Looker Studio vs. ThoughtSpot

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
ThoughtSpot
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
ThoughtSpot is an Agentic Analytics Platform for enterprises where users ask data questions using natural language and get answers with AI. Code-first for data teams and code-free for business users, ThoughtSpot can handle large, complex cloud data at scale.
$1,500
per year (5 users)
Pricing
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
Editions & Modules
Looker Studio Pro
$9
per month per user per project
Looker Studio
No charge
Thoughtspot Analytics - Pro
$50
per month (billed annually) per user (25-1000 users)
Thoughtspot Analytics - Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
Considered Both Products
Looker Studio

No answer on this topic

ThoughtSpot
Chose ThoughtSpot
We selected ThoughtSpot with the promise that it would evolve into a Google search for business insights. To date, it has not gotten close in my opinion.
Features
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.6
55 Ratings
6% below category average
ThoughtSpot
7.3
89 Ratings
11% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.339 Ratings6.021 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.254 Ratings8.289 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.353 Ratings7.725 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.1
54 Ratings
4% above category average
ThoughtSpot
7.5
91 Ratings
7% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.946 Ratings8.490 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.350 Ratings7.290 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages5.725 Ratings5.749 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.753 Ratings8.688 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.7
54 Ratings
6% above category average
ThoughtSpot
8.3
84 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web8.148 Ratings8.355 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.747 Ratings8.678 Ratings
Report Versioning8.335 Ratings7.918 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.437 Ratings8.564 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.020 Ratings8.135 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
6.5
53 Ratings
17% below category average
ThoughtSpot
7.4
86 Ratings
8% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.353 Ratings7.585 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.150 Ratings7.679 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.027 Ratings7.565 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining4.63 Ratings6.913 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
ThoughtSpot
8.1
86 Ratings
5% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.282 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings7.974 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings7.778 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings7.916 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.572 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
ThoughtSpot
7.5
53 Ratings
3% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings7.351 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.234 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.146 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
ThoughtSpot
7.1
51 Ratings
9% below category average
REST API00 Ratings6.942 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings6.535 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.134 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings7.013 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.335 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.115 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
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
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IBM Analytics Engine
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Score 7.2 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
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Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(56 ratings)
8.6
(91 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(7 ratings)
8.3
(85 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioThoughtSpot
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
ThoughtSpot
It is well suited when the same data is consumed by many different people with different analytics and visualization requirements because, if you have the data available in ThoughtSpot, every user can prepare different views. Also, it is a good reporting tool, you can get rid of slides if you have a good dashboard prepared, gaining flexibility and agility.
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
ThoughtSpot
  • Beautiful visualizations. The visuals are distinct, clean, and easy to discern from one another.
  • Intelligent querying functionality. When looking to manipulate the data, the search function makes it easy to manipulate the features in the data, along with aggregating them in the way you'd like.
  • Embedding! It has been a smooth process thus far for our product & technical teams to work with ThoughtSpot and bring it into our product.
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
ThoughtSpot
  • It would be great if ThoughtSpot can add the feature to filter by clicking on visualizations. i.e if I click on a particular data point in the chart if the full dashboard can filter just for that particular data point.
  • Color coding the heatmap with different colors like green to orange to red.
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
ThoughtSpot
I give it just waiting because passport is brilliant and it has helped our organisation In advancing to the next stage in the age of AI. It has allowed or non-tech people to better service and clients in a cost-effective way. George port has allowed us to create new products for us and for our clients increasing our revenue streams and reducing clients churn
Read full review
Usability
Google
It is not ideal and requires time and dedication to understand how to work with it. Also, it has a lot of limitations around data it can accept. But in most cases, this tool is sufficient for everyday tasks of product and marketing departments. I wouldn't say that the interface is very user-friendly, but for people who regularly work with analytical tools, it must be ok.
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ThoughtSpot
The rating is because of the ease of use of the interface as it has a no code interface that makes it easy to setup data pipelines without extensive programming. Cloud native integration: It integrates seamlessly with cloud based data warehouses. Automated data loading, Scalability, Cost Effective, Transformations, Data Governance and security.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
it's available unless there is a server or system update etc. sometimes the timing of this is bad (for example during a month end close)
Read full review
Performance
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
It does what it is supposed to. Would be nice to have a bit more insights
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.
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ThoughtSpot
I give it this meeting because the team is not only help able to help us in the current solutions but also amazing and taking feedback and feeding it back to their development team which includes more products and features into ThoughtSpot
Read full review
In-Person Training
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
inhouse in-person training. Took a bit to long to get the basics.
Read full review
Online Training
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
poor instructions
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
Understand use case and model and design accordingly
Read full review
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.
Read full review
ThoughtSpot
We also explored Tableau Ask Data. Tableau is our standard for BI in our organization. We want to use the smallest amount of tools in our company to have the best adaption. ThoughSpot will fill a few gaps that we have with our current set up and will also enhance out offering for our employees in the transition of being more data driven within in near future
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Scalability
Google
No answers on this topic
ThoughtSpot
Because it is very reliable, inside the situation, we need strong internet connection to access a lot of data but easily never had any downtime except during the upgrades
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
ThoughtSpot
  • Time to market ROI is massive vs hiring the full-time dedicated team to build and maintain a frontend multi-tenant SaaS data viz product.
  • It will be interesting to see over time how the advanced features play out in terms of usability and end value, such as Natural Search, which we are very excited about, and the machine learning tools.
Read full review
ScreenShots

ThoughtSpot Screenshots

Screenshot of the ThoughtSpot home screenScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the Spotter AI agent that surfaces insights through natural language queriesScreenshot of AI Assist producing SQL in real timeScreenshot of SpotIQ, which offers AI-driven insightsScreenshot of the integration with dbt models and metrics