Spotfire end users connect to Spotfire Server using either an installed client or a web client.

Spotfire® Analyst is a fully-featured client for working with data sources and creating complex analyses. It is installed on a user's local computer. See the Spotfire Analyst User Guide for more information.

To make it possible to view or create interactive analyses in a web browser, a Web Player service must be installed on the server. Depending on which licenses, or license features, a user has, the web client will have different capabilities. A consumer user can generally view and interact with analyses that others have created for them. A business author user can also create and edit analyses using the web client, even though not all of the functionality from the installed client is available. An analyst user often has access to all of the available functionality in each client, but an on-premises administrator can change the license features available to each user. For more information about different license features, see License feature reference. For more information about the functionality of the web client, see the Spotfire Web Client User Guide.