Inspect and Explore Workbooks Privately in Your Browser Without Uploading

Why publishing to Tableau Public is unsafe for company or client data

Tableau Public is free, but every workbook and dataset published to a Tableau Public online profile is accessible to anyone on the internet. Visitors can view your visualizations, and unless the author disables workbook downloads in settings, anyone can download the entire .twbx file along with the underlying data source.

If you are working with payroll, customer emails, healthcare records, or client financials under an NDA, you cannot publish that workbook to a Tableau Public online profile. On desktop (Windows and Mac), you can keep files local for free using Tableau Desktop Free Edition (for one person working locally, with no publishing to Server/Cloud and no sharing of packaged workbooks), Tableau Desktop Public Edition (when saved locally to disk rather than published online), or Tableau Reader (for view-only .twbx files), whereas team publishing and sharing require a paid Tableau Creator seat ($75 per user/month, billed annually, as of October 2026). If you want to open workbooks or chart data directly in your browser on Windows, macOS, or Linux with no desktop installation and no cloud upload, you can use xmetric.

How local-first browser execution works in xmetric

xmetric reads your files inside your browser tab's sandbox:

1. No network transfer on open: When you select a .twbx, .twb, .pbix, .pbip, .csv, .xlsx or .parquet file from your disk, your browser reads the file bytes directly using the HTML5 File API.
2. Packaged files extracted locally: The workbook inspector lists data sources, sheets, dashboards, calculated fields, and broken or unused calculations, and lets you save packaged data files inside your browser tab.
3. Verify it yourself in DevTools: Open your browser's Network tab (F12 or Cmd+Option+I), drop a file into the inspector, and watch the network log. No rows leave your machine.
4. Build on it in the app: Open the workbook in the xmetric app to drag fields onto shelves and change marks. Not every dashboard will look identical to Tableau. Data stays in the browser unless you save a workbook online.

Example: computing confidential salary bands locally

Suppose HR hands you an employee compensation file and asks for each employee's variance from their department average. You can test this Level of Detail expression in the formula playground, then build the full view in the xmetric app:

// Tableau Calculated Field: Variance from Department Average Salary
[Base Salary] - { FIXED [Department], [Level] : AVG([Base Salary]) }

Equivalent SQL window expression:

SELECT
  employee_id,
  department,
  level,
  base_salary,
  base_salary - AVG(base_salary) OVER (PARTITION BY department, level) AS salary_variance_from_dept_avg
FROM employee_compensation;

Comparing privacy and cost across workbook tools

Where Tableau Public or Tableau Desktop is the better choice today

• Public portfolios. Choose Tableau Public if your goal is a public data journalism portfolio or sharing open civic datasets, where discoverability on the web is a benefit.
• Local Desktop authoring. Choose Tableau Desktop Free Edition for full desktop authoring for one person on Windows or Mac without publishing or sharing packaged workbooks.
• Governed publishing. Choose paid Tableau Desktop (Creator) if your company requires publishing governed data sources and workbooks to Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud (which includes Tableau MCP across all Cloud editions).

Where xmetric fits

• Free, no install. Open sensitive .twbx, .twb, CSV, Excel and Parquet files in your browser on any operating system.
• See and fix the logic. Inspect workbooks (including .pbix and .pbip) in the workbook inspector, debug calculation errors with the error tools, and test LOD expressions in the formula playground.
• Build and share. Drag fields onto shelves in the xmetric app; save a workbook online only when you choose, and share a view-only link.
• Coming. An MCP server for AI agents, and live Postgres and BigQuery connections.