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Board vs Looker Studio comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Business Performance Management (7th)
Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
9th
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 November 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 1.8%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.5%
Board1.8%
Other95.7%
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

"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 aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it."
"Depending on your data, and what kind of business you are doing, I think investing in BOARD is a good, viable solution, because it's very user-friendly, and once you get the hang of it you can do wonders."
"We are currently implementing Board Financial Consolidation package with Board consultants with optimum results in terms of time and comprehension of the product."
"The drill down is good for people who have that high level view, because they can do some analysis based on it."
"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."
"All the reports are prepared automatically."
"I find Board to be simple and easy to use."
"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 product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"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."
"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 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."
 

Cons

"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. ​"
"The setup was a bit complex."
"It would be huge in the future if BOARD offered a lot more graphs and presentations, and it was a lot easier to use."
"It needs 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."
"Initially we did have issues with the BOARD crashing, but at that time I was fairly new."
"Initial setup was complex because my company has its own fiscal calendar that was difficult to set up."
"​We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."
"At first, the product was not very intuitive, but now if you get it, it is customizable."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a template or create a template, which can take significant time, it's not the most user-friendly from an interface perspective."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"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. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"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 tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"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 cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
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 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

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: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.