Sigma vs Tableau comparison

Sigma Computing and Salesforce are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Sigma Computing is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.0, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Sigma Computing holds a 1.6% mindshare in BIT, compared to Salesforce’s 16.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Sigma Computing users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Sigma

Read 6 Sigma reviews

1,329 Views
736 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 306 Tableau reviews

13,499 Views
11,916 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Sigma

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Tableau and Sigma compete in the analytics and business intelligence market. Sigma often has the upper hand in features and ease of deployment, making it a compelling choice for many users.

Features: Tableau offers powerful data visualization capabilities, extensive third-party integrations, and a comprehensive dashboard experience. Sigma provides an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface for data exploration, real-time collaboration features, and seamless cloud integration. Key differences include Tableau's advanced visualization tools versus Sigma's flexibility and ease of collaboration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau follows a traditional deployment model with comprehensive customer support known for responsiveness. Sigma's cloud-based approach simplifies deployment and provides proactive service with quick responses, offering a cloud-first solution for faster updates and deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau typically involves higher initial costs due to licensing fees and setup, leading to a more gradual ROI driven by its extensive features. Sigma offers lower upfront costs with a cloud subscription model, resulting in quicker ROI, especially concerning ongoing operational efficiencies. The contrast lies in the immediate value and lower initial investment that Sigma offers compared to Tableau's feature-rich but costlier solution.

To learn more, read our detailed Sigma vs. Tableau Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Sigma vs. Tableau

May 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Sigma

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

16th

Ranking in Data Visualization

14th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tableau

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

2nd

Ranking in Data Visualization

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

306

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Sigma is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 16.2%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Russell Rothstein

CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Modern dashboards and reports enhance decision-making and presentations

I would love to be able to create my own reports in Sigma, as I can do in Salesforce. Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst. I'm interested in the upcoming AI co-pilot to enable natural language generation of visualizations and reports. Also, the marketing materials did not match what I feel we've received. Regarding pricing, Sigma's pricing doesn't allow more people to have the ability to create their own reports. We have very few admin or report creator licenses, while everyone else is on a view-only mode.

Read full review

Nattawat Choosuwan

Senior Data Consultant at a government with 11-50 employees

Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process

An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Sigma serves as the visualization and reporting front end."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

"Sigma is a great software for non-technical business users. If someone's familiar with pivot tables or Excel or Google Sheets, they should be able to pick up Sigma pretty quickly. There is a very low bar for onboarding."

"The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

"I find the collaborative features, such as commenting, to be very valuable."

"The most valuable aspect for me is having real-time data."

"One of the most valuable features of Tableau is that it's a visual analytics solution, not just a dashboarding solution. Compared to Power BI, which is a dashboarding solution, there are no limitations with Tableau. For example, when you add a chart or a map to Power BI, it has a 3,000-point limitation. When you try to track your whole vehicle on the map, you only see the first 3,000 rows on the map, and Power BI doesn't tell you which part of the data is shown on the map. But Tableau doesn't have any limitations, which means that you can see five million data points on a map. It starts the project by creating the visuals that directly converts to SQLs. In that way, all the components have no limitations. When we compared Tableau to Power BI, we also found Tableau to be more fancy. Fancy means you can create more visual graphics and more visual dashboards. With Power BI, this isn't so—it's just some tables and some simple charts together. Tableau is more for business users who want to analyze data. Tableau can directly connect the analytics systems, like R or Titan, and get the results in screen, so it's a good solution for analytics scientists. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data."

"It is very easy to implement and to use."

"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."

"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce."

"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."

"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."

"It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."

"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"

More Tableau pros

Cons

"Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst."

"The only minor area for improvement lies in handling highly complex visualizations."

"I would like to see better visualization options. That would allow me to build out more visually pleasing dashboarding in Sigma."

"Sigma lacks a versioning feature to track changes. There is a need for better structuring, like a folder system, to organize diagrams efficiently."

"Sigma could have better reports."

"The product's roadmap regarding introducing new features in the solution or new versions of the tool can be made better in the future."

"There should be more widgets that would help less trained individuals create charts with less difficulty."

"An area needing improvement involves the complexity of the product should you need to alter a lot of parameters. If you have technical servers, much interface, different providers and more serious processes, that will be time consuming."

"In the next release, I would like to be able to have the option to see more raw data that I'm converting on the dashboard."

"The interface needs improvement as sometimes it is locked, and it takes some time for the visualization and dashboards to load."

"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."

"With Tableau, when you're dealing with very large datasets, it can be slow so the performance is an area that can be improved."

"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."

"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The retail price is set at one thousand dollars per creator per year."

"In Korea, the tool's pricing depends on the scale of usage. For instance, it's reasonable for a department with fewer than 50 users to adopt Tableau, like sales. However, the pricing becomes an issue when considering an enterprise solution for a larger user base, say 10,000 people."

"Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"

"Its price is higher than Power BI and QlikView. Tableau costs around $70 per user per month, whereas Power BI is around $8 to $9. QlikView is around $30. Tableau has various prices for various models such as Creator, Designer."

"It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid."

"It is more expensive than other solutions."

"Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."

"Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."

"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

29%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Sigma?

The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sigma?

The pricing of Sigma is a concern, as it restricts our ability to provide more users with report-creating capabilities due to the high cost of admin or report creator licenses. Most users have view...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sigma?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Hex vs Sigma

Compared 36% of the time

Apache Superset vs Sigma

Compared 16% of the time

Omni vs Sigma

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Sigma

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Sigma

Compared 8% of the time

More Sigma Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 19% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 5% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Sigma

June 2025

Download Sigma product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

June 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Overview

Sigma is the next-generation of analytics for cloud data warehouses with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that gives business experts the power to ask any question of their data no matter the query.

Sigma Computing

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Snowflake, Fivetran ,Autodesk, Flowspace, Super League Gaming, Zumper, Clover, Volta, Olivela

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.

Buyer's Guide

Sigma vs. Tableau

May 2025

Free Report: Sigma vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about Sigma vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Sigma vs. Tableau report.

See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors and best Data Visualization vendors.

We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.