There are many different pieces of visualization software out there. Many have found their niche and are best for that purpose. There are so many different ones available that review sites need to use the top X format to review the best (i.e., “Top 10 best data viz tools of 2025”). Here I will only address the two I feel comfortable with, Microsoft’s Power BI (I hold a certification in this one), and Salesforce’s Tableau.
Power BI (Power Business Intelligence ) – free for 90 days
– PBI has the most market share of any of the Tools for this purpose, but that is primarily because of two reasons:
- PBI has a 90%+ market share because it is considered part of MS 365. If you use MS Word, you probably own Power BI as well.
- Power BI seems easy to use on the surface, but it becomes truly more difficult once you get past the basics.
Tableau or Tableau Public (a free version of Tableau)
– Although Tableau has a tiny portion of the market, between 5 and 8%, depending on how you track it. It is, by far, the better tool.
- Although I am certified in the use of Microsoft’s Power Business Intelligence (Power BI) tool, I find that Tableau is:
- Easier to use, no matter how deeply you get into it
- Is better at handling bigger data sets
- Has a beautiful way of determining what the data types are in your data
- It is way more logical in its design and interpretation of dashboards
- On top of that, I ALWAYS put my data into Tableau first to check it out, even if I plan on using Power BI.