Looker vs. Sigma Computing

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker
Score 8.7 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
Sigma
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Sigma Computing headquartered in San Francisco provides a suite of data services such as code free data modeling, data search and explorating, and related BI and data visualization services.N/A
Pricing
LookerSigma Computing
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerSigma
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredOptional
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.Contact us for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerSigma Computing
Considered Both Products
Looker
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 …
Chose Looker
It takes forever sometimes to have data ready in tableau dashboard, and also it takes effort to maintain each dashboards. We do not have so many efforts to maintain all. Also, we need to be able to see data faster and therefore take actions and work faster. With Looker we might …
Chose Looker
Looker Studio is not as robust as Tableau or Microsoft BI. So it does not provide quite as much insight or depth and it has more limitations overall then the other major reporting products. However, it is also free and connects perfectly with other Google products. Plus, all of …
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 …
Chose Looker
Looker is a free tool to use on the basic level, which can't really compare apples to apples since all of the other services are paid services. Looker already has a leg up because of that. The other platforms definitely have more features and capabilities off the bat because it …
Chose Looker
The learning curve for Tableau Cloud was too steep for our team. After watching a couple of YouTube videos, anyone can begin connecting data sources and creating reports with Looker. Looker is also free with Google Workspace, making the decision between Looker and Tableau a …
Chose Looker
Tableau did not have the customization that we were told it had, and it was expensive. Domo looks promising, but is also expensive so we haven't purchased it (we may in the future). Google Sheets was very basic and did fine for what it was, but we needed something a bit more …
Chose Looker
Looker seems to be all inclusive in data analysis and reporting. Along with the ability to forecast and add specific metrics to data sets. The automatic reporting sending them on scheduled days is great as well. The only concern is the ease of use as it requires high level …
Chose Looker
I don't remember much about Tableau, but it was chaotic and poorly set up for our company.
Chose Looker
I have not used any other products like Looker before and the company has been using Looker since I've joined. We've talked about replacing other software vendors in the past but never discussed replacing Looker because of how vital it is to our organization.
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 …
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 …
Chose Looker
Looker is more mailable; it allows more dynamic visualisations, filters, drilldowns etc. It's sharing capabilities are also more streamlined than AWS Quicksight. However in contrast to this AWS Quicksight can leverage AWS IAM roles and policies which can be quite scalable. …
Chose Looker
Looker is free, so it's certainly better bang for your buck. It's a good platform for someone who just needs a quick way to look at the data they have. It doesn't have some of the advanced functionality that Tableau has, but it integrates well with the Google ecosystem, so it's …
Chose Looker
In terms of reporting specifically Looker Studio allows to integrate way more sources into a single report. If needed sources can be blended and parameters can be created with calculations etc
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.
Chose Looker
I choose Looker when I need quick charts. It is easier to start and configure, browser-based, and easy to connect with Google Sheets. This gives it a good competitive advantage when comparing pricing—other similar tools have expensive licenses. In a corporate Google …
Chose Looker
Looker and Tableau are similar products with benefits and drawbacks according to which software you choose to employ. Looker is a Google product whereas Tableau is a Salesforce product. Depending on your existing tech stack it is recommended to leverage the integrated, native …
Chose Looker
Looker is web based app and much easier to use.¨ON the othe hand Power BI offers robust integration with Microsoft products (like Azure, SQL Server, and Excel) and a wide range of other data sources. Power BI's ability to seamlessly connect and import data from these sources is …
Chose Looker
We use both Looker and Tableau. It depends on the specific team. However, there is a clear correlation that we use Tableau more often when there are more data sources, including financial data.
Sigma
Chose Sigma
I am not an expert in any of these, though from my brief exposure to Looker it felt like a steeper learning curve, more appropriate to companies with dedicated and skilled BI engineers, whereas Sigma (and Tableau, and Looker Studio) offer a quicker and more intuitive interface …
Chose Sigma
Ease of use, access for teams, adhoc and iterative data analyses, from non-technical users, to experience data analysis teams.
