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Looker Studio vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 9, 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
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.7%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 15.6%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise15.6%
Looker Studio2.7%
Other81.7%
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.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Analytics at Mjunction Services
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"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 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."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team."
"Easy for beginners to use"
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"Its dashboarding is the most valuable. It is easy to create visualizations and dashboards and import Excel sheets and ESP files in Tableau as compared to other tools."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"The solution offers very good reporting."
"I consider Tableau to be the best analytical tool available. It's really handy to use and can be used by non-technical people."
"You are able to see and follow trends."
 

Cons

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"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."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"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."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."
"The charts in Tableau are quite limited."
"The look and feel of the tool itself, including the dashboard features and data visualization, could be improved. The graphs in Tableau also have room for improvement."
"There should be more widgets that would help less trained individuals create charts with less difficulty."
"An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability."
"The charting is overly complex in comparison with Power BI's"
"There's no mature ETL tool in Tableau, which is quite a negative for them."
"The interface needs improvement as sometimes it is locked, and it takes some time for the visualization and dashboards to load."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"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 product is available for free."
"If they want to be competitive in the market, the price must be improved."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. My guess would be that it is $1000 or less per year. We might go for Power BI in the future because of its umbrella with Microsoft licensing. It is much cheaper for us to use Power BI, and some folks will go in that direction because they don't want to pay the higher license."
"Pricing could be better. I believe they should offer better pricing for deployment in small to mid-sized companies."
"Tableau is a little cheaper as compared to Power BI and other technologies that we have used in the past. However, if the business users in our organization want to make presentations, Tableau has been asking us to purchase a Tableau Creator license, and $35 per month is expensive for business users. Power BI is giving a free desktop version for business users to connect to any data source and build their own dashboards. That's why we have proposed to use Power BI for most of the business users in our organization."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"The cost is high."
"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."
"Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
 

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 Business117
Midsize Enterprise67
Large Enterprise184
 

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
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Tableau Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.