Looker vs Microsoft Power BI vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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Looker

Microsoft Power BI

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Executive Summary

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

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To learn more, read our detailed Embedded BI 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

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

Embedded BI

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

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.

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

"If one has to deal with large volumes of data, which I categorically could tell is big data and has to create visuals, Looker is the tool to go."

"With respect to buy solutions, cost is relevant. However, the Looker solution would have outmatched the ongoing multi-million budget spending with respect to cost-efficiency."

"In the past, adding a new dashboard to our product was a multi-week development effort, now our nontechnical product management and client success teams can create, launch, and maintain high quality dashboards with no interruption to the development team."

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

"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."

"We LOVE Looker here at Snagajob."

"Looker offers incredible business visualization and analytical tools: graphs, charts, tables, and single numbers."

More Looker pros

"The demand estimation and forecasting profitability are the most effective features of Microsoft Power BI, along with vendor and supply chain risk analysis, inventory and stock forecasting, real-time production monitoring, and quality control through defect tracking and root cause analysis."

"My primary uses of this solution are BI reporting using SQL server reporting, Power BI online reports, and BI dashboards."

"We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly."

"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."

"The most effective feature of Microsoft Power BI for data analysis is the ability to use Power Query directly from Excel. Power BI's integration capabilities impacted our data management by allowing us to push all reporting down to the end user, giving them the capability to perform "what if" scenarios and discover and validate their own data without needing to refer to IT. Additionally, it provided insights that we couldn't get from Oracle Cloud. We wrote an extract routine to transfer our Oracle Cloud database to Power BI, which was a game changer in terms of giving people confidence in the finances."

"Our setup is very straight forward and can be done in a matter of hours."

"We encourage end users to use Power BI because it's quite easy for them to interact with the menus and the navigation bar. Even for ordinary users, they can create their own dashboard using Power BI."

"Power BI is the best visualization tool I have ever worked with."

"ThoughtSpot saves a significant amount of time compared to other tools and is very user-friendly."

"The initial setup was very straightforward."

"I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases."

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

"The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable."

"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."

"This tool has really improved our decision-making by 70 to 80% because we are able to rely on insights from different data sources from different departments."

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

More ThoughtSpot pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"The product does not have documented material."

"Stability needs improvement."

"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 pricing model makes sense, but can be very expensive, potentially prohibitively so for smaller companies."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

More Looker cons

"The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating."

"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface with Microsoft BI."

"I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility."

"This solution needs integration with SAS and more deep analysis functionality."

"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."

"It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table."

"The Power Query feature needs to be improved to handle large amounts of data. This feature is also slow for large data transfers making it better to use some kind of script."

"We have used other solutions and the reporting functionality should be user-friendly and have a drag and drop feature should be available, but Microsoft BI doesn't have these features."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do."

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

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

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

"I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins."

"The visualization customization needs improvement."

"The customer service and support are not good. I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses."

"A customized visualization is lacking in this product."

More ThoughtSpot cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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 is cheap."

"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."

"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."

"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."

"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."

"I am satisfied with its price. Its price is very less as compared to Tableau and QlikView."

"No comment."

"The current licensing model that Microsoft BI has is expensive. My customers have told me the cost is approximately $20 per user and this can get expensive fast. There should be a one-time purchase option if the customer has a lot of users."

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…

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

No data available

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	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

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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...

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker

Comparisons

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MicroStrategy vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker

Compared 6% of the time

QlikView vs Looker

Compared 6% of the time

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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

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

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Omni vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 11% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 7% of the time

Sigma vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 5% of the time

Databricks vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 5% of the time

Embeddable vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Looker

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Microsoft Power BI

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Download ThoughtSpot product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

No data available

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

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.