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Databricks vs Looker Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (8th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 9.0%, up 4.6% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 2.9% mindshare, up 2.6% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of use and its accessibility are valuable."
"Databricks has a scalable Spark cluster creation process. The creators of Databricks are also the creators of Spark, and they are the industry leaders in terms of performance."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"Databricks' most valuable feature is the data transformation through PySpark."
"The most valuable feature is the Spark cluster which is very fast for heavy loads, big data processing and Pi Spark."
"Imageflow is a visual tool that helps make it easier for business people to understand complex workflows."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"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 solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
 

Cons

"As a data engineer, I see cluster failure in our Databricks user databases as a major issue."
"Can be improved by including drag-and-drop features."
"There has been a significant evolution in databases. One area of improvement is the Databricks File System (DBFS), where command-line challenges arise when accessing files."
"My experience with the pricing and licensing model is that it remains relatively expensive. Though it's less expensive than AWS, we still need a more cost-effective solution."
"Databricks would benefit from enhanced metrics and tighter integration with Azure's diagnostics."
"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."
"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."
"The API deployment and model deployment are not easy on the Databricks side."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"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."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are different versions."
"The product pricing is moderate."
"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."
"The solution is affordable."
"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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?
From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Data Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Genesys, Shueisha
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861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.