Looker Studio vs MicroStrategy comparison

Read 160 MicroStrategy reviews

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Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: February 2023).

Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy

February 2023

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Helped 850,760 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 Studio

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (11th)

MicroStrategy

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th), Embedded BI (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
MicroStrategy, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 3.0% mindshare, down 3.6% since last year.

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

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.

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AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

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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

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

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

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

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

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

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

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

"The single stack solution will always be more profitable, scalable, and elastic for organizational needs."

"You can build once and deploy to multiple operating systems. Also, it resizes in the way you want it to."

"It was easy to install and implement a report with it."

"The mobile for MicroStrategy is the best of all the BI platforms. As a separate product for the mobile device, MicroStrategy is the entire BI platform. It is an enterprise solution, a separate unit, etc."

"I have had a lot of projects where we had a lot of users, like thousands of users, and the data was in one report which could bring in six million records. MicroStrategy is doing a good job on scalability."

"It's useful if you need to create dashboards that you check every day. Also, we can create a queue, but it will be updated every day with scheduled updates."

"The solution's platform analytics gives us real-time analysis of how a particular user uses the report and how the systems behave."

"We use MicroStrategy as an integrated solution with some of their other CRM type applications."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

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

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

"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."

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"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."

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"The online community page of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"One of the things that I want to see MicroStrategy do is become more cloud native. Right now, the deployment on cloud is very easy to ruin, it is very much like spinning up separate VMs."

"The graphs available for the new dashboard of version 10 are weak."

"I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging."

"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."

"We have not invested nor are we planning to invest in MicroStrategy's mobile platform."

"The areas that have room for improvement in MicroStrategy are mainly related to building additional tools. Specifically, the embedding process has been a bit of a struggle."

"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The product is available for free."

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

"The solution’s licensing cost is expensive."

"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."

"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."

"The licensing is a bit high per user."

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."

"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."

"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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...

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.

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface. I find the user interface lacking when compared to Power BI. Additionally, their hyperintelligence could be improved in certain as...

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Comparisons

Compared 43% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 19% 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 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

Download Looker Studio product report

Looker Studio

May 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

April 2025

Also Known As

Data Studio

No data available

Overview

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

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.