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Looker Studio vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 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
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
307
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 20.7%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
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 ability to design complex data models and equations."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"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."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"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 product has the best features for analytical views and filters."
"The solution provides the leverage of having custom visualization and the capability of self-service."
"When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"I like Tableau's heat maps and the storyboard. You can create data stories and tons of visuals with it, and it goes together really well. Tableau lets you manipulate the data in various ways."
"Tableau's initial setup was straightforward."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"I believe one of the most valuable features of the solution is trend analysis."
 

Cons

"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."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"I think Tableau could be improved with cheaper or more flexible licensing, though this is a generic improvement and applies for any product. It would be better if they had more flexible payment and licensing plans so that they could suit small- and mid-sized organizations."
"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner."
"The integration with other program languages, like Python, needs to be better."
"If you mainly need a tool for BI reporting, it's not the best option. Tableau needs better abilities to generate simple reports, integrate, create databases, and work with data lakes."
"The forecasting feature in Tableau in my view is too limited because it must have dates but I should be able to predict the outcome of an event without having a date as part of the input."
"Tableau support could be improved."
"The customization requires a lot of effort and should be simplified. The performance could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"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."
"Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
"It's an annual fee with everything included but it's quite expensive."
"Pricing could be better. I believe they should offer better pricing for deployment in small to mid-sized companies."
"The value for money is definitely there."
"I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

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. ...
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: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.