Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.6, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Google holds a 2.7% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 26.7% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Looker Studio

Read 12 Looker Studio reviews

1,051 Views
1,158 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

14,384 Views
11,351 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Looker Studio compete in the data analytics category. Power BI might have an edge due to its deep integration within the Microsoft ecosystem and comprehensive functionality, while Looker Studio's free access and integration capabilities make it appealing for budget-conscious users.

Features: Power BI seamlessly integrates with Microsoft's services like Excel and Azure, offers powerful data modeling, and features advanced visualization options and a robust library of custom visuals. Looker Studio integrates smoothly with Google products and external APIs, making it efficient for Google ecosystem users, and supports real-time collaboration.

Room for Improvement: Power BI users face issues with handling large data sets and the constraints of DirectQuery connectivity. Some also find the premium pricing tiers steep. Looker Studio shows room for growth in real-time data integration and performance as users report lagging report loading times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI offers flexible deployment options including public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, and on-premises, catering to varied enterprise needs. Its customer support is comprehensive, supported by a large community, though consistency can vary. Looker Studio’s cloud-based deployment suits cloud-native applications best, and its user-friendly Google support system offers robust assistance and self-service options.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI starts with a free version, scaling up to more expensive premium tiers, which can affect costs during large deployments. It promises quick ROI due to its comprehensive functionality. Looker Studio is free, which appeals to those seeking basic BI tools without financial burden, making its ROI attractive, particularly for users already leveraging Google’s ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

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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

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.7%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.7%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

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.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft BI is its visualization and its ease of use."

"Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision."

"You don't need much support with Microsoft Power BI because it has such a large base of users who can answer your questions on their forums. There are also many video tutorials and webinars available online that offer solutions to whatever problems you may have."

"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."

"What Power BI is, is a whole collection of templates of small amounts of data that can be used to do something for a real world project, that can be easily set up and become the business intelligence environment or a data warehouse for a large amount of data, for a real world customer. That's what is remarkable."

"It's the analytic engine in terms of the interface on the Power BI environment, as opposed to pivot tables, and it's a mobile solution."

"One of the key factors why I use Power BI is because it's very flexible with other Microsoft tools."

"I like the downloadable visualizations a lot. I think that they give the user a very nice starting point in creating awesome dashboards, with the right way to tell their data story."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."

"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."

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

"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."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

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

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"In the future, Microsoft BI can be better by increasing user-friendliness"

"Microsoft needs to do some more research and development to make it more stable."

"It needs an AI which can choose the appropriate connection strings and provide options for connections."

"If you look at the new tool, even though they promised that you could do data modeling, that you could do everything from the Power BI side, if your data is really large in volume, sometimes it doesn't work on the Power BI. More feature testing from their side would certainly help users."

"I think that the solution is harder to use for people who are not experts in data."

"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."

"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."

"One area for improvement in Microsoft Power BI is serviceability. Compared to one of its competitors: Tableau, there are a lot of things which you cannot do in this tool, that can be done in Tableau."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."

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

"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 tool is free."

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

"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."

"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."

"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."

"It's straightforward licensing."

"Power BI premium is really expensive for our market. A lot of small and medium companies would like to purchase it, but they can't afford it."

"Compared to others, I think it is reasonable."

"It is reasonably priced."

"Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

40%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 43% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

April 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

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

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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