These product limitations make Tableau Reader an appropriate option for some proof-of-concept projects, but the wrong choice for deploying analytics at scale across your organisation. In addition, Tableau Reader users can only access and interact with local workbooks (see the comparison chart below for a detailed product comparison). In terms of functionality, Tableau Reader lacks the governance, security and administration capabilities which are essential for mission-critical production deployments of Tableau. Tableau Viewer is a role-based licence option on Tableau Server which allows casual users to access and interact with trusted content created by creators and explorers without putting the security of your data at risk.
At the time, Tableau Reader was the only option for sharing interactive content with other users in an organisation without access to Tableau Desktop. This was before Tableau Server was made available to organisations to govern the sharing and distribution of analytics content. Tableau Reader is a free product that was created in the early days of Tableau to allow analysts and content creators to distribute content they built in Tableau Desktop. Reference materials Toggle sub-navigation.Teams and organisations Toggle sub-navigation.
