Tableau Public is a free platform to explore, create and publicly share data visualizations online. It allows you to use the majority of the software functions. You can create visualizations and connect to Text and Excel documents. However, the largest difference is that Tableau Public does not allow you to save your workbooks locally. You have to save them on the publicly which means that everyone can see your data since it’s saved on the cloud.
Tableau desktop offers all the full features of software. Your workbooks can be shared locally. This version allows you the connect to different file types, create extracts of the data sources and save your Tableau workbooks locally and publicly.