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Looker vs Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Embedded BI
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"The product is easy to use."
"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."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"Good CS and administration."
"It's pretty easy to set up the product."
"I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"We have a lot of servers and applications from which we want reports, and it allows us to create reports from an SQL source or some other source."
"The way data is presented is very valuable. The amount of information that we can get at a glance is also valuable. You can then drill-down and see data from many different angles in the same chart by selecting certain things. Based on the selection, everything changes automatically. If we have four parameters in a particular item, when you select a parameter, the remaining charts on that page automatically change for that particular parameter."
"The product's most valuable features are DAX functions for formulas and calculations."
"This product has a lot of features and most of them are user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Stability needs improvement."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"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."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product does not have documented material."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"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."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The graphic interface could be better."
"If you have to pull multiple data sources performance is somewhat lacking."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface with Microsoft BI."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
"The initial installation is difficult."
"The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on."
"Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"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."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"Microsoft BI is free for the personal edition, but there is also a paid-for professional version."
"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."
"The costs are small and the benefits are high."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"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."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."
"It is a cheap solution for our needs."
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Educational Organization
28%
Financial Services Firm
10%
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 Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If adva...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...
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. W...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets tak...
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...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Studio
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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