Board vs Looker Studio comparison

Board International and Google are both solutions in the Reporting category. Board International is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.6. Board International holds a 0.7% mindshare in RT, compared to Google’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Google users who would recommend it.

Board

Read 37 Board reviews

347 Views
67 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 13 Looker Studio reviews

975 Views
255 Comparison Views

86% 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Looker Studio

June 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

18th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Business Performance Management (9th)

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 June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.7% 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

"The ability to create a data model and have it in testing within a week is fantastic."

"Our data is now more structured. Between our data warehouse and BOARD, which are both brand new, we now have a more structured data view with more accurate, timely data."

"I think the product is good in terms of ease of use."

"All the reports are prepared automatically."

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

"It allows people to quickly create dashboards with reports."

"A lot of flexibility from the data modeling standpoint. It can add specific line items into our budget, for example, or if we want to make changes to the data model itself, we have that flexibility."

"BOARD technical support is knowledgeable and helpful."

More Board pros

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

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

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

"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."

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

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

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."

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

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"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."

"I would like to see better relationships with the partners."

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

"The setup was a bit complex."

"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."

"I'd like to see a more passive report user for enterprise report writers that aren't particularly technical."

"It's very powerful, but there is also a big learning curve. It should be a little more intuitive."

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

More Board cons

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."

More Looker Studio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"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."

"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 product is available for free."

"The tool is free."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Transportation Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

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...

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What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

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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 29% 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

More Board Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 44% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 18% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Board

June 2025

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

June 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

June 2025

Free Report: Board vs. Looker Studio

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