206: Every Data Analyst Tool You Need is FREE

If you're trying to break into data analytics, you've probably wondered how much do all these data tools cost? Because when you start adding up Excel, Tableau, Python, AI tools, it starts to sound really expensive. But here's the big secret that they don't want you to know. You can get all of these tools for absolutely free. $0 and I'm going to tell you how today, so we are covering the 10 most used data tools, and I'll show you my exact setup for each and show you how you can replicate it on your own. We'll cover four categories, spreadsheets, scripting, business intelligence, and ai. And I actually do pay for two of these tools, so make sure you stick around to the end to figure out what tools they are and why they're worth paying for. But let's get started with the most in demand data tool, Excel. And everybody knows Excel. What most people don't know is that you can use it for completely free. In fact, Microsoft doesn't want you to know that you can use it for free. It's so unbelievably hidden on their website. They don't ever talk about it at all. But don't worry, I have your back. I'll have an exact link that you can use to get access to this free version of Excel, along with the other nine data tools that we'll be covering today. It's in the description down below. So check it out. Welcome to Excel for free on the web. This is like the only place I've really been able to find where it can link to, where you can get it for free and you can just sign in with your Microsoft account or create your own. And then once you do, it'll look like this. And sure enough, you can create a a blank workbook. You can access all of your other files that you've done previously. So you can see that I've used this. In the past, I'll go ahead and press create blank workbook just to show you, but just like that you've got Excel running in your browser. That is one of the biggest downsides to the free version is it's only in your browser, but usually today that's okay. Like usually are only working when there's internet. Um, there are some downfalls, like file sizes in your browser can cause things to, to bog down and be really slow or even not work. Um, but other than that, you get formulas, you get charts, you get pivot tables. Um, you can even, you know, share this with different people by copying the link or copy link to the sheet. Um, you can manage the access to this. You get five gigabytes of storage basically, of OneDrive to store all your files. Now of course, you are missing other things other than just being able to use it on your laptop or your desktop. Um, and there's a bunch of different differences between the two. To be honest, I couldn't find any real documented, like this is the free version versus the paid version. This is what you get. Um, so leave a comment down below if you want me to do a full in depth. Free Microsoft Excel versus paid Microsoft Excel. But like, the biggest thing is you're not gonna be getting all of the functions up here. Like, uh, you don't have power query and power pivot. Um, you're not gonna have like VBA macros for automation. Uh, the solver and analysis tool packs are unavailable. And of course, once again, you're not gonna have offline access. So there's gonna be some things that you can't do with the free version of Excel, but. When you're just trying to learn on your own, you're building your skills, you're practicing formulas, then like literally everything you need is in here. The pivot tables, formulas, vlookup, all the good stuff you need is going to be available in the free version. And even if it's not, like this is a really good way to get started without having to pay. And then once you need to learn the stuff that's not in the free version, maybe you start paying $7 a month for the paid version. So who knew Excel is free. Our next tool is the other big spreadsheet software, which is Google Sheets. And this one's really simple. Google Sheets is a hundred percent free. Seriously, all you need to do is go to sheets.google.com and sign in and boom, you're basically done. It's all available for you. You basically get a full fledged spreadsheet for $0. It has real time collaboration. It has 15 gigs of data and storage. It has so many different functions. Graphs that you can make up here at the top. Different formulas, and it even has something called Google App Scripts if you wanna write custom code inside of your spreadsheet. Now there is a paid version, kind of, it's Google Workspace. And Google Workspace basically includes the premium version of all the Google products, and it's about $7 a month or $15 a month depending on what plan you're on. But mostly that's for businesses. It adds things like custom email domains to your Gmail and more storage and more admin controls. For the spreadsheet functionality, it's. Pretty much nearly identical. So for an aspiring data analyst, Google Sheets is one of the best free tools out there, especially if you're collaborating with other people or you wanna do like more automations. Uh, it's a lot easier than Excel, in my opinion, but I will give you one caveat. Although Google Sheets is very similar to Excel, there are some slight differences. Once again, I have to make a whole separate episode about what the differences between Excel and Google Sheet are, but just know that there is quite a few differences. Google Sheets is pretty much like 25 times more in demand than Google Sheets is in terms of like corporate industries. And Excel absolutely dominates Google Sheets when it comes to actually being written in job descriptions. So I highly recommend focusing on Excel instead of Google Sheets because that's what's. Going to be A, in the job listings, and B, what's going to be used at the companies. And hey, by the way, if you want me to send you cool data tool comparisons like this, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter. I include graphs like this all the time that are designed to help you actually know what you need to be focusing on on your data journey. So make sure you sign up in the link down below. Also 100% free. And that's the end of category one, the spreadsheets. Moving onto category two scripting, and honestly, this is where a lot of people get intimidated because it is programming, but I promise you this