Looker Studio vs. Metabase

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker Studio
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
$9
per month per user per project
Metabase
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Metabase aims to bring data tools with the simplicity of consumer products to the crufty world of enterprise business intelligence. Their open source analytics and business intelligence applications connect to most commonly used databases to let anyone in a company ask questions, and create dashboards or nightly emails without knowing SQL. Metabase Enterprise enables the user to embed branded analytics into customer applications.
$85
per month
Pricing
Looker StudioMetabase
Editions & Modules
Looker Studio Pro
$9
per month per user per project
Looker Studio
No charge
Starter
$85
per month (includes 5 users, then $5 per user, per month)
Growth
$749
per month (includes 10 users, then $15 per user, per month)
Open Source
Free
Enterprise
starting at $15,000
per year
Enterprise
Starts at $15,000
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioMetabase
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Looker StudioMetabase
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.7
53 Ratings
8% below category average
Metabase
7.8
4 Ratings
4% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.337 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.952 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.151 Ratings6.94 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.1
52 Ratings
12% below category average
Metabase
7.4
4 Ratings
8% below category average
Drill-down analysis9.544 Ratings8.34 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.248 Ratings7.14 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages3.224 Ratings5.22 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.451 Ratings9.14 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.0
52 Ratings
5% below category average
Metabase
8.6
2 Ratings
4% above category average
Publish to Web8.146 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.645 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Report Versioning8.033 Ratings7.52 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling6.436 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.818 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.2
51 Ratings
12% below category average
Metabase
7.8
4 Ratings
2% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.651 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.248 Ratings10.02 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.026 Ratings6.72 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining5.02 Ratings5.72 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Metabase
9.6
4 Ratings
13% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.94 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.64 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.63 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Metabase
9.0
2 Ratings
13% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Metabase
8.7
3 Ratings
11% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.13 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Looker StudioMetabase
Small Businesses
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.3 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mathematica
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Sigma
Sigma
Score 9.2 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Looker StudioMetabase
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(54 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(5 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioMetabase
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Looker Studio is well-suited for those wanting to analyze web/site data and performance quickly. It is simple enough to learn/use for quick report-building or drilling into data. Looker Studio is easier to use/understand than the GA4 console and thus has a better UI/UX. It is an efficient tool for fast, simple data needs—especially for team members with limited analytical capabilities and knowledge.
Read full review
Metabase
Metabase is an easy tool to use if you are interested in collecting and aggregating data from multiple platforms. It is also easy to set up and start receiving the data results as a report. It is also easy to integrate with other tools that generate visual reports and take the necessary actions based on the data details.
Read full review
Pros
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
Metabase
  • We're currently using it to fetch reports for our products, such as daily sales, pipeline, visits, and attendance reports.
  • Data representation from database directly.
Read full review
Cons
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
Metabase
  • Report Types
  • Updates
  • Colour/Branding
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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
Read full review
Metabase
No answers on this topic
Usability
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
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Metabase
Its generally quite easy to use but some SQL is definitely important
Read full review
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
Metabase
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
The free version of Looker Studio is still better than the leading enterprise-embedded BI tools, despite its weaknesses. The leading embedded BI platforms have terrible visualizations that can be spotted a mile away. They are also primarily locked to a grid, making it very hard to fully customize. The price point is also a major deterrent, since users end up paying for lots of features they might never use. Looker Studio has weaknesses on the blending and modeling side, but we've been able to get by via connection to GBQ and transformation done in dbt.
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Metabase
It does not stack up against Metabase, they complete each other.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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.
Read full review
Metabase
  • It is serving us whatever we're looking for, and we've recommended many organizations to implement it if they want better data analytics as it provides better functionality than we will build.
  • As a negative it gets difficult to get control over data to be fetch initially.
Read full review
ScreenShots