We recently made the decision to bring Sigma into our ‘best-of-class’ toolkit, and as a long-time Tableau user, I’ve spent the last few weeks really getting under the hood. I wanted to share what it actually feels like to work with Sigma from a creator’s perspective. If you’re an analyst used to the "Tableau way" of doing things, here are my honest first impressions.
To be honest, I really enjoyed my first few sessions in Sigma. I started with their tutorials to get my bearings, and I was surprised by how quickly I could build actual insights. Everything runs directly in the browser, but it feels incredibly snappy. One of the standout features for me is the transparency; being able to see the underlying data at any point is a breath of fresh air.
Even better is the way Sigma handles lineage. You can see exactly which elements, the Sigma name for everything in a workbook, depend on others. Having that visual map of how your dashboard is tied together is something I know I’m going to miss the next time I’m deep in a complex Tableau build.
The actual building process required a bit of a mental shift. If you’ve ever used PowerBI, Sigma will feel familiar. Instead of the free-form "pills on shelves" approach we love in Tableau, you select a chart type and work through property and format menus to get it looking right.
This change also forced me to rethink how I handle calculations. In Tableau, we have our trusty data pane on the left where everything lives. Sigma doesn’t have that. I learned quickly that it’s much better to write your calculations within the Data Element itself rather than inside a specific chart. If you do it inside the chart, that logic doesn't roll over to the next visual, and you’ll find yourself typing the same formula over and over. This need is slightly reduced when you change parent-child relationships within a workbook.
One of the coolest "aha!" moments I had was discovering how Sigma uses parent-child relationships. You can build a chart that is directly based on another chart element. When you do this, all your calculations, filters, and interactive bits flow down automatically to the "child" elements. It’s a bit like setting up filter actions in Tableau, but much more intuitive because the relationship is baked into the structure of the workbook. If you set up the lineage correctly, the interactivity just works without you having to touch every individual filter.
This flexibility is a lifesaver for those of us who work iteratively. I was particularly impressed when I needed to switch a data source from one server to another. Sigma actually suggested the mapping for the swap, and the whole thing worked on the first try. The only real downside I found is that if you make a chart a parent, every aggregation becomes a calculated field that gets carried forward. You can end up with a bit of a mess in your columns, seeing things like “Sum of Sales (1)” popping up in your tooltips.
Speaking of tooltips, Sigma does something I didn't know I needed until I saw it: it automatically puts legend colors right in the tooltip. It makes reading the data so much faster. However, there is a trade-off. In Tableau, I love "viz-in-tooltip" or even just writing a tooltip as a full sentence to make it feel more human. In Sigma, you’re currently stuck with a standard list of info. You can add more columns to that list, but you can't change the layout or the way it looks.
Overall, I’m really happy to have Sigma in my rotation. It’s not necessarily about one being better than the other; it's about how they handle the workflow differently. Sigma rewards a structured, iterative approach, while Tableau still holds the crown for creative, narrative-driven design. It’s an exciting time to be an analyst when we have two tools this strong to choose from.