Looker vs Looker Studio vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

The compared Looker and Looker Studio solutions aren't in the same category. Looker is ranked #6 in EBT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 8.3% mindshare in the category. Looker Studio is ranked #9 in RT , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Looker users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Looker Studio users who would recommend it.

Looker

Read 19 Looker reviews

3,046 Views
1,005 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 14 Looker Studio reviews

2,053 Views
883 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Tableau Enterprise

Read 307 Tableau Enterprise reviews

19,689 Views
2,953 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Looker

Looker Studio

Tableau Enterprise

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Executive Summary

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

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July 2025

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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

Embedded BI

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala

Sr Analytics Consultant at a tech vendor 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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Vijay Subramanyam

Delivery Head at cblsolutions

The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing

Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

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Uzair Faruqi

Head Of Analytics at Mjunction Services

Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization

Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

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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

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

"The product is easy to use."

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."

"We can centralize all our data models."

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

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

"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."

More Looker pros

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

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

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

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

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

"The Web Editing capabilities allow us to grant end users enough capabilities for them to do self-serve discovery without the added cost of needing to get everyone desktop licenses."

"Tableau is quite easy to develop dashboards with, and the range of dashboards is good."

"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."

"It's very easy to use and users don't need any IT support to access it as the information is right there."

"There is a lot of APIs available, which means that Tableau can be customized to a large extent."

"Tableau is an advanced specialized tool. One of the best features I've seen is the lack of an intermediate semantic layer. I think that's an advantage compared to any other tool like BusinessObjects or Power BI, which are Tableau's biggest competitors."

"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."

"The use of a storyboard helps the flow of the data visualisation."

More Tableau Enterprise pros

Cons

"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."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"Stability needs improvement."

"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 visualization capability of the product is limited."

"The product does not have documented material."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"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."

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

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

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

"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 tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

More Looker Studio cons

"Implementation requires a technical background."

"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."

"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."

"An advanced type of visualization is a bit tricky to create. It has something called a Calculated field, and that sometimes gets a bit difficult to use when you want to create an advanced type of visualization."

"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."

"It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."

"The look and feel of the tool itself, including the dashboard features and data visualization, could be improved. The graphs in Tableau also have room for improvement."

"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult."

More Tableau Enterprise cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"It is cheap."

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

"The tool is free."

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

"The product is available for free."

"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 solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."

"Tableau is an expensive solution."

"In Korea, the tool's pricing depends on the scale of usage. For instance, it's reasonable for a department with fewer than 50 users to adopt Tableau, like sales. However, the pricing becomes an issue when considering an enterprise solution for a larger user base, say 10,000 people."

"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."

"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."

"Tableau has reasonable pricing."

"The cost is high."

"For our organization, the cost hasn't been an issue."

More Tableau Enterprise pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Looker?

The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization opti...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we u...

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

See all answers

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?

Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....

See all answers

Comparisons

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker

Compared 11% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker

Compared 7% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 43% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau Enterprise

Compared 18% of the time

Domo vs Tableau Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau Enterprise

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau Enterprise

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Enterprise Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker

August 2025

Download Looker product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

August 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau Enterprise

July 2025

Download Tableau Enterprise product report

Also Known As

No data available

Data Studio

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

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

Tableau Enterprise offers powerful features for creating interactive visualizations, dashboards, and maps, including drag-and-drop functionality and easy integration with multiple data sources, promoting real-time collaboration and self-service analysis.

Tableau Enterprise stands out with its ability to create user-friendly, interactive visualizations, making it pivotal for business intelligence applications. Users benefit from its seamless connectivity and advanced analytical functions, facilitating data blending and storytelling. Despite a complex learning curve and high licensing costs, its features like geospatial analysis and efficient content distribution drive its indispensable value for data-driven insights. Enhancements in predictive analytics and support integration with machine learning tools further its capabilities across industries.

What are the most valuable features?

Interactive Visualizations: Enables users to create engaging reports.
Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Simplifies data analysis processes.
Data Integration: Offers seamless connectivity with multiple sources.
Real-Time Collaboration: Supports synchronous data sharing.
Advanced Analytics: Provides predictive analytics and geospatial analysis.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Informed Decision-Making: Facilitates data-driven insights.
Efficiency in Reporting: Streamlines dashboard and reporting tasks.
Cost-Effectiveness: Despite high licensing, value in robust analytics tools.
Customizable Options: Tailors analytics to specific needs.

Tableau Enterprise is widely used for business intelligence, supporting industries like healthcare, telecommunications, and finance. Organizations utilize it to analyze performance indicators, operational insights, and financial analytics, enhancing decision-making through interactive reports and real-time data integration.

Salesforce

Sample Customers

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

Genesys, Shueisha

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI. Updated: July 2025.

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