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Birst vs Looker Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

Birst
Ranking in Reporting
31st
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (19th)
Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.6%
Birst0.8%
Other96.6%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Principal Engineering Manager I at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Offers dashboards and self-service reports. The report performance is very slow.
Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain Most of our customers are interested in dashboards and self-service reports. We are able to offer them these features with this solution. Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution The report…
Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have been able to scale pretty quickly and easily; it has been a great experience and I love this product."
"In general, Birst as a cloud VI solution is a user-friendly tool that looks really nice and engages users straight away."
"It has given us the ability to join all our data sources into one place to streamline reporting and analytics."
"Birst is a great tool for: Creating a simple data warehouse Uploading data for quick analysis, visualizations, and dashboards"
"The fact that it is completely cloud based makes the maintenance easier since we don't have the onus of maintaining the server."
"Scalability is one of the core features of this product that makes Birst great."
"If you are looking for a cloud-based, lightweight data mart and reporting, this tool is good."
"Dashboards and self-service reports are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
"This is a great tool if your organization leverages other sets of Google tools and needs some quick ideas that are a prettier and more interactive than Google Analytics."
"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, allowing us to compare revenues."
 

Cons

"Visualization: This aspect of the product is not up to the same level as its competitors in the market."
"The administration module was built using flash. It is clunky and outdated."
"We are yet to realize the real return on the investment given the need to alter the underlying intention of the product’s use."
"I would want to see some improvement in the user management module."
"My own experience just made me think that this was a hidden cost that they tried to hide, but keeping that in mind, it might only be my experience as to how this surfaced for us, because I had this image of Birst that you pay this amount and get everything."
"I would like to see better connection functionality. It is not very intuitive and the UI is kind of neglected."
"The initial setup was extremely complex. The Birst consultants wasted a lot of time in configuring the system."
"I would like to see better connection functionality. It is not very intuitive and the UI is kind of neglected."
"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."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"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."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"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."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"The product is available for free."
"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 tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Performing Arts
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Genesys, Shueisha
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Looker Studio and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.