Dashboarding with Tableau vs. Google Data Studio

Below I present some pros and cons of dashboarding with two major tools in the business analytics space- Tableau and Google Data Studio.

Aug 2020

I recently came across Google Data Studio- a dashboarding and report creation tool- and was curious to see how it compares to more established dashboarding tools like Tableau. Below I present dashboards created with each tool displaying data on police shootings from 2015 to the present (maintained by The Washington Post). After spending some time exploring each tool's functionality, it's clear that they're both very useful; however, given their different strengths, one tool might better suit a particular user's needs than the other.

Google Data Studio is perfect for quickly creating dashboards that only need to present traditional charts and visualizations. Creating charts is very intuitive and the fact that it's completely browser-based enables easy access and shareability. In contrast, Tableau is definitely a more capable tool, which allows users to really push their creative boundaries, as evidenced in Tableau's gallery of public visualizations. Unsurprisingly, the learning curve with Tableau is a little steeper, though it's not too difficult to learn the basics and seems worth the investment of time given its more refined presentation and greater visualization possibilities. I've listed a few pros and cons for both tools based on my experience dashboarding with them below.

1) Tableau:

Advantages Over Google Data Studio:
- Much more customizeable (e.g. types of visualizations possible as well as small formatting details)
- More refined display (e.g. hover text is crisper)
- Tiled layout option enables easier symmetrical structure
- Not only a visualization tool but also doubles as an analytics software

2) Google Data Studio

Advantages Over Tableau:
- Simple implementation of color themes
- Interpolation available for line charts (i.e. line smoothing)
- Built-in indicators to help line up dashboard elements when dragging
- Browser-based (easier to access and share)
- Chart creation is simpler overall (i.e. more intuitive, fewer clicks)
- Better looking donut chart (highlights area hovered over and doesn't display pie boundaries like Tableau does)