ETL comparison: Alteryx v/s Power Query

Alteryx

Alteryx is an ETL (extract, transform, load) tool which is used for data cleaning, blending and modelling purposes. It’s an enterprise level ETL tool which is simple to use and can process large datasets.

I’ve started using Alteryx in my current organization in the last 2 months, and I’ve been fascinated by its capabilities. As a person who has mainly worked on Power BI, SQL, and MS Excel, some features of Alteryx have impressed me a lot.

In this article, I’m comparing Alteryx with Power Query with respect to their data preparation capabilities.

Advantages

Here are some things which I’ve found really beneficial in using Alteryx:

1. The ability to convert complex business logic into technical logic and implement it in the data cleaning and modeling process.
2. The Alteryx engine is more powerful compared to Power Query engine. Hence, it can handle huge sizes of data efficiently.
3. The Alteryx UI is very simple to use (drag and drop, then configure) and interpret the workflows.
4. More variety of tools are available including tools that help for performing predictive analytics like machine learning and deep learning.
5. Spatial analysis can be done in a simple and effective manner.
6. The Alteryx community has free guided resources to master the tool and crack certifications like Alteryx designer core, Alteryx designer cloud, etc.

Limitations

Though it has the above advantages, here are a few drawbacks too:

1. Alteryx license is costly and the free trial is for 14 days only (Note: students can get a 1-year free license) whereas Power Query is free to use in both Excel and Power BI.
2. The visualization/reporting capabilities are limited in Alteryx compared to Power BI/Excel where Power Query has been integrated with.

Conclusion

Simply put, if you are expecting to implement complex business logic in huge and multiple data sources, I’d highly recommend you try Alteryx for the data preparation and modeling process. The prepared data can later be visualized using any data visualization tool. (Power BI/Tableau etc.)

You may also check out KNIME, which is a free and open-source counterpart of Alteryx. It has limited community support to help solve your queries as compared to Alteryx.

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