Looker vs. Microsoft Power BI

Looker

426 Reviews and Ratings

Microsoft Power BI

1,906 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Looker	Score8.8 out of 10	N/A	Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.	N/A
Microsoft Power BI	Score8.6 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.	$10 per month per user

Pricing

Looker

Microsoft Power BI

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Pricing Offerings
Looker	Microsoft Power BI
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	No

Required

No setup fee

Must contact sales team for pricing.

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Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Looker	Microsoft Power BI
Considered Both Products	Google Verified User Chose Looker Better in terms of data configuration with slight harder learning curve, available help material is not that much and we usually have to connect with Looker Help with chat for our data and analysis questions. While Looker offers a wide range of visualization options, there were … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Technically, Power BI is much more complete and powerful, but it's like an ocean liner. I didn't need all that equipment. In my case, I needed to move more quickly, like on a speedboat, to build a page with several data sources in a single source of truth that could be easily … Incentivized Helpful? Alicia Barevich, bCRE, bCEE Information Systems Manager in Information Technology at The Blake School (Education Management, 1-10 employees) Chose Looker Looker isn't quite as powerful, but the learning curve is so drastically easier that it pretty much lets us do everything we want. Incentivized Helpful? Rajender Singh Senior PLM engineer in Manufacturing at IGW (Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Looker Looker is a great fit for our company because we have collaborative analytics workflows and complicated data ecosystems and because of its strengths in data modeling, integration, and collaboration. Brand name and peer recommendations also helps us to select Looker against … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Our organization is going all in on Google products so switching out of the Microsoft suite of tools is a no brainer. All the Google tools work incredibly well together and once you transition it’s incredibly hard to be half in half out between Google and Microsoft. If you’re a … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Easy setup and day-to-day use. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker We haven't had a proper benchmarking done. We might consider looking at other options, but this thing is deeply integrated into our platform, so not anytime soon. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Looker works and exists in the Google ecosystem. If you are a Google Cloud Platform user, Looker is a no brainer. There is also Looker Studio, the small (free) brother with less features which is basically a report only viewer/creator. The reason we choose Looker is because can … Incentivized Helpful? Marcos Vinícius Costa de Carvalho Business Analyst in Information Technology at ACE Ventures (Capital Markets, 51-200 employees) Chose Looker Actually, I use both power BI and Looker. Power BI has more data connectors and power query, one of the most important things that Looker does not have. You can customize the visuals in power bi in a higher level than Looker as well. Besides, Looker is much more advanced when … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker There are some specific use cases where other tools are not useful in our organization. Some software solutions are shared with other organizations inside the company and Looker is the only tool where we can collaborate good enough. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Legitimately, every other business solution is superior to Microsoft's product offerings. They are a business that doesn't listen to their customers because they know that they don't have to and that someone will always be a client. That being said, Looker does care about your … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker The easy which with data and reports can be customized in Looker for adhoch or individual needs is amazing - Very easy to filter and save views. Incentivized Helpful? Shelby Bowden Graduate Research Assistant in Research & Development at Western Kentucky University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Looker Looker provides really excellent customer service in comparison to other similar products. The sharing aspect of Looker is also a big plus, which allows multiple users to access the data at the same time. We have also found it to stand out among competitors with its dashboard … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker If you company is using Google suite products, Looker is a no-brainer. Tableau is probably the most flexibly but as a result it has the least governance capabilities. Power BI is kind of old-school in terms of how it feels to use it. I think in general, Looker brings a lot of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker Looker stacks up well against other data providers for usability and friendly interfaces, plus the ability to customise. We actually integrate Looker with other analytics tools in the same sphere (power bi, Dreamdata and others) so that we can have one comprehensive dashboard … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Looker In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, … Incentivized Helpful? Francois Salvert Web Analytics and Dashboarding in Marketing at Dataligent Services Analytiques Inc. (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Looker Free, simpler...less enterprise grade level Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI After several years using Google Looker Studio and BigQuery, Microsoft Power BI is a step-up in terms of visualizations. It is also much more powerful, leading to less errors and has a more intuitive interface. Looker Studio has a focus on Google Analytics whereas Microsoft … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI I prefer Power BI because of its affordability and fewer complicated tools than Tableau. It's easy to use and compatible with other Microsoft products, which are mostly used in the IT industry. It's not limited to only one platform like Looker Studio, which is mostly used in … Incentivized Helpful? Marcos Vinícius Costa de Carvalho Business Analytics Analist in Human Resources at ACE (Financial Services, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Complexity: Microsoft Power BI is more powerful and complex, Looker Studio is simpler and easier to use. Data: Microsoft Power BI handles complex data modeling and diverse sources, Looker Studio is better for simpler data and Google ecosystem sources. Analytics: Microsoft Power … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Some of the strengths are 1. User-Friendliness 2. Self-Service BI (Caters to all levels of the employees 3. Cost-effective. 4. Easy integration with Microsoft Suits. 5. DAX Calculations 6. Familiar Interface like traditional Excel. 7. Easier Self-Service platform for … Incentivized Helpful? David Jensen Operations Manager, Customer Success in Corporate at SaltClick (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Microsoft Power BI excels against its competition in being a great combination between feature set and scalability. Tableau is more integrated with Salesforce but it has a high starting price point whereas Microsoft Power BI can start out with a single license for less than $20 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Microsoft PowerBI is easy to use, has leadership alignment, and is liked by everyone using it in the past and in the current setup. Thus, we decided to continue renewing Microsoft Power BI. We had also evaluated some competitors, but those platforms were not as easy to onboard. … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Overall Microsoft Power BI has more capabilities, it is more customizable and it also has it's own query language DAX which is really powerful for complex calculations and that's something you just don't get in their competitors, also when integrated with the other power apps, … Incentivized Helpful? Vishal Verma Senior Software Engg in Engineering at THRILLOPHILIA TRAVEL SOLUTIONS PRIVATE LIMITED (Computer Software, 501-1000 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI It Improve business process agility. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Due to microsoft user and all the data into excel it was found more feasible from the organization to get Microsoft Power BI. Also due to access of microsoft licence we don't need to survey other vendors and feasibility. Also price wise it was more competitive then Tableau. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI I selected Power BI because it is the best in all because of its ecosystem and its ability to connect with multiple data source like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SQL Server, web, analysis services etc. Moreover, its available on both Cloud and Desktop with some pro and cons … Incentivized Helpful? Scott Kennedy Director, eCommerce Analytics and Digital Marketing in Marketing at Franklin Sports (Sporting Goods, 201-500 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Power BI from a price perspective is the lowest cost (probably even from a total cost of ownership perspective) of all the offerings I have ever evaluated. The piece that really stands out for Power BI is the data transformation layer called Power Query. This section allows you … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI Microsoft Power BI is the leader of this category, but it is a little expensive. It could use some more customization features, but other than that, it gives stellar returns for your investment. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Microsoft Power BI We selected Microsoft Power BI because it was the easiest to integrate with our primary systems, allowed us to embed reports for our partners, allowed us to host our data and some reports on premise. It also provided the shortest route to production deployment allowing us to … Incentivized Helpful? Purav Vaidya Vice President, Mobile technology in Information Technology at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Microsoft BI tool does a better job than most of the other software. The reason is excellent visualizations and its capability to connect with various other software and data sources. Tableau does a better job when it comes to tutorials and being more user-friendly. Also … Incentivized Helpful? Glenn Burnside Vice President, Operations & Strategy in Information Technology at Headspring (Computer Software, 51-200 employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI We selected Power BI because it had more flexibility in modelling/measurement definition, excellent per-user pricing, easy self-implementation, integration with our other Office 365 tools, and easy distribution of content to others in the organization. Incentivized Helpful? Kunal Sonalkar Data Analytics Intern in Information Technology at University of Florida (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Power BI performs quite well in comparison to it's competitor's products. We compared it mainly to GoodData and Tableau. Power BI has a great pricing. It's affordable and efficient with mid-sized datasets. Hence many companies go for it. Competitive products like Tableau are … Incentivized Helpful? Edson Pinheiro Data Engineer in Information Technology at Cognizant (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Microsoft Power BI Much more instinctive Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

