Looker vs Looker Studio comparison

The compared Looker and Looker Studio solutions aren't in the same category. Looker is ranked #10 in EBT , and holds a 6.4% mindshare in the category. Looker Studio is ranked #11 in RT , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Looker users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Looker Studio users who would recommend it.

Looker

Read 19 Looker reviews

2,532 Views
1,013 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 16 Looker Studio reviews

2,110 Views
1,076 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Looker

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker and Looker Studio based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI.

To learn more, read our detailed Embedded BI Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Embedded BI

February 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:

Categories and Ranking

Looker

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded BI (10th)

Looker Studio

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (11th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker is designed for Embedded BI and holds a mindshare of 6.4%, down 9.0% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 2.6% mindshare, up 2.4% since last year.

Embedded BI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Looker	6.4%
Tableau Enterprise	17.6%
Qlik Sense	8.6%
Other	67.4%

Embedded BI

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

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala

Sr Analytics Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive

Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can centralize all our data models."

"Empowering every employee to make smarter decisions in less time easily pushes us into the black on ROI."

"The product is easy to use."

"The most valuable features are the ability to create visualizations for non-technical employees, as well as the ability to provide ways to dynamically slice the data."

"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."

"It is easier and quicker to find things in the database."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."

"Features related to visualization should continue to be improved."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"Their needs to be much more control of visualizations to become more on par with Tableau."

"This product is useful for non-technical users, who are able to use the interface to easily slice data. But for the admin users who are responsible for maintaining the schemas and files behind the scenes, it can easily become a chore, as there is a lot of manual work involved in defining the schemas of the connected database(s), as well as any refactored tables; the restrictive syntax also makes maintenance difficult."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"Some of the visualizations are a bit limited on how much you can customize them."

"The product does not have documented material."

More Looker cons

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

More Looker Studio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheap."

"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."

"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."

"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Media Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	6

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

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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?

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker

Compared 12% of the time

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

Sisense vs Looker

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 12% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker Studio

Compared 10% of the time

RStudio Connect vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker

March 2026

Download Looker product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

March 2026

Download Looker Studio product report

Also Known As

No data available

Data Studio

Overview

Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time.

With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations.

The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

Google

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

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer

Genesys, Shueisha

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We monitor all Embedded BI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.