Alteryx vs Tableau – Which is the Winner in 2020? Nowadays, organizations prefer data proof over plain words. Thus, a massive amount of data is coming to the organizations to derive solutions to the problems or deriving insights into the future. Management of data is a painful task for organizations. Thanks to tools like Alteryx and Tableau at the rescue. Before knowing the exact difference between Alteryx and Tableau, you should know What is Alteryx and What is Tableau?
Alteryx – Data Analytics Platform
Alteryx is popularly known as a Self-Service Analytics tool. Business users can build their data workflows in Alteryx by quickly blending and preparing the data without any programming skills. Alteryx is a software that makes this ETL process easier. Alteryx is the one super tool that combines the functionalities required for Data Preparation, Geo-Spatial Analytics, and Data Science.
Alteryx consists of three products:
- Alteryx Gallery
- Alteryx Designer desktop tool
- Alteryx server
Alteryx prepares and blends the data. Still, when it comes to visualization, it needs software like tableau for the pictorial representations and creating visualizations to present the data accumulated in the easiest understandable way possible. Do you know What is Alteryx Gallery?
Tableau – Data Visualization Tool
One of the best visualization software in the market and 7 years in a row as a leader in a Gartner Magic Quadrant for analytics and Business Intelligence platforms. Tableau offers ease in deployment options, product usability, and product support. To develop complex and sophisticated visualizations in tableau there is no need to know to code.
Tableau can take a massive amount of data to create the best visualizations. Tableau is not empowered with data blending and modeling capabilities; this is where Alteryx comes to picture. The process of data blending, preparing, and modeling is done by Alteryx and is fed to tableau by data source connections. Thus, it is clear that Alteryx and Tableau work hand in hand. Check out 101 Tableau Interview Questions and Answers.
Interconnection of Alteryx and Tableau
As stated before, Alteryx handles the data to model it in the form suitable for Tableau to create visualizations. Let us take an example of address data; Tableau needs the location in latitude and longitude to create a spatial analysis data visualization, but if the addresses are directly fed to Tableau it will not be able to come up with the spatial visualization as nobody saves the address data in latitude and longitude format. The address first needs to be modeled and prepared by Alteryx. Alteryx has specialized tools called street geocoder and CASS to convert address data into spatial data. This saved data can now be stored in .tde (Tableau Data Extract) file format.
Now, once .tde file is created, by using the Publish to Tableau Server tool of Alteryx, this data is fed to Tableau to create spatial visualization. In his way, Alteryx and Tableau are interconnected to work together; if one (Tableau) is best in creating beautiful and most convincible visualizations, the other (Alteryx) is the best in the industry to prepare and model big data.
Alteryx vs Tableau
Though Alteryx and Tableau work hand in hand, there are a lot of differences to take into consideration.
| Specifications | Alteryx | Tableau |
| Definition | Alteryx is known as Best analytics Platform | Tableau is known for its visuals crating capabilities |
| Process | It performs ETL and connects to different data sources to prepare the raw data. | It connects to data sources and creates the best visualizations on prepared and modeled data. |
| Usage | Performs Data Analysis | Builds Data Visualizations |
| Graphic User Interface (GUI) | Average and accepted globally | Best |
| Technical Knowledge | Necessary for data blending and preparing | Not necessary |
| Sharing | After performing Analytics sharing the file is possible | Visuals can be shared with the individuals given access |
| Flexibility | For data blending | For data visualization |
| Analysis | Perform predictive and spatial analysis | Can keep the data in the proper format |
| Data Preparation | The best tool for data preparation | When compared to Alteryx, not a good option |
| Data visualization | Not an ideal tool | An ideal tool |
| Price and its type | Starts from $1950 for the annual subscription | Starts from $35 and can be annual or monthly payment options |
| Drag and Drop Interface | Eases to build the workplace | Visuals can be built in a few minutes |
| OS Compatibility | Windows, Android and on-line | Windows, Android, iOS an on-line |
| Customer support offered | Via phone call, live chat or can generate report ticket | Via phone and training videos |
Alteryx and Tableau both are best in their fields. Alteryx is ‘the best’ in the industry for data analytics and Tableau in creating visualizations. Alteryx vs Tableau But when Alteryx and Tableau work together, they create a masterpiece! Both the tools complement each other to develop business models that deliver business insights to medium and large organizations.