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Looker vs Sisense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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
Ranking in Embedded BI
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sisense
Ranking in Embedded BI
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (18th), Cloud Analytics (5th), Reporting (13th), Data Visualization (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 7.7%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sisense is 6.1%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Sisense6.1%
Looker7.7%
Other86.2%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Anton Nenov - PeerSpot reviewer
A BI tool to analyze data from multiple sources with an easy initial setup phase
I can say many things about the parts that need to be improved in Looker. 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. Blending data from different sources is not something that can be done easily.
Vishal Halbe - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved project turnaround time with customizable dashboards and faster data delivery to stakeholders
Sisense has some limitations, especially in rendering tables or graphs. For example, if you want to perform custom sorting or searching based on multiple columns, that becomes quite tricky. Providing more control over how the data is sorted or filtered would be quite useful. Additionally, it could provide more connectors to integrate with emerging different data sources to exponentially increase the amount of data it can handle. Sisense should provide more support for CI/CD, as we found the CI/CD approach quite limited, which is something that can be worked on. Some data scientists suggested more features can be offered by providing different models for data analytics. Sisense can improve by adding more features for handling complex schemas and making the pricing straightforward. The dashboarding features are good enough, but additional features could make it even more attractive. Also, CI/CD support or source control support would be really helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"The product is easy to use."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"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."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"Whenever we have an issue or are unsure how to proceed, they manage to simplify the issue and help us execute it in a graceful and scalable way."
"Ability to work with very large data sources without the limitations of Excel."
"We monetize Sisense to our customers so they can transform it into their application, and it works as a native application."
"It has allowed me to move my data to the cloud."
"Sisense positively impacts our organization by speeding up the process of getting and presenting the data to customers or stakeholders, which normally takes a lot of time due to curation and presentation efforts."
"The Sisense solution was very easy to set up, and its visualizations were effective."
"The dashboard design interface is very intuitive and allows you to quickly and easily produce professional, innovative dashboards."
"There are many built-in connectors, which allow us to easily add new sources of data, often in minutes."
 

Cons

"Stability needs improvement."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster."
"The solution's setup process could be easier."
"I would love to have more customization capabilities for building dashboards, especially in creating custom widget sizes."
"Larger datasets will sometimes give a "Accumulated logs" error when trying to make minor changes. T"
"This solution does not have tabs. In order to have tabs, you have to download an add-on to mimic the tabs. They should be integrated to improve the solution."
"At present there are additional costs involved if we wish to share our data queues within this solution, which we would like to see removed."
"The initial version we purchased only ran on Windows servers, which was less than ideal for our DevOps team. I believe that has been remedied in the latest release."
"Sisense has some limitations, especially in rendering tables or graphs. For example, if you want to perform custom sorting or searching based on multiple columns, that becomes quite tricky."
 

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."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"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."
"Compared to Power BI or Tableau, Sisense is much more expensive."
"This solution is more expensive than Tableau, Qlik and Dundas. It is an expensive tool. They charge $75,000 while Tableau is $45,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Media Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
 

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 advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...
What needs improvement with Sisense?
Sisense has some limitations, especially in rendering tables or graphs. For example, if you want to perform custom sorting or searching based on multiple columns, that becomes quite tricky. Providi...
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
Sisense was used for one of our clients to enable analytics and dashboards for their applications, which were supposed to get the data from different partners for that specific client. Sisense is w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot. They were practically dead even from a pricing perspective.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker vs. Sisense and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,922 professionals have used our research since 2012.