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Looker vs MicroStrategy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Ranking in Embedded BI
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MicroStrategy
Ranking in Embedded BI
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 9.4%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 11.6%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Adedayo Iyanda - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to secure our operational environment and streamline account management
Our data usage is in Google, using SQL. However, the dataset size varies significantly. While some sets are not extensive, others fall into the category of large enterprise-level data, impacting costs. It's not a singular size; it varies. We're considering transitioning to Looker due to performance issues, specifically in this context. I would rate the solution an eight. We have various pros and cons to consider. Right now, the key advantage is the easy access and availability. Sharing information is seamless, and it facilitates quick comparisons with near-immediate updates—it's almost live. We don't need instances for file logs; reports are accessible right there. Visualizing data is also straightforward. In terms of drawbacks, the experience is similar to Looker, functioning as an IPaaS.
Ariel Lindenfeld - PeerSpot reviewer
Gartner says MicroStrategy can be costly. What do you think?
In its BI Magic Quadrant report, Gartner says that although MicroStrategy administration costs per user are average, customers report above average costs for licensing and implementation. Additionally, customers say that the main limitation to widespread deployment is the cost of MicroStrategy…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The product is easy to use."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"The single stack solution will always be more profitable, scalable, and elastic for organizational needs."
"The most valuable features are the Visual Insights and the visualizations."
"There's extensive logging capabilities, if something is wrong then we are able to find out why."
"It is very stable."
"The product is very mature. It's quite robust and an excellent enterprise-level solution."
"With the new version that's coming out, I think they have simplified a lot of things. Also, when it comes to the administration part, and sharing, and the collaboration features, they are really great. You can send out comments with a filter to someone in your organization, and if the person clicks on it, he actually ​sees what you are seeing. So that's really great."
"The architecture is very solid."
"The most valuable features are drill down, dashboards, documents, bringing everything under one roof, and visualizations."
 

Cons

"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Stability needs improvement."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"I don't think that they will, but I'd like to see parallel processing, scalable parallel processing."
"The areas that have room for improvement in MicroStrategy are mainly related to building additional tools. Specifically, the embedding process has been a bit of a struggle."
"Our data warehouse is sort of static; negative load and that is it. It is not as real-time as we would like. We are working on building that out first to create more real-time, at which point we will work on some potential integrations with other applications, but I don't think we are there yet."
"Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem.​"
"Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that."
"When we come to them with a problem, they might know more of a generalized solution, but not one targeted to our industry."
"MicroStrategy should improve migration automation. Additionally, I would like there to be better partnership support."
"With Cube partition (v10.1 and above) scalability has not been an issue, but the Cube publish time, and temporary space consumption while the Cube is being published, has almost doubled during implementation of Cube partition."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"It is cheap."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."
"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."
"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."
"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."
"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."
"The price was good. We have had great support along the way."
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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
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...
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?
MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface. I find the user interface lacking when compared to Power BI. Additionally, their hyperintelligence could be improved in certain as...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.