Looker vs. Tableau Cloud

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
Tableau Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.
$15
per month billed annually per user
Pricing
LookerTableau Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Viewer
$35
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Explorer
$70
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Creator
$75
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Creator
$115
per month billed annually per user
Tableau+
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerTableau Cloud
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerTableau Cloud
Considered Both Products
Looker
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
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
I don't remember much about Tableau, but it was chaotic and poorly set up for our company.
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
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
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.
Chose Looker
Looker is considerably easier to learn than any of the other tools listed above. For example, Tableau does offer a robust selection of visualizations, however setting them up and plotting the data correctly is considerably harder than in Looker. Another major advantage of …
Chose Looker
Looker was easier to use, better integration with non-standard datastores, such as Prestodb, and Snowflake, and BigTable. Ease of manageability. Creation of reports faster and easier compared to QlikView. Tableau has better heat maps, however, Looker has better drill down in …
Chose Looker
Looker is cheaper, by far. Easier to manage. In the end, Looker was a better choice for us, even with its maintenance warts and the headaches with the APIs. Tableau licensing is difficult to manage, at the very least, whereas Looker is not. User management is much easier to …
Chose Looker
Looker is a lot easier to connect with our data pipelines and for users to create their own scalable Explores. Before, analysts would have to create separate Tableau dashboards for each ask, but now with Lookers Explores, some teams are able to self serve and create their own …
Chose Looker
Looker empowers users to create their own views/dashboards from its web application. The last time I used Tableau (in 2015), only certain license holders could create content from the desktop application. Everyone else was a view only user. On that theme, we found Looker to be …
Chose Looker
Looker stacks up very well against the other tools we have evaluated and used. All the tools have their own pros and cons. Looker had a better edge in terms of visualizations when we chose to use it. After several updates, other tools began to have newer features. Looker still …
Chose Looker
Tableau is also a great BI tool, but it felt a lot less flexible to me in terms of customization of data. As a visual platform, Tabluea is incredible; it can produce unbelievably rich visualizations and dashboards. It's also easier to get set up on Tableau too, but ultimately …
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 …
Chose Looker
Tableau provides additional visual functionality and is great for more in-depth visuals or further data exploration, but it is costly and an extremely robust solution for simple data reporting. Looker can't be beat when it comes to integrating with other G-Suite tools. All in …
Tableau Cloud
Chose Tableau Cloud
It seems more robust then the other platforms. There is a lot you can do from merging many different data sets together by joining them at like points, to creating visualizations of the data, or by showcasing some important data to any number of people within your organization. …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Looker ended up as the winning product due to its easy to use and flexibility. It's easy for nontechnical stakeholders to learn how to create their Explores. But Tableau gives us more flexibility in creating highly customized visualizations so analysts still rely on it.
Chose Tableau Cloud
I like Looker's interface a little more and it updates quicker.
Chose Tableau Cloud
I would say that Tableau Online has the most sophisticated capabilities, but not the most straightforward UI or path to learn and operate within it quickly. It felt more technical than the other products I used and did not look as good, but I also found that it could answer a …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Online is much faster to get data sets integrated and being used, accordingly. From almost day one, we were able to integrate our data warehouse and pull data directly into Tableau Online. This made us aware of some of the data details that we had been missing and were …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau does a great job compared to all of these mentioned tools. Other tools also have a great shape-up of dashboards but obviously all have their advantages and disadvantages. The reason Tableau has an edge over all the other tools is because of its excellent visual design …
Features
LookerTableau Cloud
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.7
Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Cloud
7.0
Ratings
15% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.80 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.40 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Cloud
6.9
Ratings
15% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.20 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.80 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.80 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.20 Ratings7.50 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
Tableau Cloud
7.1
Ratings
16% below category average
Publish to Web8.40 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Report Versioning8.60 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.20 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.0
Ratings
13% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.8
Ratings
16% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.10 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.60 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings6.50 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
Tableau Cloud
7.0
Ratings
19% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.70 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.20 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.10 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.20 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.2
Ratings
23% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.4
Ratings
20% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.50 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Mobile Application5.00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.40 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.4
Ratings
20% below category average
REST API00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerTableau Cloud
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.1 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.1 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
LookerTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerTableau Cloud
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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If you're using Tableau as the primary BI tool, then Tableau Cloud is well suited to publish and share the results with a wide(r) audience. It is well suited for various degrees of self-service proficiency, from pure consumers of analytical work to more advanced users who can use web editing for smaller or larger adjustments, and even for desktop power users who will publish their work to Tableau Cloud. It has many good ways to organize the content and make it easily accessible via search, favorites, folders, collections ("playlists for your data"), or history ("recents"). It might not be ideally suited if there are many on-prem sources to be used (even though there are options to connect them) or if you have very special requirements regarding custom server setup, which is limited in a shared cloud environment like Tableau Cloud.
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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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  • Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
  • The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
  • The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
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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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  • Can be a steep learning curve for new users
  • Modeling and building algorithms aren't always intuitive and take some testing/retesting to ensure it's working as it should
  • Inability to integrate easily with our HRIS platform. Reports are pulled from HRIS at various intervals and uploaded into Tableau
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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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The tool's capacity to handle complex data sources.
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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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From an end user perspective Tableau Online is overall very easy to navigate once you get used to it, my only complaint is that when expanding or contracting a graph, the "plus" and "minus" on the bottom left is sometimes hidden, and should always be visible. From a builder perspective, it can take some getting used to but the sheer depth of customization makes it all worthwhile.
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Reliability and Availability
No objections
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No answers on this topic
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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I have no had a lot of experience with the support team, but I know that it’s hardly necessary for the end-user to contact. Usually, the main questions I get are on how to read a certain dashboard or how to navigate to a certain place. Overall, the simplicity of the software is what helps out with less need for support.
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Implementation Rating
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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I wasn't part of the implementation team
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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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When weighing the pros and cons of Tableau Online vs. SAP ERP, two key considerations emerged as clear winners. SAP ERP is a powerful data purification tool, but it doesn't measure up to the competition in terms of data presentation. When it came to data visualization and analytics, Tableau was our go-to tool. The price is the second consideration. Tableau, on the other hand, was the more cost-effective option for our requirements.
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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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  • No need to hire a team of developers to deliver our product, a huge cost savings for a start up company.
  • The ability to work off data extracts allows us to "set in and forget it" so to speak, which allows our customers to use the system during business hours with almost no cost in terms of database usage.
  • It has been a great internal tool for dashboarding company metrics and helping us track goals and implement solutions to meet those goals through efficient data analysis.
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.