stuff isn't as hard as it may seem, and you can set all of this up with exactly $0. All right, let's start with Python, which is probably the coolest, most sexy programming language and data right now. And you might think, oh, that has to be really expensive, right? Uh, nope. The answer is free $0, and there's lots of places to get it. Oftentimes, people will just go to python.org and download it for free there. But I don't really recommend that because I think there's an easier way to do it. And this is the method that I actually teach my bootcamp students. And it's to download it via the Anaconda distribution. Of course, we'll have a link to this in the show notes down below where you can get access to all of the different places to download these softwares. But I really like the Anacon distribution because obviously it's free, but it not only gives you Python, but it gives you some awesome IDs, uh, like Spider or like Jupyter, uh, I think VS. Code is also included in there. Uh, and it also pre-install 250. Python packages that are all database like, uh, pandas, mpa, matplotlib, iLearn, these are the libraries that you're going to use in the data world and those all com pre-installed. So I really like that. So this is what I recommend is just doing the Anaconda distribution. And there is obviously like paid versions of Anaconda and paid versions of other sort of Python like tools. But with those, the majority of the time it's for companies. Companies that need things like license compliance, security scanning, central package management, and. Some other like, you know, corporate things, like for me and you, when we're just tinkling around on our computer, this is more than good. You definitely should not be paying for any sort of python at all. I guess there might be a little bit of an exception with some of these new AI tools coming out. There is some like ai, python, IDs. But you're not really paying for Python at that point. You're paying for the IDE that you're coding in. So there you have it python's free. Next is r and r is really great for statistics. Uh, it's used a lot in academia and like in governments and in pharma. Uh, I don't use R too much anymore. I do have a download on my computer and we do teach it inside of my bootcamp 'cause I think it is worth learning, but. R is free. It's a hundred percent free. It is open source, and I don't even really think there's a paid version of R. Basically you just go to this janky website for the R project and you go to download and you do this like crazy looking download based off of where you're at and what type of computer you have. It is a little bit tricky downloading it. Uh, and this website looks like it's made in like 2001, but I promise you it's a hundred percent free. You won't have to pay for it. Now, something you may not know is what these scripting languages, Python and r. You need to have some sort of IDE, which stands for Integrated Development Environment to actually kind of use them at least, unless you're really good at using like your command prompt or your terminal in your computer, which I'm assuming most of you aren't. I'm definitely still am not comfortable with that. So you need to find some sort of an IDE to use Python. That's one of the reasons I recommended. Doing Anaconda for RI highly recommend using R Studio. It's from a company called Deposit and I just think it's the best IDE for R, and you can download it here and that way you can actually like integrate your R with some sort of an IDE. That makes it really easy to code in. Now Pza is a company that has paid products, but a lot of it is free and open source. Really as an individual. You wouldn't buy anything from Pza. It's just more from a corporate standpoint that's gonna get you like a bunch of packages and a bunch of like cloud space and like all these sort of support and all these different things. It's nothing that you really need to use as an individual. Like literally everything that I've ever done with R I've never paid for, and I've done it strictly with the R download and our studio from Posit. So I think you guys are in good shape and once again, R is free. The third scripting language we're gonna be talking about actually really isn't a scripting language. It's more of a database language, but it's sql, and that stands for structured query language, and that's the language that you use to talk to databases. And so if you need to practice with databases, you need to talk to an actual database. How do you download it? Does it cost millions of dollars? Well, no. The truth is most sequel is free, and there's lots of different sequel flavors. Lots of different SQL softwares. I'm not gonna cover all of them today, but I will show you my personal favorite that I have downloaded on my machine. So I really like my sql. Is there a reason why? I don't know. I like it. It's fine, but there's a community edition that's free. You can literally go to this link. You can download the MySQL installer for windows or whatever computer you have, and then make sure you also install the MySQL Workbench. This is like the IDE that's gonna let you easily use MySQL on your computer, and then literally with those two downloads, you can write queries, design databases, see your data, like do anything you would do in any sort of SQL program. For absolutely free. It can handle millions of rows. It's real, it's production grade. There's no really limitations on it other than like there is a paid version that's sold by Oracle and that can like, that can be like thousands of dollars, right? And that's gonna get you more enterprise. Solutions like monitoring and backups and security and all that boring stuff that we don't care about as individuals. But if you're just learning sql, this is an awesome option. That's more than enough. You don't even need anything else. But if you're interested in other SQL flavors, Postgres has a very similar download. Postgres sql, very similar to MySQL and as well as SQL Lights has a free download as well. You can check out all three of those, and even, and I've been gatekeeping this for a while, so if you're listening, listen really closely. Downloading and installing and using SQL via these free tools isn't always easy. And so in my bootcamp program, we have two modules on sql. The second one, we actually go