Power BI vs Tableau - Best BI Tool

one of the most common questions i get as a data analyst is should i be using power bi or should i be using tableau for my business intelligence software and for good reason both these names come up as they're the two most popular options in the marketplace right now so what up dad nerds i'm luke and my channel is all about tech and skills for data science and i want to share my insights of working with both power bi and tableau i've been working with both of these softwares for the past couple years in my normal day job and so i've gained a lot of insights and experience with them that i'd like to share with you in this video today we're going to be going over a lot of the key differences and also a lot of the key similarities between these two softwares and then at the end of this i'll be going through and providing my recommendation on how you should go about selecting either tableau or power bi so with that let's get started and we'll start with understanding what is power bi and also what is tableau so let's start with power bi first power bi is a business analytics service that comes from microsoft and so because it comes from microsoft microsoft has a lot of other popular options such as word excel powerpoint it fits well into this ecosystem power bi comes with its own desktop application this application has a lot of synergies with excel so it has a similar back end where you can use power query to access the data you want to get to but then a much more robust front end to allow you to visualize data more easily and i call this a business analytics service because there's multiple different offerings that comes with power bi so you can yes apps access it via your computer but then also you can access it via your phone via their application they have methods to access it online via embedded and they even have their own power bi service which is a application that you can access for your internet browser and share and collaborate on dashboards also with this service this is great for those in that microsoft office 365 ecosystem because it provides a go-to location that you can go and access and control access to certain dashboards and then also host your data in this service so that way it can get auto refreshed and populated with the newest and greatest insights moving on to tableau tableau is a data visualization software that was acquired in 2019 by salesforce tableau is i would say actually more dynamic than power bi because tableau instead of only focusing on organizations and businesses they also have a very heavy uh community and collaboration focus so let's focus on first the business and organization applications and offerings they have first for this they have similar to power bi an application that you can get onto your desktop and use this to visualize they also have another application called tableau prep builder that allows you to go in and actually shape and transform your data before you send it to tableau so those that are familiar with excel or power bi it's very similar to power query which is already included in power bi but now with tableau you have a separate application for this and then as far as sharing your work there for this they have two different options they have tableau online and tableau server tableau online allows tableau to host it for you if you don't have any servers but they charge a little bit more of a premium and then tableau server and for that you'll host it on your own and you can share your dashboards in this service via access via your web browser then i called out the community and collaboration aspect of this so tableau has this thing called tableau public that allows you to one get this desktop application that is free of charge you can download it to your computer and from there you can create custom visualizations and then upload it to tableau public which is an online application that you can access and see all the different dashboards that other people are working on as well moving into cost and we're going to start with tableau first because in my opinion tableau has a more simple cost structure to understand so as previously stated tableau public is a free service you can get the application for free and you can also share your dashboards online for free as well now when you get into the tableau service that's when you're going to have to start actually paying money so for those like me that need to actually create dashboards have access to this tableau application and tableau prep and also be able to access the online or server option that's going to cost 70 a month for each one of those users and then say somebody like your boss that needs to actually access this but doesn't necessarily need to transform or make these dashboards they have options of 12 to 15 a month for those type of users so that way they can access this platform so let's look at power bi now so as previously stated you can go and right now download power bi desktop and get that for free when it comes to power bi service once again that's when you're going to have to start paying for this service and there's a couple different options on how you can go about paying for this so first let's look at the pro users so you can just get subscriptions for everybody to be a pro user and that's ten dollars a month and with this cost so if i'm a pro user i can create a dashboard and then upload it to the power bi service and i can host it there modify the data share it with people if somebody wants to access that dashboard they need to also have a pro license so it doesn't matter if they create dashboards or not they will need this license now moving into the other option to purchase and that is a premium capacity and say you have a large art organization with hundreds or thousands of people that you want to be able to share your dashboard with but you don't want to necessarily have each one of them have a pro license this is a great option for that because then you host your dashboard in this premium capacity and then it allows anybody that you allow access to this uh service with they can go and access the dashboard and they don't need that pro license the item to note is that you don't necessarily need office 365 that suite to pay for it to get power bi you can get power bi on its own and you can do that by creating an account and setting up different accounts via the azure active directory and for my research i found that you can set it up for free next up are the system requirements so the things that require a web browser such as tableau online tableau server or the power bi service those are going to be your browser going to be compatible with any browser that you have access to and so there's no relay system requirements for that what i'm going to talk about here are the desktop applications so for power bi since it's a microsoft product duct you need windows 8 or newer and it's not necessarily directly installable in onto mac os i do have a video that i'll include a link for and it will show you how to set up a virtual machine in order to get power bi on your mac for tableau it's very much similar in that it supports windows 7 or higher and then it does support mac os but it only supports technically high sierra mojave and catalina so the newer version of mac os that is out right now big sur and also specifically the m1 chip it does not support but i've found a workaround to install a previous version of tableau so tableau 2020.3 and using rosetta i've had no problems with tableau working on my mac okay so now let's go into a deeper dive for understanding the applications themselves and how you can create dashboards with these applications here we are on my mac with power bi loaded and a quick overview of just the layout of power bi similar to other microsoft products you have a ribbon up at the top that you can select different options then you have your dashboard location right here where you would build your dashboard with all your different visuals your visuals itself so the visualization pane that you can select the different visuals and then customize and then your data field so going in and selecting your data and for this i've already loaded the data so for power bi it's all about selecting the visualization that you want first and then selecting the data to fill it in to actually build that visualization so let's start with a bar chart to start with so i've added the bar chart to my dashboard and i can position it wherever i want within the dashboard itself we'll just put it right here and then from there what's good about power bi and they find mostly people that are new to this type of software is then it tells you to hey add the data as necessary to fill this in