Looker Studio vs MicroStrategy comparison

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Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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

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Helped 881,707 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

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (12th)

MicroStrategy

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

162

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (11th), 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 2.7%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
MicroStrategy, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.3% mindshare, down 3.4% since last year.

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Looker Studio	2.7%
Microsoft Power BI	17.3%
Tableau Enterprise	15.6%
Other	64.4%

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
MicroStrategy	1.3%
Microsoft Power BI	8.9%
Tableau Enterprise	6.2%
Other	83.6%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel

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.

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AnkushSingh

Lead Software Engineer at Momentus

Provides strong data visualization and security while easing deployment across multiple sectors

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis in my experience are the security, the metadata management, and the administration, along with the options of different workarounds available to accommodate different types of requirements. MicroStrategy's data visualization capabilities are great, and I would rate them nine out of 10.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

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

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

"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."

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

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

More Looker Studio pros

"It's user-friendly, also the MTDI cube is a very good approach, as it helps you to use the pre-format instead of using the standard objects from the schema of MicroStrategy."

"We've made a few enhancements to our Enterprise Manager system to allow self-reporting to grow. We see that as a very useful system. It's been incredibly beneficial in diagnosing production performance issues, diagnosing what reports are running slowly, where the SQL could be optimized, opportunities or metrics where we see long-time running performance. Enterprise Manager has been absolutely vital in giving us some of the insights about our system."

"The most important feature is the way it handles ad hoc queries and provides formatted reports."

"It is one tool which you can find everything. "

"It definitely impacts people, who are excited to use it."

"The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good."

"The implementation was fairly straightforward."

"There's extensive logging capabilities, if something is wrong then we are able to find out why."

More MicroStrategy pros

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."

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

"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."

"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."

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

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."

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

More Looker Studio cons

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

"Native VI on mobile apps and better android support are lacking."

"I would like to see a feature where migrations are easier. When you migrate from certain environments, it could probably be a little cleaner. Sometimes it seems to be somewhat clunky when you migrate from one environment, say a development to a test or production environment."

"I did not see any additional value of providing one button for installation on the whole platform if it was going to be installed for different servers. You would have to make customization every time. There was no additional value in an installer."

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

"They should give proper industry-based tutorials so that one can learn it easily and implement it based on the requirements. They should give more MMP files so that we can import a whole project altogether and learn from that project."

"You can now do data blending at the document level and data blending allows you to show results from different data sets in one grid, so to speak. I want to be able to create a data set that can receive data from multiple cubes, have it in one data set, and then bring it to the document, because then I can reuse it for other documents. Now, I have to do it in a document and then it's less reusable, because if I want to share that functionality, I have to copy the document, strip a lot of things, and then work on that basic element that I've built in that document."

"The graphs available for the new dashboard of version 10 are weak."

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."

"We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly."

"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."

"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."

"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us."

"The price of MicroStrategy is reasonable."

"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."

"The price was good. We have had great support along the way."

"The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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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

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Marketing Services Firm

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	37
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	100

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...

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

My company has many licenses for MicroStrategy because we can build reports in this tool. I don't know what the cost is for these licenses.

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

I don't have any issues with MicroStrategy and would not suggest how it can be improved. I would not change anything because it's a great tool to build reports. I would appreciate improvements in M...

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Comparisons

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker Studio

Compared 8% of the time

RStudio Connect vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Sisense vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs MicroStrategy

Compared 12% of the time

QlikView vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

Mode Enterprise vs MicroStrategy

Compared 2% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

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Looker Studio

January 2026

Download MicroStrategy product report

January 2026

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.