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Google Data Studio pros and cons

Vendor: Google

4.0 out of 5

20 reviews
80% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Google Data Studio provides unmatched technical support, enhancing decision-making and boosting ROI. It offers business visualization tools empowering teams to manage dashboards independently. Despite Looker integration improving data interaction, Looker lacks connection to Excel and REST APIs, has minor bugs, and its pricing model can be costly for smaller companies. Visualization control and reliance on database components impact performance compared to competitors like Tableau.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Technical support is highly praised, enhancing the user experience significantly.

Empowering employees to make informed decisions efficiently contributes to positive ROI.

Looker transforms companies' data usage, enabling insightful questions to be answered.

Exceptional cost-efficiency stands out, outperforming multi-million budget spending.

Provides valuable business visualizations and analytical tools, such as graphs and charts.

CONS

There have been minor bugs, including a security issue, though it did not impact users.

Visualization controls need improvement to compete with Tableau.

Pricing can be very high, potentially limiting for smaller companies.

Looker depends heavily on the database's performance, causing issues with underperforming databases.

Lack of connection to Excel and REST APIs limits data source diversity, hampering use cases.

Google Data Studio Pros review quotes

Head Of Data Warehouse at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 8, 2016

Technical support is the best ever.

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Data Analyst (Data Engineering) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 18, 2016

The most valuable features are the ability to create visualizations for non-technical employees, as well as the ability to provide ways to dynamically slice the data.

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Digital Product Manager at a retailer with 51-200 employees

Sep 20, 2016

It is easier and quicker to find things in the database.

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Google Data Studio

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Data Solutions Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 5, 2016

We LOVE Looker here at Snagajob.

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Business Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Oct 16, 2016

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

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Head of Data & Analytics at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Empowering every employee to make smarter decisions in less time easily pushes us into the black on ROI.

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Business Operations Associate at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 29, 2016

Looker is an extremely valuable product that can really transform your company's ability to use data to answer challenging questions.

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reviewer1198944

PhD/ Doctorial Candidate: Electric-/Electronics-Development at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 2, 2022

The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used.

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reviewer1856880

Vice President Engineering at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 12, 2022

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

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Software Data Engineer at PayPal

Oct 5, 2022

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.

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Google Data Studio Cons review quotes

Head Of Data Warehouse at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 8, 2016

There have a been a few minor bugs, including a security bug that did not affect us.

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Data Analyst (Data Engineering) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 18, 2016

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.

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Digital Product Manager at a retailer with 51-200 employees

Sep 20, 2016

There is a lot of customization that we needed/need to build ourselves. Other BI tools have more out of the box.

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Google Data Studio

Free Report: Google Data Studio Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Google Data Studio. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.

889,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Data Solutions Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 5, 2016

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

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Business Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Features related to visualization should continue to be improved.

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Head of Data & Analytics at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 16, 2016

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

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Business Operations Associate at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 29, 2016

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

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reviewer1198944

PhD/ Doctorial Candidate: Electric-/Electronics-Development at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 2, 2022

Looker depends on the database components. For example, if you have a underperforming database, then you likely will have a poor performance experience.

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reviewer1856880

Vice President Engineering at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 12, 2022

It needs to be more user-friendly.

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Software Data Engineer at PayPal

Oct 5, 2022

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.

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Show 7 more reviews (out of 17)

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Product Categories

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Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Google Data Studio

Qlik Sense vs Google Data Studio

QlikView vs Google Data Studio

MicroStrategy vs Google Data Studio

ThoughtSpot vs Google Data Studio

Sisense vs Google Data Studio

Zoho Analytics vs Google Data Studio

TIBCO Jaspersoft vs Google Data Studio

GoodData vs Google Data Studio

Embeddable vs Google Data Studio

Panintelligence vs Google Data Studio

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See all alternatives

Related questions

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Which solution do you prefer: Tableau, Qlik Sense, Amazon QuickSight, or Looker?

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When evaluating Embedded BI Tools, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?

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