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Looker pros and cons

Vendor: Google

4.0 out of 5

19 reviews
80% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Looker offers robust stability with a perfect rating, benefiting from cloud-based functionalities for seamless data model centralization and optimal SQL query generation. Designed with microservices architecture, Looker excels in usability and shareability. Despite its strengths, Looker faces limitations, lacking direct Excel connectivity and REST API data consumption. Integrations and visualization need improvement, and challenges persist in data blending. Additionally, documentation is limited, impacting some users.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Looker ensures optimal SQL query generation with UI actions.

Looker is highly stable and effectively integrates with BigQuery.

Looker centralizes data models efficiently.

Looker is a cloud-based platform offering real-time data updates.

Looker enhances usability and shareability.

CONS

Looker does not connect to Excel, which limits data presentation options.

It cannot directly consume data from REST APIs, which is necessary for diverse data sources.

Integrations with other BI tools and databases are lacking.

Blending data from different sources, including cloud and internal data, needs improvement.

Visualization capabilities are limited.

Looker Pros review quotes

Head Of Data Warehouse at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 8, 2016

Technical support is the best ever.

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Data Analyst (Data Engineering) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 18, 2016

The most valuable features are the ability to create visualizations for non-technical employees, as well as the ability to provide ways to dynamically slice the data.

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Digital Product Manager at a retailer with 51-200 employees

Sep 20, 2016

It is easier and quicker to find things in the database.

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Data Solutions Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 5, 2016

We LOVE Looker here at Snagajob.

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Business Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Looker offers incredible business visualization and analytical tools: graphs, charts, tables, and single numbers.

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Head of Data & Analytics at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Empowering every employee to make smarter decisions in less time easily pushes us into the black on ROI.

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Business Operations Associate at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 29, 2016

Looker is an extremely valuable product that can really transform your company's ability to use data to answer challenging questions.

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reviewer1856880

Vice President Engineering at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 12, 2022

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

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Software Data Engineer at PayPal

Oct 5, 2022

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.

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Dmitri Solodovnik

Business Intelligence Team Lead at Oxagile

Oct 18, 2023

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

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Looker Cons review quotes

Head Of Data Warehouse at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 8, 2016

There have a been a few minor bugs, including a security bug that did not affect us.

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Data Analyst (Data Engineering) at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 18, 2016

This product is useful for non-technical users, who are able to use the interface to easily slice data. But for the admin users who are responsible for maintaining the schemas and files behind the scenes, it can easily become a chore, as there is a lot of manual work involved in defining the schemas of the connected database(s), as well as any refactored tables; the restrictive syntax also makes maintenance difficult.

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Digital Product Manager at a retailer with 51-200 employees

Sep 20, 2016

There is a lot of customization that we needed/need to build ourselves. Other BI tools have more out of the box.

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Free Report: Looker Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Looker. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2026.

884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Data Solutions Manager at a recruiting/HR firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 5, 2016

Some of the visualizations are a bit limited on how much you can customize them.

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Business Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Features related to visualization should continue to be improved.

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Head of Data & Analytics at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 16, 2016

Their needs to be much more control of visualizations to become more on par with Tableau.

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Business Operations Associate at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Oct 29, 2016

The pricing model makes sense, but can be very expensive, potentially prohibitively so for smaller companies.

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reviewer1856880

Vice President Engineering at a pharma/biotech company with 5,001-10,000 employees

May 12, 2022

It needs to be more user-friendly.

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Software Data Engineer at PayPal

Oct 5, 2022

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.

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Dmitri Solodovnik

Business Intelligence Team Lead at Oxagile

Oct 18, 2023

Integrations with other BI tools could be better.

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Show 5 more reviews (out of 15)

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