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Kibana vs Tableau: What are the differences?
Key Differences between Kibana and Tableau
Kibana and Tableau are both data visualization tools that are widely used in the field of analytics and business intelligence. While they share similarities in terms of their purpose, there are key differences that set them apart from each other.
Data Source Compatibility: Kibana is specifically designed to work with Elasticsearch, a distributed search and analytics engine, while Tableau is compatible with a wide range of data sources including relational databases, cloud services, and spreadsheets. This difference in data source compatibility allows Tableau to integrate with a larger variety of systems, providing more flexibility to users.
Functionality: Tableau offers a wider range of functionalities compared to Kibana. With Tableau, users have access to advanced features such as predictive analytics, statistical modeling, and powerful visualizations. On the other hand, Kibana focuses more on providing real-time analytics and log analysis capabilities for Elasticsearch data.
User Interface: Tableau is known for its user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing non-technical users to create visualizations easily. Kibana, while offering a user-friendly interface as well, requires a certain level of technical knowledge to utilize its full potential. It is more suited for users with experience in Elasticsearch and data analysis.
Customization Options: The customization options in Tableau are more extensive compared to Kibana. Tableau allows users to fully tweak the appearance and behavior of visualizations, add custom calculations, and create interactive dashboards. While Kibana does offer some customization features, they are more limited in scope.
Deployment: Kibana is typically deployed within the Elastic Stack, which includes Elasticsearch and Logstash, allowing for a seamless integration of data analytics and visualization. Tableau, on the other hand, can be deployed both on-premise and in the cloud, providing more flexibility in terms of deployment options.
Cost: Tableau is a commercial software that requires a license for its full functionality. It offers different pricing plans based on the features and deployment options. On the other hand, Kibana is open-source and free to use, providing a more cost-effective solution for those who have already adopted Elasticsearch.
In summary, the key differences between Kibana and Tableau lie in their data source compatibility, functionality, user interface, customization options, deployment options, and cost. While Kibana is focused on real-time analytics and Elasticsearch integration, Tableau offers a wider range of functionalities and data source compatibility, making it a preferred choice for users seeking comprehensive data visualization capabilities.
From a StackShare Community member: “We need better analytics & insights into our Elasticsearch cluster. Grafana, which ships with advanced support for Elasticsearch, looks great but isn’t officially supported/endorsed by Elastic. Kibana, on the other hand, is made and supported by Elastic. I’m wondering what people suggest in this situation."
For our Predictive Analytics platform, we have used both Grafana and Kibana
- Grafana based demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdTB2AcU4Sg
- Kibana based reporting screenshot: https://imgur.com/vuVvZKN
Kibana has predictions
and ML algorithms support, so if you need them, you may be better off with Kibana . The multi-variate analysis features it provide are very unique (not available in Grafana).
For everything else, definitely Grafana . Especially the number of supported data sources, and plugins clearly makes Grafana a winner (in just visualization and reporting sense). Creating your own plugin is also very easy. The top pros of Grafana (which it does better than Kibana ) are:
- Creating and organizing visualization panels
- Templating the panels on dashboards for repetetive tasks
- Realtime monitoring, filtering of charts based on conditions and variables
- Export / Import in JSON format (that allows you to version and save your dashboard as part of git)
I use both Kibana and Grafana on my workplace: Kibana for logging and Grafana for monitoring. Since you already work with Elasticsearch, I think Kibana is the safest choice in terms of ease of use and variety of messages it can manage, while Grafana has still (in my opinion) a strong link to metrics
After looking for a way to monitor or at least get a better overview of our infrastructure, we found out that Grafana (which I previously only used in ELK stacks) has a plugin available to fully integrate with Amazon CloudWatch . Which makes it way better for our use-case than the offer of the different competitors (most of them are even paid). There is also a CloudFlare plugin available, the platform we use to serve our DNS requests. Although we are a big fan of https://smashing.github.io/ (previously dashing), for now we are starting with Grafana .
I use Kibana because it ships with the ELK stack. I don't find it as powerful as Splunk however it is light years above grepping through log files. We previously used Grafana but found it to be annoying to maintain a separate tool outside of the ELK stack. We were able to get everything we needed from Kibana.
Kibana should be sufficient in this architecture for decent analytics, if stronger metrics is needed then combine with Grafana. Datadog also offers nice overview but there's no need for it in this case unless you need more monitoring and alerting (and more technicalities).
@Kibana, of course, because @Grafana looks like amateur sort of solution, crammed with query builder grouping aggregates, but in essence, as recommended by CERN - KIbana is the corporate (startup vectored) decision.
Furthermore, @Kibana comes with complexity adhering ELK stack, whereas @InfluxDB + @Grafana & co. recently have become sophisticated development conglomerate instead of advancing towards a understandable installation step by step inheritance.
Very easy-to-use UI. Good way to make data available inside the company for analysis.
Has some built-in visualizations and can be easily integrated with other JS visualization libraries such as D3.
Can be embedded into product to provide reporting functions.
Support team are helpful.
The only complain I have is lack of API support. Hard to track changes as codes and automate report deployment.
Power BI is really easy to start with. If you have just several Excel sheets or CSV files, or you build your first automated pipeline, it is actually quite intuitive to build your first reports.
And as we have kept growing, all the additional features and tools were just there within the Azure platform and/or Office 365.
Since we started building Mews, we have already passed several milestones in becoming start up, later also a scale up company and now getting ready to grow even further, and during all these phases Power BI was just the right tool for us.
Pros of Kibana
- Easy to setup88
- Free65
- Can search text45
- Has pie chart21
- X-axis is not restricted to timestamp13
- Easy queries and is a good way to view logs9
- Supports Plugins6
- Dev Tools4
- More "user-friendly"3
- Can build dashboards3
- Out-of-Box Dashboards/Analytics for Metrics/Heartbeat2
- Easy to drill-down2
- Up and running1
Pros of Tableau
- Capable of visualising billions of rows6
- Intuitive and easy to learn1
- Responsive1
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Cons of Kibana
- Unintuituve7
- Works on top of elastic only4
- Elasticsearch is huge4
- Hardweight UI3
Cons of Tableau
- Very expensive for small companies3