Looker

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 8.9 117 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.8 140 Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports	9.196 Ratings	8.5120 Ratings
Customizable dashboards	9.0115 Ratings	10.0140 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates	8.499 Ratings	8.0128 Ratings

Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 8.6 116 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.2 140 Ratings
Drill-down analysis	8.2112 Ratings	7.0139 Ratings
Formatting capabilities	7.9114 Ratings	9.0138 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages	8.947 Ratings	8.0103 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration	9.2116 Ratings	9.0135 Ratings

Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 8.9 112 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.6 134 Ratings
Publish to Web	8.594 Ratings	8.0129 Ratings
Publish to PDF	9.1100 Ratings	9.0122 Ratings
Report Versioning	8.775 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling	9.297 Ratings	8.0104 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers	00 Ratings	9.074 Ratings

Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 7.0 113 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.7 136 Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)	8.2109 Ratings	9.0131 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization	8.397 Ratings	8.0122 Ratings
Predictive Analytics	4.66 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining	00 Ratings	9.01 Ratings

Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 8.4 112 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.6 127 Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)	8.7106 Ratings	9.0121 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model	8.393 Ratings	9.0102 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)	8.2106 Ratings	10.0111 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control	8.345 Ratings	7.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)	00 Ratings	8.394 Ratings

Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker 6.3 84 Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.0 117 Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access	7.781 Ratings	8.0111 Ratings
Mobile Application	5.01 Ratings	7.793 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile	7.675 Ratings	7.7112 Ratings

Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Looker and Microsoft Power BI
Feature	Looker - Ratings	Microsoft Power BI 8.4 80 Ratings
REST API	00 Ratings	8.072 Ratings
Javascript API	00 Ratings	9.956 Ratings
iFrames	00 Ratings	8.055 Ratings
Java API	00 Ratings	8.046 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)	00 Ratings	8.163 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)	00 Ratings	8.444 Ratings

User Ratings
	Looker	Microsoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend	8.7 (117 ratings)	8.5 (142 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.5 (7 ratings)	9.0 (2 ratings)
Usability	8.8 (12 ratings)	7.9 (58 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Performance	6.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	8.8 (14 ratings)	10.0 (53 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (1 ratings)	9.0 (1 ratings)
Configurability	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Data Sharing and Collaboration	8.5 (51 ratings)	8.5 (82 ratings)
Data Sources	7.3 (51 ratings)	9.0 (81 ratings)
Ease of integration	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Professional Services	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)