Chose Sigma
Sigma Computing exclusively uses Snowflake as its data source, which enhances data security by not caching or extracting data locally. Tableau, on the other hand, allows a broader range of internal databases and files like SQL Server, Postgres, etc., and supports extracted …
Chose Sigma
Microsoft Power BI, Qlik Analytics Platform and Microsoft Excel
Chose Sigma
maintianed is very user friendly. Its various ways of embedding helped us in various aspects. The usage of control ids of the filters as parameters helped us in optimizing very longSQL queries. The live Support team every weekday is a very great intiative that helped in quick …
Chose Sigma
I'd rate Sigma to be extremely similar to Sisense except it looks not as nice. I would say that as a tool, Sigma is more user-friendly than Tableau, Power BI, Trevor, and Metabase.

I do feel that Looker is far more powerful and looks great, but I also recognize that Looker does …
Chose Sigma
Sigma computing has better pricing than the competitors. We're always looking for what is good for the price but also gives us all we need to complete our reporting. It also brings about a lot of updates that are nice to see. The embedding helps other BI tools sometimes.
Chose Sigma
We did not have any similar reporting system like Sigma.
Chose Sigma
Sigma has a better view of tables and it is much easier to create new data sets/aggregations. Tableau is better in some visual aspects because there is more customization available, albeit more confusing than Sigma to do. Sigma is very intuitive and did not take long to learn …
Chose Sigma
Sigma Computing had better functionality and is beginner friendly. While Tableau is a more well known product, Sigma Computing has a better user interface that is easier to comprehend for those without a non-technical background. This makes it easier to showcase dashboards to …
Chose Sigma
Sigma is better than Tableau in my opinion because Sigma has the connection to live data, rather than stale csv files.
Chose Sigma
Sigma is the easiest to use from a workbook developer perspective, and from a non-technical end user perspective. Everything from administration, semantic layer setup, to creating dashboards is easier in Sigma than these other tools. Developing content in Sigma is enjoyable, …
Chose Sigma
Sigma has the capabilities of the other BI tools. I think it's pretty user friendly and easy to learn. Many of our stakeholders are used to using Excel so it's nice that it is a smooth onboarding process for them. We haven't looked into much of the visualization capabilities so …
Chose Sigma
I have found that Tableau can be used to create a greater variety of custom and complex visuals, though these visuals are far more difficult to create in a quick turnaround. While Sigma may be more limited in terms of what types of visuals can be create or how customized they …
Chose Sigma
With Looker, to be effective, a substantial amount of coding & modeling needs to happen in LookML. Being another language to learn, users have to context switch again from at a minimum either SQL or Python into LookML. The concept of being able to source control, code review, …
Chose Sigma
Less visually appealing. Feels like fewer pixels. Harder to make graphs and visuals. Really good integration with snowflake and intuitive usage for custom equations and filters.
Chose Sigma
2 biggest reasons for Sigma were easy of use for power users, and cost of having a large amount of viewers of the data.
Chose Sigma
Much more customizable than Looker Studio
Some features are way better than Cluvio. But Cluvio search bar was better.
Chose Sigma
I was not involved in the buying and decision-making process.
Chose Sigma
Not even a comparison, Sigma is a far superior BI and data visualization tool
Chose Sigma
sorta in the middle.
One thing that differs than domo or power bi, is that those softwares bring in the data into the platform, instead of how sigma runs a query against our data warehouse each time a user interacts with the dashboard (there is some small caching, so not always)
Chose Sigma
Sigma is by far the best. It is easiest to learn and easiest to use on a day to day basis. I never have to wait for dashboards to load and it's very easy to understand the variables that are going into my visualizations. Best of all I can manipulate the data within Sigma …
Chose Sigma
flexibility, works really well with snowflake, export capability, level of support, the fact that Sigma Computing is a start up and improving so quickly. Web based software
Features
LookerSigma Computing
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.7
Ratings
6% above category average
Sigma Computing
8.9
Ratings
9% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.70 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.30 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
Ratings
5% above category average
Sigma Computing
8.6
Ratings
7% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.10 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.80 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.80 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.20 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Sigma Computing
9.1
Ratings
9% above category average
Publish to Web8.30 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.60 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.10 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.9
Ratings
14% below category average
Sigma Computing
6.6
Ratings
19% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.10 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.60 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.3
Ratings
2% below category average
Sigma Computing
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)8.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.2
Ratings
23% below category average
Sigma Computing
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.40 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
LookerSigma Computing
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerSigma Computing
Likelihood to Recommend
When you need to create a centralised dashboard for multiple stakeholders that blends cross-channel reporting. As an SEO agency reporting for clients - Looker is a great solution. It's less appropriate depending on the intended users. For instance, in my experience Looker reports have been under-utilised because they're not accessed regularly, provide too much noise or often simple PDF reports are preferred
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Scenarios where Sigma Computing is well suited: - Data Reporting and Visualisation : It is suitable for dashboards that integrate data from multiple back-office systems - Search and Filtering Capabilities: It provides a robust platform for searching through datasets and visualisations. Scenarios where Sigma Computing is less appropriate: Handling of null values and dynamic table adjustments
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Pros
  • It is very easy to start a new dashboard and configure what you want to display by just selecting/dragging from the list of available columns.
