Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.6, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Google holds a 2.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 27.2% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Looker Studio

Read 12 Looker Studio reviews

1,051 Views
1,158 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

14,384 Views
11,351 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Looker Studio compete in the data analytics category. Power BI might have an edge due to its deep integration within the Microsoft ecosystem and comprehensive functionality, while Looker Studio's free access and integration capabilities make it appealing for budget-conscious users.

Features: Power BI seamlessly integrates with Microsoft's services like Excel and Azure, offers powerful data modeling, and features advanced visualization options and a robust library of custom visuals. Looker Studio integrates smoothly with Google products and external APIs, making it efficient for Google ecosystem users, and supports real-time collaboration.

Room for Improvement: Power BI users face issues with handling large data sets and the constraints of DirectQuery connectivity. Some also find the premium pricing tiers steep. Looker Studio shows room for growth in real-time data integration and performance as users report lagging report loading times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI offers flexible deployment options including public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, and on-premises, catering to varied enterprise needs. Its customer support is comprehensive, supported by a large community, though consistency can vary. Looker Studio’s cloud-based deployment suits cloud-native applications best, and its user-friendly Google support system offers robust assistance and self-service options.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI starts with a free version, scaling up to more expensive premium tiers, which can affect costs during large deployments. It promises quick ROI due to its comprehensive functionality. Looker Studio is free, which appeals to those seeking basic BI tools without financial burden, making its ROI attractive, particularly for users already leveraging Google’s ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

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Helped 845,040 peers since 2012

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

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 27.2%, up from 25.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."

"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 ability to design complex data models and equations."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."

More Looker Studio pros

"The most valuable features are the easy creation of reports, dashboards, and the ability to perform analysis. It is important for us to create reports because we have some operations during certain hours and we can use this tool to track the information."

"The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members."

"The main feature I find valuable is the possibility to work with an extensive amount of data."

"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."

"We find the solution offers good stability."

"Provides data feeds for enterprise KPI reporting."

"Ability to extract data from a variety of sources and systems."

"The drill-down capabilities and automatic charts are the best ones. The visualization is also very good. In terms of visualization, no competing product, such as IBM Cognos or any other product, has the same capabilities."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"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."

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

"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."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

More Looker Studio cons

"The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects."

"They can improve the user interface a little bit to make it more user-friendly. When creating a dashboard, it is not very user-friendly. You have to click on a certain style and use your keyboard keys to move it. You cannot drag and drop it."

"There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution."

"Right now, their premium pricing is keeping us out of the premium market. The premium price per user just doesn't make sense for us, but we haven't reached the limit of 500 users to justify the premium."

"I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data."

"I believe the price should be degressive, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."

"BI is scalable, but there are some problems with limited online storage."

"The accounting data needs improvement."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The product is available for free."

"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."

"I'm not very familiar with the licensing aspect, as it operates in the cloud as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Essentially, you pay based on cloud cost models, which might include hourly rates or similar billing structures introduced by Microsoft. Many organizations utilize it and pay for its services, somewhat like Office 365. It's a cloud-based platform that provides the necessary services, including support, for development, and you pay accordingly for the usage."

"We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."

"The solution is priced well for what they offer. However, the premium version is very expensive."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately."

"The cost of the solution is more flexible for us because the desktop is free and we pay as we use it in the cloud."

"The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

43%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets take about three to five minutes to reflect in Looker Studio. Overall, the interfac...

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What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and I use it for project plan maintenance and data tracking.

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 46% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

March 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Google

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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