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GoodData vs Google Data Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 23, 2026

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

GoodData
Ranking in Embedded BI
16th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (23rd)
Google Data Studio
Ranking in Embedded BI
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of GoodData is 2.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Data Studio is 5.6%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker5.6%
GoodData2.8%
Other91.6%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

it_user241098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engagement Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
​Setup is straightforward from a business user standpoint but MAQL needs to be easier.
Cloud connect Report generator MAQL needs to be easier Better row-level security for end-users I've used it for nine months, mainly for implementation and delivery to customers. No issues encountered. No issues encountered. When the source is big and/or the source is Netsuite there are…
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Automated dashboards have transformed daily trend analysis and now drive faster business decisions
One of the best features that Looker offers is LookML, which allows us to develop dashboards directly rather than dragging and dropping. We can also customize some fields that are not available in the table by combining different tables using LookML. Compared to other reporting tools, Looker is somewhat more customizable and interactive. With the help of Views and Explore in Looker, we can combine different tables and create a unique column that is not available in the table, and then use that column in our reporting dashboard. Since we brought Looker into our project, it has improved data visibility and enabled faster interaction between us and our client. Rather than simply using free form or Essbase, seeing customizable and visualized data in Looker allows the business users to understand the trends in the data more easily rather than just seeing numbers. It has helped us save a lot of time. The automated dashboards that we develop allow us to run the dashboard for the coming years with only some modifications, which has reduced some manpower and working hours. When I joined this project, there were around eight to nine people for developing Looker dashboards. Once the development part is completed for almost all cases, the next part is just monitoring the dashboards and making some minor changes required to align with business goals. After development, the team was reduced to three or four people, so the manpower has significantly reduced, and time taken has decreased as well. For a business user to understand data from free form or Essbase, it usually takes thirty minutes to an hour to go through the previous day's trend. However, with the visualization tools in Looker, they can easily understand the data and compare it to the previous one or two years using a bar graph, pie chart, or other graphs. The return on investment has been very good. The number of employees has reduced to half, and time is saved by nearly two to three hours a day because of automated reports. We are just monitoring the reports to ensure they are released. This has saved nearly two hours per day, and the team has been reduced to half.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a good product for your end to end BI needs when its all on the cloud."
"With respect to buy solutions, cost is relevant. However, the Looker solution would have outmatched the ongoing multi-million budget spending with respect to cost-efficiency."
"Technical support is the best ever."
"Since we brought Looker into our project, it has improved data visibility and enabled faster interaction between us and our client."
"Looker is an extremely valuable product that can really transform your company's ability to use data to answer challenging questions."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"We can centralize all our data models."
 

Cons

"When the source is big and/or the source is Netsuite there are issues."
"Their needs to be much more control of visualizations to become more on par with Tableau."
"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."
"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 pricing model makes sense, but can be very expensive, potentially prohibitively so for smaller companies."
"They need to work more on interactivity in order to help users interact with the tool itself, and it needs to be more user-friendly."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel."
"Stability needs improvement."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Legal Firm
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
8%
Media Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Looker?
One thing is that Looker is not user-friendly to non-technical users. Someone with knowledge of Looker can understand it, but a person without any technical background finds it somewhat advanced or...
What is your primary use case for Looker?
Looker serves as our main business intelligence reporting tool by creating dashboards and reports. We create interactive dashboards that help users understand the changes in data and the current tr...
What advice do you have for others considering Looker?
My advice to others looking into using Looker is that if they are new users with some technical knowledge of SQL or Python, they can understand LookML code or use the explore tab to drag and drop t...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Looker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AutoPilot, Redbubble, showpad, SpareFoot, LogMeIn, CSC
Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI. Updated: March 2026.
889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.