a differentiator from the competition.
 

Categories and Ranking

Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
TIBCO Spotfire
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 15.4%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Spotfire is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

MR
May 08, 2015
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Fuad Mammadli - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable tool to create dashboards for financial reporting
I have experience with Qlik. Our company moved from Qlik to TIBCO, as the latter provided us with easier options to make dashboards. We consider TIBCO to be better for our company in some of the areas related to automation and analytics. The data monitoring team in our company prefers TIBCO.
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

MR
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015
If you want real world proof. Have a bake off or POC with a real world set of criteria: 4 or more data sources, 100M or more records and mobile, etc. You'll be glad that you did!
2 out of 26 answers
Mar 5, 2015
Each of these DV providers have a strong offering but subltle differentiators: Tableau is your general purpose BI tool-great visuals and user friendly UI. Spotfire is geared more towards the data scientist and incorporates more statistical analysis functions. Qlik excels at reporting and their data association model. Excuse the shameless self-promotion but If you are interested in unique capabilities like connecting to real time streaming data sources and/or semi/un structured data for more sophisticated analysis, I’d recommend also taking a look at Datawatch.
Mar 5, 2015
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high, particularly in traditional markets like Turkey, impacting market penetration. There is a lack of local support and distributors, making it challenging to sell.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
ClickView ( /products/clickview-reviews ) offered more visually appealing visualizations. TIBCO Spotfire and ClickView ( /products/clickview-reviews ) need improvement in scheduling, which is criti...
 

Also Known As

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
Spotfire
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about TIBCO Spotfire vs. Tableau Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.