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Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.6, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8. Google holds a 2.9% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 26.4% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.
Looker Studio
Read 13 Looker Studio reviews
  • 975 Views
  • 255 Comparison Views
86% willing to recommend
Microsoft Power BI
Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews
  • 12,177 Views
  • 2,330 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: June 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI
June 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
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
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 June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.4%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.
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

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"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."
"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 ability to design complex data models and equations."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
More Looker Studio pros
"The standard BI visualization capabilities are great."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an easy-to-use tool."
"It's easy to create reports and it's easy to download the data from the corresponding report."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The querying capabilities are the most valuable because they allow me to build many automations. We have many workflows and many databases that we work on a daily basis. They need to be updated quite quickly. In order to not to take much of our time doing these updates manually, I have set up these automations using the systems. The process is just to ingest the data and reprocess it. Every time I click a button, everything is updated in almost real time. It is by far the easiest system not only for querying but also for data modeling, data visualization, and deployment. It is light years ahead of Tableau and even Microsoft Excel to do these kinds of things. It is very easy to use and set up, and it has a lot of videos on the internet."
"The Microsoft Power BI app is very good. It's also very flexible."
"The flexibility of the program is valuable. We are able to add other information to the reporting information and expand upon it."
"Its connectivity with other Office applications, mostly with Excel, and the ability to deploy it very easily are the most valuable features. It comes sort of bundled with the cloud, so you don't need to set up a server and a standalone infrastructure. So, getting into the system or building something that you can deploy is very easy and very cheap. With other systems, you need to have a server, and you need to have a license for the server. The initial setup is very costly."
More Microsoft Power BI pros
 

Cons

"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"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."
"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."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
More Looker Studio cons
"There is no column-level security in Microsoft BI, and this is a feature that most of our customers are looking for. That is something that should be implemented."
"I would like for there to be some type of user manual that shows steps on how to navigate the solution."
"It could have more of a hold on big data. Manipulating big data on this solution complicates things. This needs to be improved."
"​It needs more analytic tools."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"Adding paginated reports to this tool could be of great help for users who want to move away from SSRS."
"The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side."
"I have a little problem with Synapse Analytics because it's very new. It's a product that has many capabilities, but it is not very well developed. I have to see the list of permissions from one object. I can't do this in Synapse. I have to search on the web for a solution because I don't have the tool for it."
More Microsoft Power BI cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"The tool is free."
"Their price is good."
"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."
"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."
"Its price is very low. It is like $10 per user, per month. The clients pay for their own licenses. It is not on us. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. That's the beauty. With other systems, you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars just to get started, and then you need to spend $500 per year for the license, which becomes much more costly. You have a system here where for $120 to $140 a year, you can start with two people and start developing and deploying. You can see why the cost difference is huge, especially when you are on a low scale, like us, and you're not building something very huge."
"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"It is reasonably priced."
More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Educational Organization
30%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 Logo
Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio
Compared 44% of the time
Tableau vs Looker Studio Logo
Tableau vs Looker Studio
Compared 7% of the time
IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio Logo
IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio
Compared 5% of the time
Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio Logo
Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio
Compared 3% of the time
Databricks vs Looker Studio Logo
Databricks vs Looker Studio
Compared 3% of the time
More Looker Studio Competitors
Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 13% of the time
Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 8% of the time
Domo vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
Domo vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 7% of the time
Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 7% of the time
KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 5% of the time
More Microsoft Power BI Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Looker Studio
June 2025
Looker Studio reportDownload Looker Studio product report
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
May 2025
Microsoft Power BI reportDownload 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
June 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: June 2025.
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