No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (22nd), Business Performance Management (6th)
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 August 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.4%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.4%
Board1.8%
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

"The ROI is great."
"It allows people to quickly create dashboards with reports."
"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."
"The aesthetics of it are really nice. That is what attracted us to BOARD: the ease and functionality of it."
"Where it used to take me three days at the beginning of the year to create the new financial statement, now it is a matter of minutes because all the data is in the system."
"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."
"The benefits are getting the data in one spot, the ability to report dynamically, and version control."
"Primary valuable features are its flexibility and versatility and, obviously, functionality goes along with that. Plus, it does that at a small footprint in the file servers, and does it very efficiently."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"We previously used Microsoft Power BI, but Google is better."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
 

Cons

"We have had some challenges with newer version of the rollout in terms of stability."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"​We are looking for ways to distinguish zeros versus nulls in BOARD."
"The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance. The consolidated finance area also needs improvement."
"Sometimes, the data disappears from the product."
"The product can be improved by making it possible to know where cubes are used."
"Pricing and licensing are not standard, but it can be tailored according to company needs."
"In general, we would like to see better logging in the procedural world as we currently find it deficient in procedural areas."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."
"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."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​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."
"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 tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."
"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 tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software 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 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: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.