  • It is intuitive, mainly if you use other Google services like Google Sheets.
  • The look and feel is modern and nice.
  • It it very useful to have an immediate visual overview of the data in a spreadsheet.
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  • Allows end users to easily dive into the data without having direct access to the table in our database management software.
  • Can easily turnaround dashboards that are detailed and visually pleasing.
  • Sigma is intuitive and as new features are rolled out it is easy to adopt and incorporate them into new and existing dashboards.
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Cons
  • I wish I could get more granular in the Google ad data, such as down to the campaign type, instead of having to see only all campaigns.
  • The setup can be time-consuming if you're not using the product regularly.
  • Editing the dashboard requires a few logins; I wish it was more seamless.
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  • Viewer level license is quite limited. These users can't download data or even add filters on datasets. Something to keep in mind.
  • Directly querying the underlying data warehouse will lead to increased usage. Not a big deal on something like Redshift, but your Snowflake consumption will increase, potentially by a lot.
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Likelihood to Renew
We are very haooy with Looker, it provides us with all the funciomalities we need for both the day to day oerformance tracking and longer periods reporting. It is easy to use for account managers, configurable and customizable for soecialists and what is most imoortant, our clinets generally really love it
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Because we are very satisfied with the product and would most likely renew because of the services it provides. It is a tool that you bring into your organization and let it change the way you analyze your data, present your data and share you date within the Respective teams
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Usability
Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
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It has a clean and modern interface. However, it is not completely intuitive. I think it would be better and easier to navigate with more Windows style drop down menus and/or tabls. There is a significant learning curve, but that may be due in part to the technical nature of this type of software tool.
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Reliability and Availability
No objections
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Yes, as long as you don’t conduct user error sigma is always up and running and waiting for you to complete your dashboards
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Performance
Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
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It depends, it loads quickly for smaller dashboards but when loading larger amounts of data it takes more time to do so
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Support Rating
Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
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They are very friendly and informative. They are quick in resolving our queries and help us understand very minute things as well. They are quick in creating feature tickets based on our custom requirements, and they would also create a bug ticket if there is any discrepancy and get that checked on time.
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Implementation Rating
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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Was not involved in implementation
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Alternatives Considered
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, especially for internal databases, but will gladly use Looker for our marketing information for AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and YouTube.
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I am not an expert in any of these, though from my brief exposure to Looker it felt like a steeper learning curve, more appropriate to companies with dedicated and skilled BI engineers, whereas Sigma (and Tableau, and Looker Studio) offer a quicker and more intuitive interface for smaller companies like ours without dedicated BI resources on staff.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
It is a cloud service offering that is able to expand based on your usage
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Return on Investment
  • Other than some people not liking the numbers, I don't see any negative impacts; we haven't experienced that.
  • The reports help us unravel the story of our users and how they are sifting through our pages.
  • Our clients enjoy seeing the numbers to understand better what stands out on their sites.
  • The reports have helped us see what campaigns are working and where we need to tweak things.
  • The reports have enabled us to have better conversations with stakeholders about how their web pages should be modified, edited, etc., to reflect the data.
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  • Monitoring health of cloud platform has allowed the company to anticipate issues before they affect customers – Sigma prompted us building a canary monitoring process that provides customer container health.
  • Customer success has used an activity report to discover customers running runaway processes that they were unaware of, creating an alert to contact the customer and prevent an embarrassing situation.
  • Customer success uses the activity report to prompt conversations regarding increases or declines in behavior that led to increasing contract limits or addressing churn concerns.
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.