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Birst vs Looker Studio comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Birst
Ranking in Reporting
26th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (20th)
Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.5%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.5%
Birst1.1%
Other96.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Principal Engineering Manager I at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Offers dashboards and self-service reports. The report performance is very slow.
Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain Most of our customers are interested in dashboards and self-service reports. We are able to offer them these features with this solution. Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution The report…
Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The option to build and deploy analytical models quickly, within days rather than months."
"The impact of Birst has been felt company-wide."
"The fact that it is completely cloud based makes the maintenance easier since we don't have the onus of maintaining the server."
"Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"In general, Birst as a cloud VI solution is a user-friendly tool that looks really nice and engages users straight away."
"If you are looking for a cloud-based, lightweight data mart and reporting, this tool is good."
"Users can jump to the Birst dashboard from SFDC without a repeat login."
"Birst has made it easier for us to provide embedded data visualization tools to our customers."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"This solution is a powerful way to have several tools integrated at one location and convert data into beautiful reports that can be easily edited and viewed."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
 

Cons

"I would like to see better connection functionality. It is not very intuitive and the UI is kind of neglected."
"Visualization: This aspect of the product is not up to the same level as its competitors in the market."
"Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution."
"The ETL, querying, and user interface did not accommodate our performance requirements."
"For complex reports with heavy calculations, performance can be improved."
"The ability to filter out massive amounts of data and load it properly on screen needs to be improved."
"We are yet to realize the real return on the investment given the need to alter the underlying intention of the product’s use."
"The initial setup was extremely complex. The Birst consultants wasted a lot of time in configuring the system."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"The tool is free."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
What advice do you have for others considering Google Data Studio?
I confirm that we have a call regarding my experience with Zoho. Looker Studio is a good visualization tool, but I wouldn't say there's a specific feature that stands out in terms of tracking metri...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Genesys, Shueisha
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Looker Studio and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.