Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 10.0%, up 7.2% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 2.7% mindshare, up 2.5% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks10.0%
Snowflake15.9%
Teradata8.4%
Other65.7%
Cloud Data Warehouse
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio2.7%
Microsoft Power BI17.3%
Tableau Enterprise15.6%
Other64.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Satyam Wagh - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at Nice Software Solutions
Unified data workflows have cut ticket processing times and are driving faster business insights
Databricks already provides monthly updates and continuously works on delivering new features while enhancing existing ones. However, the platform could become easier to use. While instruction-led workshops are available, offering more free instructional workshops would allow a wider audience to access and learn about Databricks. Additionally, providing use cases would help beginners gain more knowledge and hands-on experience. Regarding my experience, I was initially unfamiliar with the platform and had to conduct research and learn through various videos. I did find some instruction-led classes, but several of those required payment. The platform should provide more free resources to enable a broader audience to access and learn about Databricks. The platform itself is user-friendly and easy to use without complex issues, so I believe it does not need improvement in its core functionality. Rather, supporting aspects can be enhanced.
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

"Databricks covers end-to-end data analytics workflow in one platform, this is the best feature of the solution."
"The Delta Lake data type has been the most useful part of this solution. Delta Lake is an opensource data type and it was implemented and invented by Databricks."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
"Databricks serves as a single platform that can handle numerous end-to-end machine learning tasks."
"Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable."
"Databricks serves as a single platform for conducting the entire end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning models or AI ops."
"It's easy to increase performance as required."
"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"Databricks' technical support takes a while to respond and could be improved."
"Databricks' performance when serving the data to an analytics tool isn't as good as Snowflake's."
"It's not easy to use, and they need a better UI."
"However, the platform could become easier to use."
"Implementation of Databricks is still very code heavy."
"The connectivity with various BI tools could be improved, specifically the performance and real time integration."
"Databricks is an analytics platform. It should offer more data science. It should have more features for data scientists to work with."
"The product needs samples and templates to help invite users to see results and understand what the product can do."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"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 performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."
"The solution is affordable."
"The price of Databricks is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"There are different versions."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product is available for free."
"The tool is 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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

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?
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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Genesys, Shueisha
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Teradata and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: January 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.