Databricks vs Looker comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Databricks Logo
30,172 views|19,226 comparisons
Google Logo
2,246 views|1,776 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Databricks and Looker based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Microsoft, Alteryx and others in Data Science Platforms.
To learn more, read our detailed Data Science Platforms Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The processing capacity is tremendous in the database.""Databricks has a scalable Spark cluster creation process. The creators of Databricks are also the creators of Spark, and they are the industry leaders in terms of performance.""Databricks has improved my organization by allowing us to transform data from sources to a different format and feed that to the analytics, business intelligence, and reporting teams. This tool makes it easy to do those kinds of things.""Databricks has helped us have a good presence in data.""I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable.""What I like about Databricks is that it's one of the most popular platforms that give access to folks who are trying not just to do exploratory work on the data but also go ahead and build advanced modeling and machine learning on top of that.""It's easy to increase performance as required.""Databricks gives you the flexibility of using several programming languages independently or in combination to build models."

More Databricks Pros →

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.""It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time.""It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product.""I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability.""The product is easy to use.""From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great.""The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used.""Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."

More Looker Pros →

Cons
"The pricing of Databricks could be cheaper.""There would also be benefits if more options were available for workers, or the clusters of the two points.""The product should incorporate more learning aspects. It needs to have a free trial version that the team can practice.""I would like more integration with SQL for using data in different workspaces.""The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes.""I have had some issues with some of the Spark clusters running on Databricks, where the Spark runtime and clusters go up and down, which is an area for improvement.""There should be better integration with other platforms.""The data visualization for this solution could be improved. They have started to roll out a data visualization tool inside Databricks but it is in the early stages. It's not comparable to a solution like Power BI, Luca, or Tableau."

More Databricks Cons →

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better.""The visualization capability of the product is limited.""It needs to be more user-friendly.""The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud.""The product does not have documented material.""Stability needs improvement.""Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms.""The integration with different databases must be improved."

More Looker Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
  • "I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
  • "Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
  • "We find Databricks to be very expensive, although this improved when we found out how to shut it down at night."
  • "The pricing depends on the usage itself."
  • "I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
  • "The price is okay. It's competitive."
  • "Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
  • More Databricks Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
  • "It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
  • "The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
  • "It is cheap."
  • "I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
  • More Looker Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Science Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with… more »
    Top Answer:We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It… more »
    Top Answer:Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their… more »
    Top Answer:With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
    Top Answer:I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it to… more »
    Top Answer:The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it… more »
    Ranking
    1st
    Views
    30,172
    Comparisons
    19,226
    Reviews
    47
    Average Words per Review
    446
    Rating
    8.2
    4th
    out of 31 in Embedded BI
    Views
    2,246
    Comparisons
    1,776
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    608
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
    Learn More
    Overview

    Databricks is an industry-leading data analytics platform which is a one-stop product for all data requirements. Databricks is made by the creators of Apache Spark, Delta Lake, ML Flow, and Koalas. It builds on these technologies to deliver a true lakehouse data architecture, making it a robust platform that is reliable, scalable, and fast. Databricks speeds up innovations by synthesizing storage, engineering, business operations, security, and data science.

    Databricks is integrated with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. This enables users to easily manage a colossal amount of data and to continuously train and deploy machine learning models for AI applications. The platform handles all analytic deployments, ranging from ETL to models training and deployment.

    Databricks deciphers the complexities of processing data to empower data scientists, engineers, and analysts with a simple collaborative environment to run interactive and scheduled data analysis workloads. The program takes advantage of AI’s cost-effectivity, flexibility, and cloud storage.

    Databricks Key Features

    Some of Databricks key features include:

    • Cloud-native: Works well on any prominent cloud provider.
    • Data storage: Stores a broad range of data, including structured, unstructured, and streaming.
    • Self-governance: Built-in governance and security controls.
    • Flexibility: Flexible for small-scale jobs as well as running large-scale jobs like Big Data processing because it’s built from Spark and is specifically optimized for Cloud environments.
    • Data science tools: Production-ready data tooling, from engineering to BI, AI, and ML.
    • Familiar languages: While Databricks is Spark-based, it allows commonly used programming languages like R, SQL, Scala, and Python to be used.
    • Team sharing workspaces: Creates an environment that provides interactive workspaces for collaboration, which allow multiple members to collaborate for data model creation, machine learning, and data extraction.
    • Data source: Performs limitless Big Data analytics by connecting to Cloud providers AWS, Azure, and Google, as well as on-premises SQL servers, JSON and CSV.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Databricks stands out from its competitors for several reasons. Two striking features are its collaborative ability and its ability to streamline multiple programming languages.

    PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features. A Chief Research Officer in consumer goods writes, “We work with multiple people on notebooks and it enables us to work collaboratively in an easy way without having to worry about the infrastructure. I think the solution is very intuitive, very easy to use. And that's what you pay for.”

    A business intelligence coordinator in construction notes, “The capacity of use of the different types of coding is valuable. Databricks also has good performance because it is running in spark extra storage, meaning the performance and the capacity use different kinds of codes.”

    An Associate Manager who works in consultancy mentions, “The technology that allows us to write scripts within the solution is extremely beneficial. If I was, for example, able to script in SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python, I would be able to use my knowledge to make a script in this solution. It is very user-friendly and you can also process the records and validation point of view. The ability to migrate from one environment to another is useful.”

    Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time. 

    With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations. 

    The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

    Sample Customers
    Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
    Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Retailer9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm8%
    Marketing Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization33%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise42%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise46%
    Buyer's Guide
    Data Science Platforms
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks, Microsoft, Alteryx and others in Data Science Platforms. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Databricks is ranked 1st in Data Science Platforms with 77 reviews while Looker is ranked 4th in Embedded BI with 19 reviews. Databricks is rated 8.2, while Looker is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Databricks writes "A nice interface with good features for turning off clusters to save on computing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Looker writes "The APIs are exposed at every level, so it's highly modular". Databricks is most compared with Amazon SageMaker, Informatica PowerCenter, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio, Dataiku Data Science Studio and Azure Stream Analytics, whereas Looker is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, Google Data Studio, Qlik Sense and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

    We monitor all Data Science Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.