Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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Looker Studio

Microsoft Power BI

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio, Microsoft Power BI, and ThoughtSpot based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM and others in Reporting.

To learn more, read our detailed Reporting Report (Updated: March 2026).

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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:

Mindshare comparison

Reporting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Looker Studio	2.6%
Microsoft Power BI	17.4%
Tableau Enterprise	16.5%
Other	63.5%

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI	9.3%
Tableau Enterprise	6.7%
Amazon QuickSight	3.7%
Other	80.3%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ThoughtSpot	1.6%
Microsoft Power BI	9.3%
Tableau Enterprise	6.7%
Other	82.4%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel

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.

Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards

Antonio Flor

Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group

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.

Self-service analytics has empowered teams and now drives faster data-driven decisions

Purity Wairimu

Financial Analyst at Nestlé

I have an experience of four years using ThoughtSpot. ThoughtSpot is very easy to use. Even non-technical users find it very easy to use and user-friendly. Some of the best features ThoughtSpot offers are innovation, ease of use, and data analytics. Reporting development is also pretty easy, making complex formulas slightly easier. Additionally, dashboarding for non-technical people, easy search of data, ease of getting insights, AI-driven analytics, and the ability to easily build charts are highlights. ThoughtSpot also offers data connection with live data sources. ThoughtSpot's scalability is impressive; it can handle large data easily, and performance has been powerful and reliable. The AI-driven analytics capabilities in ThoughtSpot help to predict future outcomes and are very helpful in tracking data, and performance is great.

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

"This solution is a powerful way to have several tools integrated at one location and convert data into beautiful reports that can be easily edited and viewed."

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

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

"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 would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."

"This is a great tool if your organization leverages other sets of Google tools and needs some quick ideas that are a prettier and more interactive than Google Analytics."

More Looker Studio pros

"It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly."

"With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools."

"What I have found valuable about Microsoft BI is its performance and ease of use. The interface is very simple and it is accessible to everyone. If someone is new to this type of solution it is straightforward to understand."

"There is a lot of variety in Power BI. In particular, the visuals are quite rich and the feature set has been growing rapidly in the last two years. Possibly the best part for me is that there are a lot of ways to connect with data sources."

"The drill-down capabilities and automatic charts are the best ones. The visualization is also very good. In terms of visualization, no competing product, such as IBM Cognos or any other product, has the same capabilities."

"The tool's most valuable features are slicer and Microsoft Copilot integration. It also allows users to see reports on mobile devices. The solution can also integrate with various data sources."

"The solution is very helpful for managing the business."

"It provides good visibility."

"They have implemented something called Spotter, which provides the end user with a Google-style analytics solution to deliver quick insights without extensive training or requiring an analyst for reports."

"ThoughtSpot empowers businesses to make informed decisions by providing real-time data insights."

"The tool is user-friendly for the end users."

"The point which I found to be a strength point for Domo was collaboration while building dashboards and pipelines, and the volume of data it used to handle."

"It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box."

"ThoughtSpot excels in being self-service oriented, allowing users who aren't developers to easily create their own reports and visualizations, making it very intuitive."

"The main core of ThoughtSpot is to create models, connect data pipelines, and create business models and dashboards on top of them."

"The scalability is good."

More ThoughtSpot pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

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

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

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

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"The setup took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff."

"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."

"The admin view could be improved by making it more simplified to manage a users' activity and other things."

"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."

"The mobile app is very poor."

"The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features, they were stronger on the Tableau side."

"It should have more integrations."

"I cannot comment on the stability as we haven't yet used it for a big project."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"ThoughtSpot lacks an intermediate layer for data loading, unlike Qlik, which affects dashboard stability when the database has issues."

"Although it's a very nice feature to have, I don't think that is something which can survive alone."

"The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases."

"The visualization customization needs improvement."

"Some areas for improvement include the pixel-perfect dashboards, which are not as refined as those in Tableau."

"The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front."

"I encountered limitations mainly around UI and dashboard configuration."

"ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well."

More ThoughtSpot cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product is available for free."

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

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

"The tool is free."

"You don't need a license for development, but if you want to publish to external users, you need a license. The licensing is very costly, but I think that since the advantages and benefits of Power BI are so high, people are willing to pay. I can't blame them."

"All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."

"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."

"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."

"I rate the product pricing a ten."

"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."

"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."

"If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"I give the pricing a six out of ten."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

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…

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	135
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	166

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...

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 ...

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 ...

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 wou...

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 info...

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 ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for ThoughtSpot are competitive, and it is a very user-friendly tool compared ...

What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?

The customizability of the visualization live boards should be improved. Additional support for more data warehouse s...

What is your primary use case for ThoughtSpot?

My name is Peter Chemo, a Financial Analyst at Nesto. One of the major challenges that ThoughtSpot solves is reducing...

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker Studio

Compared 9% of the time

RStudio Connect vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Zendesk vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

QlikView vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 17% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

QlikView vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Omni vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 10% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 7% of the time

Sigma vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 5% of the time

Hex vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 5% of the time

More ThoughtSpot Competitors

Product Reports

Looker Studio

Download Looker Studio product report

Microsoft Power BI

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Download ThoughtSpot product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

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

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

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

ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable.

The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.