okay so in this case i've created a bar chart where i have my sales year over year then if i want to create another visualization i can go about doing the same thing okay so i've added a few different visualizations to here i'm just trying to keep it very simple but overall this is the pretty much the approach that you would be taking if you're building a dashboard in power bi moving into tableau on my mac let's go over the basic layout which somewhat similar to power bi but overall i feel especially new users they can be intimidated by this layout because it's not as intuitive as power bi so for this you have your top menu bar and then from there your data and your different attributes so i've already pre-loaded data into here and from there this is inside of here to the right hand side is where you're actually going to build your visualizations so let's create our first uh visualization similar before we're going to create sales over time and the approach taken with tableau is different from power bi in this you select your attributes you want to look at and then from there you select your visualization so let's go ahead and visualize that so i went in and threw in sales over time i can go ahead and swap the accesses and right now it's initially giving it to me as a line chart and from there we want to select what visualization we want so we want a bar chart in this case and i can just go ahead and select it in the show me and it will change it once again i can rotate those axis and it will change it and like i said previously you can then just select the different visualizations that you want if i wanted a pie chart to do a pie chart and i'm going to go overhead real quick and create those other visualizations similar to what we had in power bi okay so i go i went ahead and created the different visualizations that i wanted and so now i go to that dashboard where i was and i just throw those visualizations in to visualize them on a single dashboard with tableau i feel it's a little bit more of a rougher start and harder start but then once you get that you know it becomes more intuitive how to do more complex things and so therefore it's easier in the long run next up is the final product so that dashboard that you're actually delivering from what i found power bi has a very standard look to it so whenever you find a dashboard that's created by power bi i can just look at it usually and tell if it's made in power bi or not when it comes to tableau though this is where you're going to find your more artistic representations of dashboards and so this is really good option especially if you're trying to you're up and coming in this visualization field and you need to stand out tableau is a good option to use in order to get these nice looking visualizations the next topic we're going to move into are data sources and data pipelines such as etl and for this both tableau and power bi accept data from a number of different sources could be spreadsheets it could be sql databases it could be in the cloud i think you'd be hard pressed to find with either of these options a data source that you have that it can connect to now when it comes to the etl process or extract transform load they both have options for actually transforming your data and providing in a manner that you can use it within the applications themselves so for power bi as i previously mentioned we can use power query which that is if you're familiar with excel it's the same application behind that you can use to actually transform and then load your data and you can do a lot of different complicated things and it's all located within your single power bi application so it's really good for doing everything in a one-stop application the one drawback though is if you get into complicated relationships and structure of your data which i have in the past it makes your it uses up a lot of memory on your computer and it can slow down power bi tremendously for tableau it takes a different approach and whenever whatever data you apply to it it needs to be clean already yes you can set up relationships if you want to to connect data but you can't do much more transformation beyond that if you actually want to go through an etl process or set something up like that that's where you're going to use that tableau prep builder to actually perform that etl process to get it nice and clean into tableau so we've created our dashboard now and now we want to share it what are our different options for sharing let's look at tableau first in the tableau public case you can easily just go within the application itself and select to upload it to your tableau public account and it's available for anybody to go access via a url this is a really great community and it allows you to get feedback and also showcase your skills for those with a business and organization focus you though have tableau server and tableau online which you can access via your browser and this is a more secure location that you have a login you can go to and from there you can access the dashboard that you have been given permission to moving into power bi they have a similar thing to tableau public they have the power bi gallery although i don't feel the community as as as big and as strong as tableau public but if we want to get into actually sharing it securely or within an organization that's when the office 365 or the power bi service is going to be coming to use that's when you can use the power bi app that you access via your web browser and log in and you can share and control access to your different dashboards from this location and the final topic area and that's going to be getting help or the community around each one of these services for tableau i find that the documentation is extremely well documented with this application so if you have a problem you can easily go to google search it in and something in the documentation is going to pop up i don't see as many forums being used for tableau for problems because the documentation is so good power bi is completely opposite to tableau in that the documentation is not that great but they have a much more active community within the forums and so if you have a problem you can type it into google and you can most likely find the problem that you're trying to solve so moving into my recommendation for which service you should choose it really depends on what aspect you are looking at it from if you're looking at it from the student or somebody that's new into business intelligence and you're looking at which software to learn i would focus on hey what companies do you want to work for and look at those companies and see which software they're using and work towards learning that software other options to consider for the student or newcomer perspective is that think about what your end goal is with this so if you're trying to maybe stand out and get a job tableau may be a good option to create that unique visualization that you can get inspiration from from tableau public and also share it publicly to get feedback so that may be a good route but say you're going maybe you want to go the freelance route and you want to have a standardized approach to creating dashboards and do some sort of consulting power bi may be a better option for creating those standard looking dashboards to share with your clients so really you have to weigh the pros and cons of each of these to understand which is going to be the better solution from you and then if you're analyzing this from a management perspective and you're looking at hey which one should i institute within my organization i really feel like i showed here that it doesn't really matter which option you choose there is no wrong option each one has their pros and their cons but overall they have all the support you need they are fully developed visualization tools and they provide you with what you need to get the dashboards to get those business insights i would say that if you are in that microsoft ecosystem it may be at ease to implement power bi um and if you're not in that microsoft ecosystem i think tableau may be a lower cost option that may be a good option to go to for hosting your dashboards so with that as always if you got value out of this video smash that like button and feel free to leave a comment down below on questions that you may have on one of these visualization software and with that i'll see you in the next one that's a lot of stuff no

Channel: Luke Barousse

Views: 342,753

Keywords: data viz by luke, business intelligence, data science, bi, computer science, tableau, power bi, power query, excel dashboard, dashboards, bi solution

Id: axgNfM55dw8

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021