Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Looker Studio vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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
Ranking in Reporting
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
306
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 21.6%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.
Nattawat Choosuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process
An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"Tableau is easy to use."
"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."
"Tableau's ability to manage extensive data, even in an extract format, is noteworthy, as Power BI struggles with that."
"The most valuable feature is the 3D charting."
"It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."
"The stability seems to be very reliable."
"The customer service and support for Tableau in Thailand are excellent."
"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."
 

Cons

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"The tool's OpenAI integration was announced last year. However, it is late. Tableau is a good solution for end customers. However, there are some concerns regarding the stability and performance of its server architecture, including SaaS services. The server side appears unstable, and performance issues are noticeable, often accompanied by unclear error messages."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"I find data prepping in Tableau challenging to understand, perhaps because I am new to it. It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly."
"Users would like to be able to export an Excel file when they see a table or something like that. That's not an out-of-the-box feature for Tableau."
"The price could be better."
"Lacks customization in some areas."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"The development part should be better. We are putting a lot of effort in during development, so if we face any struggles, we have to find workaround solutions on the internet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"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."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
"Tableau is a little cheaper as compared to Power BI and other technologies that we have used in the past. However, if the business users in our organization want to make presentations, Tableau has been asking us to purchase a Tableau Creator license, and $35 per month is expensive for business users. Power BI is giving a free desktop version for business users to connect to any data source and build their own dashboards. That's why we have proposed to use Power BI for most of the business users in our organization."
"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"There is a license required, we pay an annual license which is priced fair."
"Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users."
"It is more expensive than other solutions."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Educational Organization
25%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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?
From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Data Studio
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.