Google Charts vs. Looker Studio

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Charts
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Charts provides a way to visualize data on your website - for free. From simple line charts to complex hierarchical tree maps, the chart gallery provides a large number of ready-to-use chart types. The most common way to use Google Charts is with simple JavaScript that you embed in your web page.N/A
Looker Studio
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.N/A
Pricing
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Considered Both Products
Google Charts
Chose Google Charts
In comparison to Microsoft Power BI, Google Charts has more ease of use for businesses who simply need a way to visually display their data from their reports. Although Power BI may be more robust in more complicated data compilation, Google Charts can still be able to do some …
Chose Google Charts
We selected Google Charts because it is a free tool and is a part of the GSuite.
Looker Studio
Chose Looker Studio
Obviously, Google Data Studio is an improvement over Google Charts, which I believe powers the chart modules used in Data Studio. I think of Data Studio as a convenient way to combine multiple Google Charts in one, easy-to-read report.

In many ways it is similar to SmartDraw's …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google ChartsLooker Studio
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.7
50 Ratings
6% above category average
Looker Studio
7.5
51 Ratings
11% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.145 Ratings8.335 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.448 Ratings9.250 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.744 Ratings5.149 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.2
51 Ratings
13% above category average
Looker Studio
6.3
50 Ratings
24% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.645 Ratings7.442 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.451 Ratings8.346 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.437 Ratings3.023 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.546 Ratings6.550 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
51 Ratings
7% above category average
Looker Studio
7.5
50 Ratings
11% below category average
Publish to Web9.549 Ratings9.244 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.546 Ratings7.043 Ratings
Report Versioning8.643 Ratings8.131 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.637 Ratings4.734 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.730 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
50 Ratings
9% above category average
Looker Studio
8.9
49 Ratings
8% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.949 Ratings9.349 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.847 Ratings9.446 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.739 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
45 Ratings
2% above category average
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)8.844 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.739 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.841 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.831 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
48 Ratings
12% above category average
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access9.546 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application9.529 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.744 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
40 Ratings
10% above category average
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
REST API8.932 Ratings00 Ratings
Javascript API8.839 Ratings00 Ratings
iFrames8.826 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API8.926 Ratings00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.828 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.728 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Mathematica
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(61 ratings)
8.8
(51 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(8 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(33 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(33 ratings)
6.7
(10 ratings)
Online Training
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google ChartsLooker Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
We can easily recommend Google Charts to any company that needs a way to visually represent their data. Another great thing about Google Charts is that it is free to use and does not require any membership fees. Although it requires a skilled used to be able to use the charts, the results are great and can be beneficial to any company who is looking to make better decisions.
Read full review
Google
Does great at open canvas editing and letting you fully customize without the need for a grid. It is democratizing self-service no-code analytics. You do not need to be a data or analytics engineer to get started, and you can go very far based on how intuitive and straightforward the UI is. Some of the biggest challenges with Looker Studio relate to user management/security, embedding options, and issue support. For a long time, every user needed to have a Gmail to invite them to view a dashboard via login, not sure if that has been improved yet. You can let any user view without logging in, but that is not always recommended due to security reasons. In terms of embedding, you can only iframe dashboards. More sophisticated BI tools let you embed elements via API or Javascript. Iframing dashboards also make drill downs and dashboard to dashboard navigation tricky/near impossible. There is also no ability to contact Google for support when bugs or outages happen. They point everyone to the Data Studio community. There is some ability to get in contact with Google if you have an enterprise-level contract with Google Cloud, but the path for support is very ad hoc and not always fruitful.
