Looker Studio vs. Metabase

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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.
$9
per month per user per project
Metabase
Score 8.3 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)
Starter
$85
per month up to 5 users
Pro
$500
per month up to 10 users
Growth
$749
per month (includes 10 users, then $15 per user, per month)
Enterprise
15,000
per year
Open Source
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioMetabase
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Looker StudioMetabase
Features
Looker StudioMetabase
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.2
62 Ratings
11% below category average
Metabase
7.5
4 Ratings
9% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.743 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.561 Ratings8.14 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.359 Ratings6.54 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.7
61 Ratings
1% below category average
Metabase
8.2
4 Ratings
2% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.251 Ratings8.54 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.257 Ratings7.44 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages6.929 Ratings7.62 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.759 Ratings9.54 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.2
60 Ratings
0% above category average
Metabase
8.7
2 Ratings
6% above category average
Publish to Web8.353 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.853 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Report Versioning8.139 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling7.942 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers7.624 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
6.6
60 Ratings
16% below category average
Metabase
8.7
4 Ratings
8% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.460 Ratings8.54 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.857 Ratings10.02 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.230 Ratings8.62 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.06 Ratings7.62 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
Metabase
9.5
4 Ratings
11% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.54 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.53 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
14% 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
8.8
3 Ratings
13% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.93 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 9.8 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.8 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 7.2 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Looker StudioMetabase
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(56 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(7 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioMetabase
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Visualizing cross-channel campaign performance can blend data from a few different sources to compare performance metrics like spend, clicks, and conversions side-by-side in a single view, which helps in quick budget reallocation decisions. When dealing with massive volumes of data (millions of rows) or highly complex queries, Looker Studio dashboards can become slow, laggy, or even crash. Performance issues are a frequent complaint when working with large datasets, making it unsuitable for enterprise-level companies
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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.
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Pros
Google
  • Breath of data - the number of ways to interrogate the data is endless, and the options to view metrics alongside each other make for comprehensive datasets.
  • Data visualisation and customisation - the options for presenting data and separating out across pages allow for clean visuals and segmented information.
  • Easy shareability/usability - a quick and simple tool to introduce colleagues to, and easy to grant access for them to be able to view the data, without having to understand the setup itself.
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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
  • It needs better handling of complex logic. We often need workarounds to perform complex custom calculations, and it can be really unpleasant at times.
  • Felt it got slow with a larger data set, and in one minor report, we had to set up time filters so that calculations during spikes could be traced more quickly.
  • Compare to competition they need to improve with notification things.
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Metabase
  • Report Types
  • Updates
  • Colour/Branding
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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
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Metabase
No answers on this topic
Usability
Google
Looker Studio is easy to use, and it offers a sufficient variety of predefined visualizations to choose from. It's easy for us, and anyone can set up basic reporting without extensive data visualization skills. The interface layout is easy to understand, and it doesn't take long to get used to.
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Metabase
Its generally quite easy to use but some SQL is definitely important
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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.
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Metabase
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
Looker Studio is far easier to implement, stand up, and learn. The interface is simpler and user-friendly for various levels of data visualization/analysis knowledge and experience. The biggest benefit of Looker Studio, however, is its ease of connection to GA data and speed. Furthermore, since it is an online program/tool, it requires less CPU/battery/storage on the user's device.
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Metabase
It does not stack up against Metabase, they complete each other.
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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.
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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.
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ScreenShots