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Board vs Looker Studio comparison

 

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

Board
Ranking in Reporting
18th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Business Performance Management (7th)
Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
12th
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 May 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.5%
Board1.7%
Other95.8%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2645016 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Software Delivery at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Offers flexibility in design and saves time in budgeting and forecasting processes
I find Board to be simple and easy to use. It offers significant flexibility in designing solutions. The system overall is very useful, with many capabilities that provide flexibility. Our budgeting and forecasting processes support around three hundred twenty users who would otherwise rely on Excel, making Board invaluable for saving time.
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

"We use it across our entire business; we use it for financial data, inventory data, sales data, and inventory transaction data, and it is performing very well."
"The dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view."
"I liked the way that I felt as a user and administrator of it. There were a lot of clicks, drops, drags, etc. versus writing code."
"Now, we have only one version of the truth."
"The ability to create a data model and have it in testing within a week is fantastic."
"Other than that, I can't think of another software solution that we've managed at the city that went as well as BOARD has."
"If you want to streamline your business and reduce hourly time using the creation of spreadsheets or other financial reports that they should go for BOARD because it drastically reduces time."
"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"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."
"This is a great tool if your organization leverages other sets of Google tools and needs some quick ideas that are a prettier and more interactive than Google Analytics."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"We previously used Microsoft Power BI, but Google is better."
"The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
 

Cons

"If we could upload other data, e.g., pivot tables which can be done in BOARD already, that we have pre-existing and have that data distribute to more complex spreadsheets​, I would like that going forward."
"​We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."
"My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem."
"More export to Excel functionality. Right now, we're having to build within the cloud-based platform, as well as build within the Excel add-in, because the export to Excel is somewhat ugly."
"The reason I would say an eight and not a 10 is because - I do have a little bit of coding background - while it's nice that it's a user-interface development, could we speed it up if we could use code to actually develop faster, for people who would like that option?"
"The product can be improved by making it possible to know where cubes are used."
"At first, the product was not very intuitive, but now if you get it, it is customizable."
"The initial setup was very complex for us."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."
"​In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
What needs improvement with Board?
Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance.
What is your primary use case for Board?
Our organization primarily uses Board ( /products/board-reviews ) for budgeting and forecasting.
What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
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, all...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Data Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB
Genesys, Shueisha
Find out what your peers are saying about Board vs. Looker Studio and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.