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Pros
Google
  • they're free with Google suite and they have backing in terms of powerful Google apps which can be plugged in to perform multiple actions like using Google sheets to import raw data into Google Charts
  • they're the most simple app to use when it comes to creating charts and visual dashboards
  • ease of customization
  • ease of using custom APIs from developers side to help make any types of charts and dashboards you want
Read full review
Google
  • Self-service
  • Easy to use, point and click
  • Little to no training required
  • Easy to share internally and externally
  • Rich visualizations
  • Canned reports
  • Easy to copy/paste/dupe existing reports
  • Ability to join data sets
  • Easy integration with various data sources
  • Flexible data integrations, including lowest common denominator (CSV, XLS, G-Sheets)
  • Wide range of APIs
  • Secure / authentication via Google SSO
  • Easy to share / re-assign ownership of reports and data sources
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • I would like a couple more introductory videos or a live chat option for when you run into an issue. I think this is a Google-wide problem, not only linked to Google Charts.
  • I have run into some issues with the Dynamic Data but also admittedly could potentially dive in deeper and investigate.
  • It would be great if Google Charts made it possible to integrate Google Chat into the platform.
Read full review
Google
  • Few functionalities are very exclusive only for data studio.
  • It's time taking to load data and at the same time only single Data source can be connected.
  • When editing the reports you have to switch between Edit and View mode to see how does the change looks like.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Google
Google Charts is a good product. It's widely supported with deep documentation and a large community. But for me, it wasn't customizable enough. When we started with simple charts, it was great, but as we got deeper and more complex, our needs outgrew the library. If I was going forward, I would choose a more barebones library with more freedom and extensibility.
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Google
It is the simplest and least expensive way for us to automate our reporting at this time. I like the ability to customize literally everything about each report, and the ability to send out reports automatically in emails. The only issue we have been having recently is a technical glitch in the automatic email report. Sadly, there is almost no support for this tool from Google, but is also free, so that is important to take into consideration
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Usability
Google
Google Charts is about as easy to use as the rest of their applications. The UI is very well thought out, allowing you to add what you need, and customize it to your exact liking. The default theme is actually really nice, which helps as most of the time, customizing is not needed.
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Google
Google Data Studio has a clean interface that follows a lot of UX best practices. It is fairly easy to pick up the first time you use it, and there is a lot of documentation on line to help troubleshoot, if needed
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
Google charts is always available and provides fast output.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Performance
Google
Connectivity is occasionally very slow.
Read full review
Google
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Google
As a free tool with massively powerful, infinitely customisable charts that can be dynamically updated - Google Charts is my favourite data visualisation tool. However, my hatred of JavaScript does jade my view on it. This is the price of the tool though, and I'm glad it's available for me.
Read full review
Google
I give it a lower support rating because it seems like our Dev team hasn't gotten the support they need to set up our database to connect. Seems like we hit a roadblock and the project got put on pause for dev. That sucks for me because it is harder to get the dev team to focus on it if they don't get the help they need to set it up.
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Online Training
Google
The online training was solely done through self training on google's guide to charts.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Google
Easy to implement
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
Google Charts stacks up better since it is free and does not have the constant pressure for cost overruns, add-ons, annual maintenance and implementation services. The speed of using Google Charts is quick, saving users potentially weeks in getting up and going. For the readers of websites with limited resources, the application shows up nicely is look and feel with charts. Great way of showing data visually.
Read full review
Google
Google Data Studio provides a great feature set considering its price point, especially when compared to commercial options from Microsoft and Tableau. While it may not be as versatile when it comes to working with and developing complex datasets, there is enough charm in its simple, easy-to-use UI to allow not-so-complex analytics to be conducted without having to hire a data analyst.
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Scalability
Google
Google Charts is essential for quick, easy, reporting. There are opportunities for advanced features.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Google
  • teams were easily able to create charts and find out progress on our learning courses and thus take actionable insights to their managers, professors
  • students could also know their progress on various courses from one single view, same for instructors in terms of imparting education
  • sales team could learn which kind of courses sold more to focus more on those areas
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Google
  • Free, so the only investment is time
  • Because it doesn't have native support of non-Google sources, it can cost more money than Tableau
  • The time spent formatting the templates or building connectors can have a negative impact on ROI
  • As a agency, charging for the reporting service is profitable after the first month or two after building the dashboard.
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ScreenShots