Looker Studio vs. Tableau Public

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker Studio
Score 8.3 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
Tableau Public
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Public is a free edition of the Desktop product. With this edition, data can only be published to the Tableau public website and does not allow work to be saved or exported locally.
$0
per month
Pricing
Looker StudioTableau Public
Editions & Modules
Looker Studio Pro
$9
per month per user per project
Looker Studio
No charge
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioTableau Public
Free Trial
NoNo
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 StudioTableau Public
Considered Both Products
Looker Studio
Chose Looker Studio
Google Data Studio is free, easily integrates with the Google Marketing Platform, and is simple to use. It's a better choice for most basic marketing reporting. Tableau is better for more BI and exploratory data analysis.
Tableau Public
Chose Tableau Public
Tableau Public is most similar to Google Data Studio in terms of being freely available for public use. However, its capabilities and sophisticated visualizations are far and beyond anything offered by Data Studio: Tableau is ideal for creating professional caliber workbooks …
Features
Looker StudioTableau Public
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
Tableau Public
9.8
12 Ratings
19% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.743 Ratings9.710 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.561 Ratings10.012 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.359 Ratings9.712 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
Tableau Public
9.7
12 Ratings
22% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.351 Ratings9.812 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.257 Ratings9.712 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages6.829 Ratings9.59 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.759 Ratings9.811 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
Tableau Public
9.5
11 Ratings
15% above category average
Publish to Web8.353 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.853 Ratings10.09 Ratings
Report Versioning8.139 Ratings9.89 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling7.942 Ratings9.69 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers7.724 Ratings8.17 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
Tableau Public
9.8
11 Ratings
23% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.460 Ratings9.811 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.857 Ratings9.811 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.230 Ratings9.79 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.06 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Looker StudioTableau Public
Small Businesses
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.8 out of 10
Supermetrics
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Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.8 out of 10
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 7.2 out of 10
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Score 7.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Looker StudioTableau Public
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(56 ratings)
8.5
(14 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(7 ratings)
10.0
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
9.6
(6 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioTableau Public
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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Tableau
Tableau public is the best platform to build dashboards for your personal profile and share with recruiters. It's always good to keep ourselves updated on the latest features, create sample dashboards and save them to a personal profile. Tableau public is free and doesn't need any subscription. anyone can create an account and start building reports.
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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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Tableau
  • Data visualization: lots of different options, including bar, scatter, pie, waterfall charts to explore relationships between variables, and to present findings/trends to different teams
  • Integrates readily with limited, though different data sources: TXT, CSV, TDE, Access
  • Exports reports for review of different dashboards: client-ready/team-ready, with a clean and tidy presentation in PDF format (or hardcopy)
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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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Tableau
  • Tableau Public (both Desktop and Server) like their "for a fee" counterparts offer very easy to learn and use tools to transform data into pictures and gain insights into your data. Most organizations report a reduction in development time of 10x vs. other similar tools, due to the intuitive user interface. That said, with Tableau Public, published workbooks are "disconnected" from the underlying data sources and require periodic updates when the data changes. Users are limited to 1 Gb of storage space per user ID and password as well.
  • I would like to see better options for public sharing of visualizations and data from within the "for a fee" products as more and more organizations are moving in the direction of data sharing with partners and their communities.
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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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Tableau
It's free, right? I'll keep using the free version. So the real question to ask is this? Will I pay $999 for the Personal version or $1,999 for the Professional? Yikes! That is a big stretch. I'm not sure about that. The product comparison chart is at: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison
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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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Tableau
Tableau public is a great training tool to understand the basics of Tableau before buying it. A great tool to extend Excel's visualization and to publish data for others. Not useful for anything you need secure. No ability to access databases. Static information only.
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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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Tableau
I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far
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Online Training
Google
No answers on this topic
Tableau
I found it sufficient, and fast. I could easily "kick the tires" with Tableau on my data so I got up and running fast.
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Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Start at the end and work backward. Identify the business case / issue and questions the end users have, then identify the data needed, and where to get it.
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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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Tableau
Google Charts/Drive is sufficient for simpler data sets, but it does not integrate with other web platforms and the visualization does not look as professional. I'm not aware of any other competitors that offer the same package as Microsoft.
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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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Tableau
  • Tableau Public visualizations have helped drive traffic to our content and sites
  • The lack of cost means it's easy to demonstrate our experience to attract paying clients
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ScreenShots