Looker vs. Yellowfin

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
Yellowfin
Score 8.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Yellowfin is a cloud-based business intelligence and dashboarding platform.N/A
Pricing
LookerYellowfin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerYellowfin
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredOptional
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerYellowfin
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.
Yellowfin
Chose Yellowfin
Alteryx Platform, Microsoft BI (MSBI) and Tableau Desktop
Chose Yellowfin
Tableau Online, Google Analytics and Amazon QuickSight
Chose Yellowfin
Yellow Fin platform is browser agnostic and is accessible from desktops as well as mobile devices. It is very simple and fast, it is integrated with Big Data, clients do not require a great training. It just works. But it’s easier to have things on the cloud, especially if you …
Chose Yellowfin
Yellowfin is much improved over this product, making the process much more simple and faster.
Chose Yellowfin
Yellowfin is no doubt, a stronger, more eloquent and polished tool compared to Microsoft's Power BI. The issue with our company specifically is that we are a big Microsoft shop, and pay for Power BI more or less in our bundle esp w/ O365. While the Yellowfin tool is a more …
Chose Yellowfin
I feel like it is not as good as powerslides, basically does the same thing but not as well. The team basically found that it was using up more time and wasn't as easy to figure out as powerslide. We ended up switching programs after a while and still looking for a much better …
Chose Yellowfin
The Yellowfin product technologies are superior and offers more flexibility in application. The Yellowfin product can be used in several different areas such a report engine over and above being a solid business intelligence tool. It further needs significant IT overhead to be …
Chose Yellowfin
We ran a full procurement project to select Yellowfin and started with a long list of over 20 BI products. Key reasons for choice were ease of use, visual looks, product integrations and cost (both licence purchase and development of content).
Chose Yellowfin
Yellowfin BI has a strong focus on a clear structured and easy to use user interface. Furthermore, the licence model was adequate for a BI system with a lot of end users.
Chose Yellowfin
Our reporting group uses Tableau extensively and compared to Yellowfin, Tableau is much easier to use (partially because more time was invested in setting it up properly, but also the design and features).
Chose Yellowfin
My selection of Yellowfin based on following criteria for the Indian market:

  • Availability in Linux platform to process high volume of transaction with CAL (concurrent user access license) model to use multiple server with high concurrent users
Features
LookerYellowfin
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.6
Ratings
5% above category average
Yellowfin
6.1
Ratings
29% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.60 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.90 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.30 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.4
Ratings
4% above category average
Yellowfin
6.6
Ratings
20% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.10 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.80 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.70 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.10 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.7
Ratings
5% above category average
Yellowfin
5.9
Ratings
34% below category average
Publish to Web8.30 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Report Versioning8.50 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.10 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings5.50 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
Yellowfin
5.8
Ratings
32% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.00 Ratings5.70 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.60 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.2
Ratings
3% below category average
Yellowfin
6.2
Ratings
31% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.70 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.10 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.1
Ratings
25% below category average
Yellowfin
6.7
Ratings
16% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.40 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Mobile Application5.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.20 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Yellowfin
6.1
Ratings
24% below category average
REST API00 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings5.40 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerYellowfin
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.0 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
LookerYellowfin
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
6.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
6.3
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
5.6
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(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)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerYellowfin
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
Read full review
We can recommend this software without hesitation, as it has the ability to generate reports and data analysis, as well as process the data automatically, which saves time. It is ideal for small and medium-sized companies that wish to improve their services in the business world
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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.
Read full review
  • The Yellowfin user interface fits seamlessly into our own web software as it too is designed in the latest web technologies making it easy to use and easily accessible to our client base.
  • The Yellowfin user interface is intuitive and easy to use, elevating VSV clients from needing in-depth training on the product before true value can be realised.
  • The Yellowfin architecture supports the Pintl architecture 100% due to a similar design strategy and as such no real overhead is added to the Pintl system for the addition of the Yellowfin product nor does it add any additional IT overhead to be used.
  • The Yellowfin product is quick and simple to develop reports and dashboards in cutting turn-around-time at the VSV development team and when new/custom reports are required by VSV clients.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • The ability to predefine a colour for a specific graph as a selection option dynamically.
  • The ability to customise the label of a chart, especially with respect to performance related reporting graphs we need an increase in dynamic charting options to meet our more specialised requirements.
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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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No answers on this topic
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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Yellowfin has large promises that did not meet our expectations after we got it installed. We tried to configure it but things did not go as planned. After 1 year of trying - we still cannot get it working. Be very careful when signing up with them - everything is not what it seems.
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Reliability and Availability
No objections
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99.9% availability
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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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No answers on this topic
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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Anytime I needed a report, I ran into issues with this software. We used Yellowfin for a period of months, having switched from Salesforce. I found the reports were difficult to produce, and the data management was okay at best.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Yellowfin provides 3 levels of training to support consumers, business analytics, developers and Administrations :
  1. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 1 (Exploration)
  2. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 2 (Advanced)
  3. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 3(Expert)
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Web-based training for large audiences for Level 1 and Level 2 I would suggest
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Implementation Rating
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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Design the data model and views for each dashboard is very important and it is the success factor Configuration of cluster for large 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.
Read full review
Yellowfin is no doubt, a stronger, more eloquent and polished tool compared to Microsoft's Power BI. The issue with our company specifically is that we are a big Microsoft shop, and pay for Power BI more or less in our bundle esp w/ O365. While the Yellowfin tool is a more sleek tool, the cost to our company is something that we have to weight against a negligible cost with Power BI.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
- Tested 500 con-current users in Linux platform with 4 cores systems - Tested with cloud based VM - Tested with 1000 reads per minutes
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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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  • made our org more data centric
  • Decisions are made based on data vs opinion
  • has created a single source of truth for the bulk of the organization
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.

Yellowfin Screenshots

Screenshot of Location IntelligenceScreenshot of Yellowfin DashboardScreenshot of Yellowfin SignalsScreenshot of Yellowfin MobileScreenshot of Yellowfin Sales KPIs