Board vs Looker Studio comparison

Board International and Google are both solutions in the Reporting category. Board International is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.7, while Google is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.6. Board International holds a 0.7% mindshare in RT, compared to Google’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Google users who would recommend it.

Board

Read 37 Board reviews

343 Views
234 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 12 Looker Studio reviews

1,051 Views
1,158 Comparison Views

85% 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Looker Studio

April 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

20th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (23rd), Business Performance Management (10th)

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 2.7%, up from 2.6% 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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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

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

"I think it's flexible. I chose this solution because, even though it wasn't out-of-the-box, you can customize it, and the long-term growth potential of the software is where I see the value."

"I liked the way that I felt as a user and administrator of it. There were a lot of clicks, drops, drags, etc. versus writing code."

"The aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it."

"It is easy to make quick updates. As the business changes, we can maintain the tool without programming help from IT."

"The flexibility and the user-experience are the most valuable features of the solution."

"The most valuable features are the reporting and the charts. The reporting functionality is handy for aggregation, when it comes to planning. That ability is fascinating and our users are very happy with it. The charts and the reporting allow our users to see all the data and to see how things are going this year or in the COVID situation. They're seeing everything. Instead of having to check data line by line, they're seeing it in a graph and they're seeing it in charts."

"Now, we have only one version of the truth."

More Board pros

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"We can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model."

"Some of our users are still using an MS Office add-in for Excel for certain calculations, and when they export from Board, some of the values, some of the totals and column names, are not coming through into Excel."

"The one thing that I think we would like to see in terms of improvement of the application is the ability to print. It's fantastic to have all of these graphic visualization of data, but we're not able to very easily just print... From my perspective, if you can have a little "print" button and then you just click it and it would produce what's on the screen, that would be very helpful."

"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."

"It would be nice to see truly transferable processes from model to model, as well as a method of building repetitive processes."

"The setup was a bit complex."

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

"The initial setup was very complex for us."

More Board cons

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

"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."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

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

"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. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

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

"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

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

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

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

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

"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 cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

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

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Board?

Some of my company's customers are interested to see the predictive analytics part of the tool. Some customers would like to leverage or prioritize predictive analytics as the main feature, but som...

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?

The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets take about three to five minutes to reflect in Looker Studio. Overall, the interfac...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and I use it for project plan maintenance and data tracking.

See all answers

Comparisons

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 31% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Board

Compared 10% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Board

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 8% of the time

More Board Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 43% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 19% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Board

May 2025

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

April 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

April 2025

Free Report: Board vs. Looker Studio

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