Looker Studio vs MicroStrategy comparison

Read 161 MicroStrategy reviews

3,718 Views
2,359 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio and MicroStrategy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: February 2023).

Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy

February 2023

Download the complete report

Helped 858,469 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

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (9th)

MicroStrategy

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th), Embedded BI (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 2.7% compared to last year.
MicroStrategy, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.9% mindshare, down 3.8% since last year.

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

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

AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

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

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

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

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."

"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."

"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."

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

More Looker Studio pros

"Having the intelligence server sit in the middle is huge for us. It is going to save us a lot of time, make our work a lot simpler, make it easier for deployment, and getting the reports in the hands of our users sooner."

"Scalability is the best thing. You can really scale."

"It has landing pages, and that makes life easy for exhibiting things."

"Project Schema/metadata- Very flexible, connects to a variety of different data sources and is very flexible for many specific tasks. Attributes/metrics/filters created once used by everyone."

"The drill-down functionality is also very good."

"Mobile brings reports/dashboards closer to the business user."

"It's an open platform. That's also important. You can create your own data connectors. There's everything you can do with APIs. It's not closed like, perhaps, an SAP system might be."

"Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

"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."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"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 tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."

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

More Looker Studio cons

"I would try to make it a little more basic, user-friendly. In terms of the UX, it's a bit sluggish there."

"The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side, to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store."

"Its price should be lower. In terms of features, what we have is quite encompassing right now."

"From a stability standpoint, from MicroStrategy, I would say it's fairly consistent. I would give it a "B" because there are times where we have issues that are just inexplicable. They go away and then we have no resolution. To me, that's not acceptable. There are just times where our users can't access things and we're not sure why, and that's a problem to me."

"Currently, the client view looks completely different depending on what you are building."

"Preparation, data loading and data management application is challenging with MicroStrategy. It lacks cube-based analytics as it is outdated, meaning there is no memory or fast processing analytics or MMA deployment."

"MicroStrategy is not cloud native today and some of their APIs are a little limiting."

"There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The product is available for free."

"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."

"Now, the price is high."

"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."

"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."

"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."

"While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."

"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."

"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

858,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Insurance Company

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...

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. ...

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Comparisons

Compared 44% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 18% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

Download Looker Studio product report

Looker Studio

June 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

June 2025

Also Known As

Data Studio

No data available

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

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.