Adaptive Insights vs Tableau comparison

Workday and Salesforce are both solutions in the Reporting category. Workday is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.2, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Workday holds a 0.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Salesforce’s 21.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Workday users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Adaptive Insights

Read 18 Adaptive Insights reviews

339 Views
22 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 306 Tableau reviews

10,182 Views
1,685 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Adaptive Insights

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Tableau and Adaptive Insights are products competing in business analytics and financial planning. Tableau appears to have the upper hand in data visualization capabilities, while Adaptive Insights is preferred for financial forecasting.

Features: Tableau provides advanced data visualization, easy integration with numerous data sources, and a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface for building reports. Adaptive Insights offers robust budgeting tools, real-time financial forecasting, and integration capabilities with various ERP systems.

Room for Improvement: Tableau could improve its setup cost and simplify deployment. Enhancing forecasting capabilities would benefit users. Adaptive Insights might enhance data visualization features, improve real-time data connectivity, and lower the complexity of its interface for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau requires robust integration, which can complicate deployment. Customer service is adequate. Adaptive Insights offers a smoother deployment experience, especially for financial teams, and receives positive customer service feedback.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau's initial cost is higher, but it offers a significant ROI for data analytics. Adaptive Insights delivers strong ROI with a predictable pricing model, focused on financial planning accuracy and efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed Adaptive Insights vs. Tableau Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Tableau

June 2025

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Helped 856,856 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

Adaptive Insights

Ranking in Reporting

10th

Ranking in Data Visualization

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (8th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (3rd), ESG Reporting Software (5th)

Tableau

Ranking in Reporting

2nd

Ranking in Data Visualization

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

306

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 21.7%, down from 23.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg

Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight

Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models

For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.

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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its dashboard."

"It's very stable."

"The biggest feature is the source of truth for all of our budget and forecast versions."

"Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed."

"The important feature is integration with source data. It connects to various ERP systems, including Workday, Intact, and others. It can also import actuals and compare them to PlanPoint quite easily."

"The integration with our payroll system to complete staff modeling during our budget and forecast processes."

"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."

"Automated reporting."

More Adaptive Insights pros

"I like Tableau's heat maps and the storyboard. You can create data stories and tons of visuals with it, and it goes together really well. Tableau lets you manipulate the data in various ways."

"One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."

"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's easy to use."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."

"The solution provides the leverage of having custom visualization and the capability of self-service."

"It provides supporting data for critical policy and operational changes"

"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"Better user interface (UI)."

"It's a Workday product; they could do a little bit better to integrate a pure-play integration with Workday, which really doesn't do that."

"The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up."

"Adaptive Insights could improve the data designer interface to make integrations easier to set up."

"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."

"The upload feature exists, but isn't terribly useful."

"Adaptive Insights has a limit of 1,00,000 rows for HTML reports. It should be improved because we will have multiple dimensions that need to be populated to enhance the image."

"We tried Discovery and OfficeConnect at one point and found them too cumbersome, at the time."

More Adaptive Insights cons

"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."

"Requires a lot of user training."

"Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge."

"I would like Tableau Prep to be integrated with Tableau Desktop. I would also like more customizations for tables."

"Tableau's integration with Einstein Analytics could be better."

"Pricing is also a concern for me as it is expensive compared to TIBCO Spotfire Enterprise licensing and Microsoft Power Platform."

"The cost of owning the solutions from Tableau is much higher compared to any other analytical solutions."

"It will be good if the server, could be more stable, and I would like to have the technical service to be more reliable."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."

"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."

"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."

"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."

"It's affordable."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."

"It is reasonable based on what it offers."

"The price of Tableau could improve. The license is too expensive."

"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."

"We always consider pricing when considering a new solution. We are a non-profit and price is a huge concern."

"The cost of the solution should be improved."

"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."

"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."

"Pricing is not bad. It's competitive."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

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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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Legal Firm

Educational Organization

38%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adaptive Insights?

It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Adaptive Insights?

12 years ago, it was very affordable. Workday has definitely increased its price since it acquired Adaptive a few years ago. So, it's affordable. But there are other more affordable solutions that ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Adaptive Insights?

The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up. So, there could be room for just improving the integrations, making it easier to integrate outside sys...

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

IBM Planning Analytics vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 12% of the time

Planful vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 9% of the time

Anaplan vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 7% of the time

More Adaptive Insights Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 18% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights

June 2025

Download Adaptive Insights product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

May 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Overview

Adaptive Insights is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis software that helps businesses streamline their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.

With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics, it enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and drive business performance.

Workday

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

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday

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

Adaptive Insights vs. Tableau

June 2025

Free Report: Adaptive Insights vs. Tableau

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