Looker vs MicroStrategy comparison

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Looker

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

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

To learn more, read our detailed Looker vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: January 2025).

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Looker vs. MicroStrategy

January 2025

Helped 845,406 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

Ranking in Embedded BI

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

MicroStrategy

Ranking in Embedded BI

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 9.3%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 12.4%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Embedded BI

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala

Sr Analytics Consultant at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive

Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

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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.

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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

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

"The product is easy to use."

"We can centralize all our data models."

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

"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."

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."

More Looker 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."

"Tech support has been great, very responsive. We usually hear back within a day. We usually email them and that works out perfect. The right person always gets back to us."

"It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps."

"Reports are very easy to create. It takes a very short amount of time to build a report, which is very useful."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to actually embed actions, comments, being able to leverage Transaction Services to embed the tool into a business process."

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

"We are using mobile analytics, and it is amazing."

"The solution has excellent features available on mobile."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"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."

"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."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"Stability needs improvement."

"It needs better visualizations."

"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's mobile dashboard is still not a RESTful design."

"They need to improve the web."

"Lacks a thriving community"

"They need to supply the support system that's just not there right now. They don't have Enterprise Manager classes. You need in-depth classes to understand what those metrics are doing, to understand the table associations from one to the other. You can't just go and pick it up and understand that DT_DAY connects to all of these tables, without going into Architect, looking at the source tables. I, as a analyst, a slightly technical user, I don't have the expertise to do that. Business users definitely don't have the expertise to do that."

"The UI seems klutzy with its manual entry."

"I don't think that they will, but I'd like to see parallel processing, scalable parallel processing."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 do not have to make any payments to use the solution."

"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."

"It is cheap."

"The solution’s licensing cost is expensive."

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

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

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

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

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

"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."

"They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses."

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

Educational Organization

33%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

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 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...

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Microsoft Power BI vs Looker

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Looker

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs MicroStrategy

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Looker product report

Looker

March 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

March 2025

Overview

Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time.

With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations.

The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

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

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.