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Looker vs Yellowfin 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker
Ranking in Embedded BI
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Yellowfin
Ranking in Embedded BI
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (44th), Reporting (28th), Data Visualization (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 9.3%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI
 

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.
AC
It is a central source of up-to-date data and information, but needs more charting capabilities
Management information Reporting Statistics Data analysis It reduces sending copies of different report/spreadsheet versions over email, which makes it difficult to access the right report. It is also able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout.  All management…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"The product is easy to use."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"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."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."
 

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."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The product does not have documented material."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"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."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

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."
"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."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
15%
Healthcare Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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, ...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker vs. Yellowfin and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.