Looker vs Looker Studio comparison

The compared Looker and Looker Studio solutions aren't in the same category. Looker is ranked #7 in EBT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 8.0% mindshare in the category. Looker Studio is ranked #10 in RT , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Looker users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Looker Studio users who would recommend it.

Looker

Read 19 Looker reviews

2,582 Views
878 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 16 Looker Studio reviews

1,842 Views
829 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Looker

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI.

To learn more, read our detailed Embedded BI Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Embedded BI

October 2025

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Helped 872,019 peers since 2012

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

Looker

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded BI (7th)

Looker Studio

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (10th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker is designed for Embedded BI and holds a mindshare of 8.0%, down 10.4% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 3.1% mindshare, up 2.4% since last year.

Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Looker	8.0%
Tableau Enterprise	26.6%
Qlik Sense	12.2%
Other	53.2%

Embedded BI

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Looker Studio	3.1%
Microsoft Power BI	23.8%
Tableau Enterprise	20.2%
Other	52.9%

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala

Sr Analytics Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive

Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

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Heron Ziegel

Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group

Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently

We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."

"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."

"We can centralize all our data models."

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."

More Looker pros

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

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

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."

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

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

"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."

"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

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"The product does not have documented material."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"Stability needs improvement."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."

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

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

"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."

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

More Looker Studio cons

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."

"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."

"It is cheap."

"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."

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

"The tool is free."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Media Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?

With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?

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 t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Looker?

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, ...

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?

We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a template or create a template, which can take significant time, it's not the most u...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

Regarding the product, I was doing research for a client in the LMS industry. I was seeing what else was out there and why certain things were pulling for certain reasons. I wouldn't say I'm techni...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker

Compared 14% of the time

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker

Compared 11% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker

Compared 9% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 40% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker Studio

Compared 8% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker

October 2025

Download Looker product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

October 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Also Known As

No data available

Data Studio

Overview

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.

Google

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

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer

Genesys, Shueisha

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