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Alteryx vs Databricks vs Looker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Predictive Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alteryx14.0%
Anaplan13.8%
SAP Analytics Cloud12.7%
Other59.5%
Predictive Analytics
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks8.3%
Snowflake17.7%
Dremio8.9%
Other65.1%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker8.0%
Tableau Enterprise26.6%
Qlik Sense12.2%
Other53.2%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have been pretty satisfied with Alteryx's data blending feature as it is quite easy to use as a non-code platform."
"Alteryx speeds up the time to obtain business answers/insights on data."
"I like the solution's velocity, the speed with which it processes data, and its ease of use."
"Data processing is most valuable. It is one of the fastest data blockers out there in the market, which is a fascinating thing about Alteryx."
"The filtering is fast, and it provides a search tool that is great."
"The tools are built-in. You just plug and play, drag and drop, once you understand how to use the tools, it is easy."
"It is efficient in optimizing our ability to get information."
"Alteryx has a good UI. We use it frequently in our projects. The tool comes with drag-and-drop features and is easy to understand for business needs. One situation where Alteryx's advanced analytics capabilities were particularly beneficial for us was during a forecasting project. Unlike Python, which requires coding, Alteryx simplifies the process significantly. With Alteryx, users can adjust parameters within the user interface without writing any code."
"Databricks is a robust solution for big data processing, offering flexibility and powerful features."
"Databricks has a scalable Spark cluster creation process. The creators of Databricks are also the creators of Spark, and they are the industry leaders in terms of performance."
"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."
"The solution offers a free community version."
"Imageflow is a visual tool that helps make it easier for business people to understand complex workflows."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the hardware and the resources it quickly provides without much hassle."
"The fast data loading process and data storage capabilities are great."
"The initial setup phase of Databricks was good."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The product is easy to use."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
 

Cons

"The solution could work on the BI side of the tool to make it a bit better."
"All of the reports are migrated or exported in an Excel file, and most of the time, a business intelligence tool is required. They could have better reporting. The aesthetic could be improved."
"The workflow and pipeline need to improve."
"The solution can be quite complex in some aspects."
"It should have Linux support. It currently supports only Windows. It does not support any other platform. Its price should also be lower. Their US partner management program is actually unresponsive. One of the reasons why we don't have a formalized partnership plan with them is because their partner management team is atrociously unresponsive. This is something that they need to change."
"It is a little bit pricey."
"There are a few hiccups with specific data sets and languages or formats that the data comes in. That may be a minor problem, but we can work through it. We had some issues looking at XML format in added data, but it wasn't significant."
"In the database, it should be more functional and connect to more big data, especially using IPI."
"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper."
"The product should provide more advanced features in future releases."
"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."
"This solution only supports queries in SQL and Python, which is a bit limiting."
"There is room for improvement in visualization."
"Databricks' performance when serving the data to an analytics tool isn't as good as Snowflake's."
"I believe that this product could be improved by becoming more user-friendly."
"In the future, I would like to see Data Lake support. That is something that I'm looking forward to."
"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 integration with different databases must be improved."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"Stability needs improvement."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product does not have documented material."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are some implementation services and internal effort costs at the beginning but there is nothing else."
"It is an expensive solution."
"We have a yearly cost that we pay for the licensing. We do not pay any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"If one is a high price, and ten is a low price, I rate the tool's price as a one. The tool is expensive."
"The desktop platform costs $5,000 per year. It's very costly."
"It has a good price."
"Alteryx is an expensive solution."
"It is $4,000 a year, so it is cheap versus other solutions. It also accomplishes three times the volume on the job in the same time (as the other solutions).​"
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
"There are different versions."
"It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one."
"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"The solution is based on a licensing model."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"It is cheap."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"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."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me direc...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, ...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say...
Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designe...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analyti...
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 adva...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: September 2025.
869,095 professionals have used our research since 2012.