through the steps of, you know, downloading my SQL into their local machines and setting it up and actually querying the databases from there and creating a project off those databases. But for the first module, the first project that I have my students do, uh, in sql, I don't want them to have to go through the headache of downloading sql. I just want them to be able to focus. On actual SQL Command. SQL queries, right? And SQL results. And so to do that, we don't do any installation and we use this free tool that I've been gate keeping. It's called CSV fiddle.io. And what it allows you to do is actually just upload a CSV file and then write SQL commands against that CSV file. So it is a lot easier to set up and actually practice your SQL than having to install, you know, the SQL installer and the workbench and everything else. So if that's of interest to you, check it out@csvfiddle.io. And of course it'll be linked in the show notes down below. And that concludes our second category of scripting languages. And we're moving on to the third, which is, I've called business intelligence. Really it's just data visualization and dashboarding. And we're gonna cover Tableau and Power bi. Let's start with Tableau. Tableau is one of the most popular data visualization tools in industry. And it's historically pretty expensive. In fact, when I worked at ExxonMobil, I was not allowed to have Tableau. I didn't have a Tableau license because they were so expensive and there was none of them free at the company. I wasn't cool enough to have a Tableau license, so it is pretty expensive if you're gonna try to pay on your own or even four, your company to pay for it, at least Historically. That was obviously like five plus years ago, so maybe it's changed since then. And so a lot of people are like, oh, I wanna use Tableau, but it costs so much. Well, there's a free Tableau version that you can use. It costs $0. And it's basically called Tableau Public, so you can find it@public.tableau.com, and you'll have the option to actually do two different ways to use this Tableau public. The first one is you can actually create an account and do web authoring and use Tableau online. And then the second one is the Tableau desktop free edition, where you actually download Tableau onto your computer and use it on your computer. And this gives you a little bit more of the. Uh, authoring experience you'd have if you had the full version of Tableau, because I will say there are some pretty heavy limitations with Tableau public. And the first thing is everything you create is going to be visible for the public. So if you have embarrassing data sets, private data sets, proprietary data sets, you probably don't wanna be using Tableau public for that because it's gonna be shown everywhere. So just know that off the top of your head, like everything that you put in Tableau can be shown to the world. There's also a bunch of other limitations on what type of graphs you can make, what type of files you can connect to. I think it's only like Excel CSV, Google Sheets, like you can't actually connect to sql. Um, there might be like some limit on how big those data sets are. And there's not really like any sort of automation or sharing capabilities other than sharing to everyone on the web. It also doesn't include anything like Tableau Prep. That was Tableau's product for data cleaning. You kinda have to clean your data beforehand and then put it inside a tableau. But honestly, for any aspiring data analyst, everyone in my bootcamp, Tableau Public is more than enough. Like you can learn the core of Tableau. Of data visualization, of dashboarding on the free version, and you can even publish 'em on Tableau public, and then you can use that in your portfolio when you're applying for jobs. So really, for the most part, when you're just getting started, Tableau costs $0. It's absolutely free. Alright, next is the other data visualization tool that's really popular right now and that is Power BI from Microsoft. And Power BI has a free plan, but it's from Microsoft, so they try to make it as confusing as possibly that they possibly can. Like it is so confusing. Uh, if you go to pricing right here, you're not gonna be able to see like, oh, start free, right? But it's like, oh, it's just a free trial. Anyways, it's so confusing. It's really hard to know how to use. Uh, and also you can't even use it on a Mac. That sucks. That's like half the world uses a Mac, right? So what are you gonna do if you're, you wanna use power beyond your Mac, and that's because Microsoft and Apple are rivals and everything, right? The other caveat to actually getting a Power BI account is you need to have some sort of a business email, at least when I downloaded it last, which was probably like three years ago. So if you have like a Gmail or an Outlook account, it's probably gonna be hard to actually download Power bi, which is one of the reasons I teach my students Tableau. It's just so much easier to access than Power bi. It's like, no, you can do it on Windows or Mac and you don't have to have any sort of special email to do. So. That being said, all these hoops you have to jump through. Once you find the right link, which once again, we'll have the link in the show notes down below. You can download it and press download for free, and you can literally do everything in Power bi. You can connect to a bunch of different data sources. You can use their data models, you can create the dashboards, the reports. It's really pretty much like the paid version. But that being said, you can't really share those reports with anyone. Like they, it's basically the opposite of Tableau Public, where it's like Tableau Public, everything you do is shown to the world. Power BI is like, you can't show anyone about this. If you wanna show anyone other than yourself, you gotta pay us money. That being said, a lot of companies who have like the Microsoft 365 plan, they actually have Power BI included with their, you know, corporate services agreement. So a lot of companies have Power BI for absolutely free at the company, or they're already paying for it. That was the case at Exxon, which is why they wouldn't let me have Tableau is you already have Power bi, you don't need to have a Second BI tool, and they were kind of right. And there's some pros