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Looker Studio vs SAP Crystal Reports 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
SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 SAP Crystal Reports is 2.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.6%
SAP Crystal Reports2.5%
Other94.9%
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.
Salman Mukhtar Baig - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Technical Manager at VS Furniture Middle East
Unlock data insights with seamless integration and robust reporting features
I assess the impact of SAP Crystal Reports' dynamic parameters on the customization and flexibility of my reports as very good. Sometimes it creates a problem when it suddenly closes during work due to improper shutdowns, but most of the time it's beneficial since I can fetch the data in one report very efficiently, which is great for the company. The sub reports in SAP Crystal Reports help me enhance the depth and detail of my reports by allowing me to use multiple sets of records, especially when I have very large requirements, such as company dashboards that show what sales, purchases, productions, and HR are doing. Using sub reports as the main report is very beneficial because I can pull multiple department data into the main report. Over the years, SAP Crystal Reports has had a very positive impact and benefits. It's a powerful tool to design any kind of report if you have knowledge of the database, and it can attach to both HANA and SQL databases. I can also connect this data with Excel, which makes it a very powerful tool for me.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"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."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
"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."
"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."
"It is a pillar of our product to provide embedded reports so I would say it has been an essential part of our system."
"The ease of making simple reports, the fact that many people use it, and the availability of expertise and trainings on the internet are the most valuable features."
"We were able to develop several On-Time Performance reports to assist with correcting scheduling errors and location errors for our buses, allowing us to get a much more accurate picture of where we are and how to get where we want to be."
"We develop many management reports using Crystal Reports; it has reduced the development cost and effort, and provides feature rich reports."
"In general, Crystal Reports 2008 is a very robust reporting tool."
"Our reports are no longer just a static product, as our users can actually interact with the reports and we can generate a single enterprise wide report where users simply navigate to see only what is pertinent to them."
"Crystal Reports is an excellent dedicated reporting tool, and I invested time into advanced training."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
 

Cons

"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 improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"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."
"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."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"The sales, operations, and IT areas could use improvement."
"We are using an old version, and the only thing isn't good is that some error messages are not specific and it is sometimes hard to find the error."
"I think the product is great and has so much now but I have noticed that it is not Excel 10 compatible and when the reports are extracted to XLS it defaults to MS Office version 95-97 which has dropped rows of data from sheet to sheet."
"They need to make it work with new file formats for Excel and Access."
"I would like to see improvement in charts and metadata extraction."
"The linking feature between tables has always been a bit buggy, which is not good because it is really the core of ensuring that the returned data is correct."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"Crystal 2008 - the export functionality could be improved, right now it will only export approximately 65K into one spreadsheet tab."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"The tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"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."
"SAP Crystal Reports is a very expensive solution."
"The cost of licensing can be a significant factor to consider when upgrading or transitioning to a new version of SAP Crystal Reports. It's important to evaluate the benefits and features offered by the new version against the associated costs to ensure it aligns with your organization's needs and budget."
"This product costs a lot of money."
"We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee."
"I feel that SAP Crystal Reports is a reasonably priced product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Outsourcing 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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise22
 

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...
What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
SAP Crystal Reports could be improved with more modern user-friendly interfaces and better integration with cloud platforms and AI tools. It would be beneficial to have easier integration with Azur...
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
I have been using SAP Crystal Reports for six months. I am using SAP Crystal Reports to develop data-driven reports and use customer data printing. When I use SAP Crystal Reports for customer data ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Crystal Reports?
I am aware that the pricing of SAP Crystal Reports gradually changes. When I bought it last time, I don't remember the exact price, and I need to check the current price on the portal. SAP Crystal ...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. SAP Crystal Reports and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.