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Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI 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

Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 18.8%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI18.8%
Looker Studio2.7%
Other78.5%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

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.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"The product is scalable."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The stability is good."
"Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool with many capabilities, but my favorite feature is its data modeling, which links tables together and allows teams to gain insights for KPIs by modeling data differently to meet various requirements."
"It seems stable. I haven't heard of any difficulties from my clients that utilize Power BI."
"The solution integrates with other Microsoft solutions very well."
"The advantages of Microsoft Power BI stem from the fact that it is really easy to use. The drag and drop facilities provided by the product are good."
 

Cons

"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."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"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."
"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."
"I believe Power BI could improve by making data tables and databases easier to handle, especially for non-programmers who may not be familiar with languages like Python. Simplifying these aspects would enhance the usability and accessibility of Power BI for a broader range of users."
"I am a SAP user and I would like this tool to have more connectors - and to more easily connect to - the ERP or SAP environment."
"This solution needs integration with SAS and more deep analysis functionality."
"The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating."
"The Power Query feature needs to be improved to handle large amounts of data. This feature is also slow for large data transfers making it better to use some kind of script."
"I feel the modeling page should be simplified."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 pricing is good. It's pretty competitive because I have worked on a few other tools as well, and Power BI is on the cheaper side."
"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."
"I used a two months free trial to see if it had what I needed."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."
"Their price is good."
"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."
"It would be better if the price was cheaper."
"Its pricing is great."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
 

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...
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...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.