and cons to each one of these tools. That being said, even if you're just creating these dashboards, most of the time it's gonna be for yourself. Right, so you can create these dashboards for yourself inside of your local machine and just maybe do a screenshot of them for your, uh, portfolio. You don't have to be showing the world your Power BI dashboards. So really for you as an aspiring data analyst who's just trying to practice and create a portfolio, power BI is free. And that's it for our business intelligence and data visualization tools. Let's go ahead and move on to the AI tools. The first one is Claude. You've never heard of Claude. It's very similar to chat GPT in terms of like a chat interface. However, I think it writes a little bit better. I think it analyzes data a little better. I think it does a lot of things a little bit better. Not everything, but a lot of like the data tasks or knowledge worker tasks. I think it does better, and this is one of the ones I actually pay for. So the free version. You're able to have like the chat, like, um, you know, chat GPT on your phone or whatever. You can still generate code and visualize data and write everything and access the web. Um, they're just gonna limit you on how often you can use it, and it's pretty limited. Claude's pretty tight with how much they let you use it. Then there's a $17 plan that will get you what's called Code Claude Code and Claude Cowork. These are two features I really like. Um, cowork allows you to. Give Claude access to your computer and allow it to do things locally on your computer, which is really nice for analyzing data, creating PowerPoints, those type of different things. And Claude code is really fancy way to do algorithmic coding. Um, it's basically using automation agents to actually code different things. Um, for the Skippy for building websites, whatever you would normally code, you could definitely use cloud code to do it and it would do a really good job. And it also gives you a little bit better researcher. Um, like to actually search and then there's some different plugins like Claude for Excel and Claude for PowerPoint, those types of things. So paying really makes sense. One of the reasons I pay and then actually there's a max plan that costs a hundred dollars per month. That basically gives you more access to do all these different things and more advanced features. I actually pay a hundred bucks a month for Claude right now, and I think it's a hundred percent worth it. So Claude's one of these tools that I think you might need to pay for. Um, you could probably get a lot of the way with just the free version, but like you can use it for so many different things and it's only $17 a month, like I definitely think it's worth paying for. So clot is $0, but I think if you want the best use out of it, you should probably pay. That brings us to our next tool, which I'm sure all of you guys have heard of, and it's chat, GPT and chat. GPT is still really useful for doing data analysis. I pay for the paid version of chat GPT as well, but in the free version you're gonna be able to get a lot of the stuff done that you need to. If you've never heard of chat GPT before, it's basically like what you used to use Google for. You can use chat GPT for and a lot more, and I'm pretty sure everyone listening has heard of chat GPT at this point. In terms of pricing, they do have a free plan where basically you're not gonna get as good of access or as much access to their good models. They're gonna limit you on everything, and I think they're even gonna give you ads at this point. I don't know if they've actually integrated that or not. I actually pay for plus at this point, but I think I'm going to be canceling it probably 'cause I mostly use Claude and I pay a lot for Claude right now. And the last tool I wanna tell you about that is totally free as a data analyst is called GitHub. And no, it's not really an AI tool, but that's the only place that really felt like it belonged in a category. And the reason why is, I think this will become more important with ai. GitHub has really become like. The middleman for a lot of AI things, and I think it's only gonna get more and more use. And so I think it's important that I start talking about it a little bit more than I have historically. Historically, I haven't talked about it that much because it is a little bit complicated to get started. Uh, and to be honest, I just didn't really use it at my jobs all that much that often, like it doesn't. It only integrates really with code and with writing, kind of, but it's mostly code. So if I was using Power BI, like I was at, at uh Exxon a lot, it doesn't really make sense to be using GitHub as much. But if you're coding Python, you're coding R, you're coding SQL, or any other coding, it makes a lot of sense to be using GitHub. And I think in the future this is going to be more important and it costs $0 for, for you. What GitHub does, if you're not familiar with it, is think of it as like Google Docs for code. It allows you to. Uh, put your code online, have it be stored somewhere and like share it with someone else. So for example, I could share any of my code I've ever written with you guys through a GitHub link and you could click on it and download all of the different, uh, coding files. And I think it's gonna be really important in the future. So I just wanted to mention it as a really good resource and it costs you $0. Of course, there are paid versions of it, and that's the most important thing I need to tell you is that once you land a job. You're not gonna be paying for any tools. The company's gonna be paying for all of your tools. So really in the beginning, you can get away as an aspiring data analyst using all these tools for free, or paying for a little bit of them, maybe here and there. But then once you're on the job, you're not gonna have to pay for all any of these different tools that you're gonna be using. The company's going to be paying for them. So I know I kind of blew through those and did those really quickly. But that link, the description down below will have instructions on how to get all these different tools for free and what you're actually missing by not doing the paid versions. So make sure you click on that link down below, and I'll see you in the next one.