Adaptive Insights vs Looker Studio comparison

Workday and Google are both solutions in the Reporting category. Workday is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2, while Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.9. Workday holds a 0.6% mindshare in RT, compared to Google’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Workday users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Google users who would recommend it.

Adaptive Insights

Read 18 Adaptive Insights reviews

1,373 Views
302 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 14 Looker Studio reviews

2,053 Views
883 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Adaptive Insights

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Adaptive Insights and Looker Studio provide solutions in data analysis and business intelligence with distinctive focal areas. Adaptive Insights is ahead in the realm of financial planning, while Looker Studio excels in data visualization.

Features: Adaptive Insights offers advanced financial modeling, seamless departmental collaboration, and precise forecasting tools. Looker Studio provides dynamic dashboards, robust data exploration capabilities, and supports multiple data sources for comprehensive analysis.

Room for Improvement: Adaptive Insights could enhance user interface intuitiveness, expand integration capabilities with non-financial tools, and improve reporting customization. Looker Studio may benefit from better handling of complex data sets, improved technical support, and more efficient data processing features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Adaptive Insights features a straightforward cloud-based deployment model appreciated for ease of integration with financial systems, coupled with responsive customer support. Looker Studio's cloud-first approach allows broad deployment flexibility and effective customer support, although complex implementations may require technical expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Adaptive Insights involves higher initial setup costs which are offset by significant ROI for finance-focused organizations. Looker Studio presents a more cost-effective solution with lower upfront costs, providing substantial value through its broad analytical and integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Adaptive Insights vs. Looker Studio Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Looker Studio

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,164 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Adaptive Insights

Ranking in Reporting

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (6th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (3rd), Data Visualization (11th), ESG Reporting Software (3rd)

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg

Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight

Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models

For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.

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Vijay Subramanyam

Delivery Head at cblsolutions

The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing

Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The biggest feature is the source of truth for all of our budget and forecast versions."

"Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed."

"It's very stable."

"Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements."

"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."

"We utilize planning on a daily basis, therefore we find it to be the most valuable product for our organization."

"The integration with our payroll system to complete staff modeling during our budget and forecast processes."

"Reports are allowed to be edited for aesthetic purposes, which is lacking in a lot of other dashboard tools."

More Adaptive Insights pros

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident."

"Better user interface (UI)."

"We tried Discovery and OfficeConnect at one point and found them too cumbersome, at the time."

"Being able to drill down when using OfficeConnect needs work."

"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."

"It's a Workday product; they could do a little bit better to integrate a pure-play integration with Workday, which really doesn't do that."

"The product's configuration process could be faster."

"Adaptive Insights could improve the data designer interface to make integrations easier to set up."

More Adaptive Insights cons

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

More Looker Studio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."

"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."

"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."

"It's affordable."

"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."

"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Non Profit

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adaptive Insights?

It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Adaptive Insights?

12 years ago, it was very affordable. Workday has definitely increased its price since it acquired Adaptive a few years ago. So, it's affordable. But there are other more affordable solutions that ...

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What needs improvement with Adaptive Insights?

The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up. So, there could be room for just improving the integrations, making it easier to integrate outside sys...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 9% of the time

Planful vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 8% of the time

More Adaptive Insights Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 43% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights

August 2025

Download Adaptive Insights product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

August 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning

Data Studio

Overview

Adaptive Insights is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis software that helps businesses streamline their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.

With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics, it enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and drive business performance.

Workday

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Google

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday

Genesys, Shueisha

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Looker Studio

July 2025

Free Report: Adaptive Insights vs. Looker Studio

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