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Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI 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
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
329
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 17.4%, down from 27.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI17.4%
Looker Studio2.6%
Other80.0%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"All the features are valuable."
"Power BI has strong support from Microsoft. If you need help, they answer promptly. There are also several discussion groups where you can get information, like the product roadmap and any new things coming up."
"The solution is not that difficult to install, although this will vary with the experience of the person responsible for its installation."
"Allows business users with a mission to solve their own problems, without an IT person."
"One of the key factors why I use Power BI is because it's very flexible with other Microsoft tools."
"The initial setup is simple to do."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft BI is its visualization and its ease of use."
"Everything that's in M Query and DAX is the heart of Power BI because with these tools you can make up for a lot of other missing features."
 

Cons

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"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."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"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."
"There were scalability issues. It does half the work like any other product in the market."
"If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution."
"I feel the modeling page should be simplified."
"In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility."
"There is need to improve the graphical and dashboard reports; they must have tabs."
"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."
"When we have a big report with lots of data, the solution slows down quite a lot."
"SSRS reporting portal cannot run on tablets, iPads and all other mobile devices."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"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."
"I used a two months free trial to see if it had what I needed."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"They are charging us by users in storage, and there is a license fee. My financial people handle all that. The client has already worked out a contract with Microsoft, and basically, we're getting government prices."
"It is free."
"The pricing is good. It's pretty competitive because I have worked on a few other tools as well, and Power BI is on the cheaper side."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise166
 

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?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.