Board vs Looker Studio comparison

Board International and Google are both solutions in the Reporting category. Board International is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.9. Board International holds a 0.9% mindshare in RT, compared to Google’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Google users who would recommend it.

Board

Read 37 Board reviews

1,697 Views
339 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 14 Looker Studio reviews

2,053 Views
883 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Board

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Board and Looker Studio are competing products in the analytics and business intelligence space. Board seems to have the upper hand due to its broad range of features and robust support options, whereas Looker Studio stands out for its scalability and data integration capabilities.

Features: Board offers advanced planning and simulation capabilities critical for strategic decision-making, the flexibility to customize processes and reporting without extensive IT involvement, and comprehensive multidimensional analyses. Looker Studio excels in real-time data exploration and collaboration, seamless integration with various data sources, and effective aggregation capabilities for detailed trend reports.

Room for Improvement: Board could improve with quicker deployment times, enhanced user interface design to boost intuitiveness, and better-nuanced data visualization tools. Looker Studio might enhance its customization options for specific organizational needs, include offline accessibility features, and expand support for more complex data modeling processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Board provides a highly customizable deployment model tailored to specific needs and offers dedicated customer support for smooth implementation, yet it experiences longer setup times. Looker Studio, with its cloud deployment model, allows quick and straightforward setup backed by responsive customer service, though it may be less tailored to unique customer requirements.

Pricing and ROI: Board typically involves higher initial expenditure but promises substantial ROI through detailed analytics and planning features that aid long-term strategic goals. Looker Studio offers competitive pricing requiring less upfront investment, delivering good ROI for businesses prioritizing flexible data analysis and reporting.

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

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Looker Studio

July 2025

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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

Board

Ranking in Reporting

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Business Performance Management (8th)

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

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 Board is 0.9%, 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

Wiboon Thabsuwan

Senior Consultant at IMD Company Limited

Easy to use and requires less time to learn or understand its features

I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products. Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.

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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

"What is very valuable is the ability to customize. We didn't see a solution out there that really matched exactly what our functional requirements would be. So we were able to work with New Brain, our integrator, and we were able to build from the ground up what we wanted, and I think that's pretty unique to BOARD."

"All the reports are prepared automatically."

"The ease of being able to get the data into BOARD is what makes it nice for people with a semi-IT background."

"It has a good set of visual elements that you can use and can explain quite well."

"The benefits are getting the data in one spot, the ability to report dynamically, and version control."

"The support from the BOARD team and their consultants is great. Whenever I use technical support, they are good."

"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."

"The ability to do write back and visualization, with minimal IT development orientation."

More Board pros

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"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."

"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."

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

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

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance."

"It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive."

"It needs more export to Excel functionality. Right now, we're having to build within the cloud-based platform, as well as build within the Excel add-in, because the export to Excel is somewhat ugly."

"We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."

"We have had some challenges with newer version of the rollout in terms of stability."

"We would like to see better logging in the procedural world."

"It would be nice to be able to host your site and actually have BOARD be the driver of your site. So you could have anybody in your organization go to www.myorg.com, for example, and then go through what you allow them to go through. So rather than having to go through the application, to be able to go to actually host it to a website."

"My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem. "

More Board cons

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

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."

"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."

"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."

"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

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for 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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?

We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Board?

Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance.

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

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 26% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Board

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 8% of the time

Jedox vs Board

Compared 7% of the time

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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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Board

August 2025

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

August 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Also Known As

No data available

Data Studio

Overview

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Board International

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

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB

Genesys, Shueisha

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Looker Studio

July 2025

Free Report: Board vs. Looker Studio

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