Looker vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker
Ranking in Embedded BI
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in Embedded BI
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
293
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Embedded BI category, the market share of Looker is 44.1% and it increased by 72.6% compared to the previous year. The market share of Tableau is 188.2% and it increased by 58.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
16.7%
Reporting
20.2%
 

Featured Reviews

it_user514275 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 18, 2016
Our BI team designs and schedules their own reports. Maintaining the schemas and files behind the scenes can become a chore.
This product is useful for non-technical users, who are able to use the interface to easily slice data. But for the admin users who are responsible for maintaining the schemas and files behind the scenes, it can easily become a chore, as there is a lot of manual work involved in defining the schemas of the connected database(s), as well as any refactored tables; the restrictive syntax also makes maintenance difficult. A personal feature request I have is the ability to create reports in such a way that the end users can inject values into the query and dynamically change the results in this way.
Daria Maslovets - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 12, 2023
Real time analysis, reliable, and easy to set up
Despite the number of available interface languages, I would like to see as many languages as possible represented in Tableau. So many companies really want to use this program and it suits them better than any other similar programs, but due to the lack of understanding of English, it is difficult for them to decide to integrate this particular product. In addition to the existing set of common data types, Tableau Desktop has such a wonderful thing as a union of data on the principle of relationships for Multi-table. This type of union is very easy to work with the data source itself and does not overload the system. At the moment, this type of union only exists for connections from databases. It would be nice if Tableau added this type of merging for data sources that are on the Tableau Server/Tableau Cloud. Every three months, Tableau adds new features. There are always new features coming up.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"The product is easy to use."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive."
"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."
"I like the solution's web version, more so than Power BI's web version. It just makes it easier to drag and drop things and to blend data on the backend. It simplifies the process."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"It is very easy to implement and to use."
"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."
"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."
 

Cons

"Stability needs improvement."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The product does not have documented material."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The user experience for less savvy or non-technical people (from my experience)."
"They need to improve the bar chart position and width."
"Overall, the only major frustration that I have had so far is with Tableau Public. I first used Tableau Public when I was building capacity, and when there was a later release to download and you wanted to upgrade, all your work would have to be manually re-entered."
"It's not an aesthetic platform at the moment."
"Other tools are more competitively priced."
"The charts in Tableau are quite limited."
"Areas for improvement would be visualization and augmented analytics. In the next release, I would like to see automated insights from the data added to the dashboard."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheap."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"Tableau has reasonable pricing."
"The price of Tableau could improve. The license is too expensive."
"There is a license required, we pay an annual license which is priced fair."
"The solution is very expensive. If you have many users then it is going to cost your company a lot of money."
"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."
"The cost is high."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
35%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.