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Alteryx vs Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI 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
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio3.1%
Microsoft Power BI23.8%
Tableau Enterprise20.2%
Other52.9%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
Tableau Enterprise10.3%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
Other70.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is very helpful."
"There are a lot of good customization capabilities."
"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."
"The data transformation feature is the most valuable. The ability to ingest data, visualize data, and transform that data is useful."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is data preparation."
"The value add of Alteryx is the agility for making changes, and speed of deployment."
"It offered quick development, with the ability to process large datasets."
"The support is very good."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."
"One of the most valuable aspects of this tool is its ease of use and the ability to easily share information with others."
"The best feature of this solution is the way you can plan, communicate, and visualize all the knowledge you extract from the data for the customers. I like the way you can show or visualize the information a client needs to answer a business question."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"It is easy to work with and very chic."
"Power BI pricing is generally considered more affordable than Tableau."
"I like all the tools in Microsoft BI because they all have different purposes. There are a lot of people using Microsoft BI, and everybody is using it. The users have adapted well to the technology."
"It works well with SSAS, which we use to generate all different kinds of trending and analytics reports. Sometimes we use Power Query and DAX to build some aggregations on the Power BI side as well."
 

Cons

"The solution is improving continuously. They have, for example, just added automatic insights. If they continue to improve on their overall service offering, that would be ideal."
"They should make the solution user-friendly for nontechnical people by giving specific names to the options."
"I'd like it to be easier to work with PDF."
"Alteryx could be improved in the area of analytics and central governance."
"The product could benefit from improved integration with visualization tools or even the inclusion of built-in visualization features."
"I mostly used it for flat files, but I have many colleagues who reported that to tune a query, in case they want to directly connect to the database, there is no option to optimize the performance of the query, as we have in Informatica."
"I'd like to see more artificial intelligence business tools or features in Alteryx."
"The data integration component could most likely be improved to increase enterprise scalability."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"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."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"​It needs more analytic tools."
"One thing I would like to have is the scripting language, as they already have within Excel. It's already within a Microsoft business product, because Excel is the number one business product out there. So it would be nice to have the scripting capability in order to automate certain processes."
"I have found that some issues exist, indicating room for improvement in scalability."
"The initial installation is difficult."
"Microsoft BI has its own challenges in terms of user interface and how quickly somebody can learn how to use it."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"You do need to do some hard coding for certain things in Microsoft BI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can be a bit pricey, especially after the first year."
"​Very transparent.​"
"Its price should be lower. The key thing that we see is that talking about ROI is an important element at the time of purchase. Cost becomes a factor in every discussion. Justifying the ROI for these kinds of workflows is always a challenge, and the only way to counter the challenge is by addressing the pricing."
"Alteryx is generally more suited for medium—to large companies due to its potentially high licensing costs."
"We use the free version of the solution. There are enterprise licenses available. It cost approximately $5,000 annually. It is an expensive solution and there are additional features that cost more money."
"The cost of Alteryx is approximately $2,900 annually."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is $5000 per year per production license."
"The tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"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."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."
"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."
"This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license."
"No comment."
"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."
"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."
"We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business134
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
 

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...
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. W...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a tem...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
Regarding the product, I was doing research for a client in the LMS industry. I was seeing what else was out there an...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Studio
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
Genesys, Shueisha
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: September 2025.
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