Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.N/A
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Pricing
LookerMicrosoft Excel
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerMicrosoft Excel
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerMicrosoft Excel
Considered Both Products
Looker
Chose Looker
There are some specific use cases where other tools are not useful in our organization. Some software solutions are shared with other organizations inside the company and Looker is the only tool where we can collaborate good enough.
Chose Looker
Looker is a great fit for our company because we have collaborative analytics workflows and complicated data ecosystems and because of its strengths in data modeling, integration, and collaboration.
Brand name and peer recommendations also helps us to select Looker against …
Microsoft Excel

No answer on this topic

Features
LookerMicrosoft Excel
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
117 Ratings
2% below category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports7.495 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.7116 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.9100 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.1
117 Ratings
1% above category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis8.1113 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.4115 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.147 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.7117 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
113 Ratings
3% above category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Publish to Web8.295 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.8101 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.276 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.998 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.7
114 Ratings
16% below category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9110 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.597 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.3
113 Ratings
2% below category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)8.8106 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.093 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.2107 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.145 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.8
84 Ratings
30% below category average
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access6.781 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.575 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
LookerMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(118 ratings)
9.2
(73 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(8 ratings)
9.5
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(12 ratings)
8.1
(18 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerMicrosoft Excel
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
As a Sales, it suited me to use such well-developed software with a nice dashboard that could navigate between my prospects, visualize the numbers of clients, and check my achievements for each quarter. That would help me understand my performance and record the data I needed for myself as a salesperson.
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Microsoft
I don't really know another program as powerful as Excel. I've used Google Doc programs but do not feel they come close. So far, anytime I've needed a table of some sort for data, whether it's budget oriented or information off a survey, the best system has been Excel. We do web audits on occasion and we create an Excel worksheet featuring every URL of the pages we're auditing, notes, data about the content, information about files attached to the page and other information to help us determine what pages need updating, deleting or otherwise. We also use Excel primarily to export our Google Analytics to in order for us to create reports for clients that need to see specific information about their traffic.
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Pros
Google
  • Show visited pages - sessions, pageviews - which programs are viewed the most.
  • Displays session source/medium views to see where users are coming from.
  • It shows the video titles, URLs, and event counts so we can monitor the performance of our videos.
  • It gives a graphic face to the numbers, such as using bar charts, pie graphs, and other charts to show user trends or which channels are driving engagement.
  • Our clients like to see the top pages visited for a month.
  • I like the drop-and-drag approach, and building charts is a little easier than it was before.
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Microsoft
  • It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
  • It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
  • It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • I wish I could get more granular in the Google ad data, such as down to the campaign type, instead of having to see only all campaigns.
  • The setup can be time-consuming if you're not using the product regularly.
  • Editing the dashboard requires a few logins; I wish it was more seamless.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Excel offers collaboration features that allow multiple users to work on the same spreadsheet, but managing changes made by different users can be challenging. Excel could improve its features by offering more granular control, better tracking of changes, and more robust conflict resolution tools.
  • Itcan be a barrier to productivity when importing and exporting data from other applications or file formats. To improve its features, it should offer better support for standard file formats and more robust error handling and reporting tools.
  • Excel can be challenging for finance students and working professionals, but it can be improved by offering more robust tutorials, better documentation, and more user communities and support forums.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
I give it this rating because it deems as effective, I am able to complete majority of my tasks using this app. It is very helpful when analyzing the data provided and shown in the app and it's just overall a great app for Operational use, despite the small hiccups it has (live data).
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Microsoft
Excel remains the industry standard for spreadsheets and has maintained simple and straight-forward formula writing methods. Although there is a learning curve to do more complex calculations, there are countless help sites and videos on the Internet for almost any need.
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Usability
Google
Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
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Microsoft
I'm giving it a 7 because it is my go to. But the fact other prefer Google Sheets when working with a team does get irritating. I've used the online version of Microsoft Excel that other teams can get into and it still seems behind Google Sheets. It's a little clanky and slow? If that's even a term.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No objections
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Microsoft
I have rarely, if ever, had issues with its availability.
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Performance
Google
Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
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Microsoft
Excel load and performs calculations immediately. It integrate well with all Microsoft Office applications and does not slow them down.
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Support Rating
Google
Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
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Microsoft
I have not had to use it often, but it is good.
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Implementation Rating
Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
Looker gives you options to integrate external APIs with great ease. Our data analytics team is able to easily use multiple data sources as input to the Looker dashboard, and everything is consolidated in one single Dashboard. You also have an option for Shared folders to be accessed by multiple people. The reporting system is perfect and has a wide range of options/reporting options that can be implemented.
Read full review
Microsoft
Out of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IBM SPSS, and Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel is by far the most common tool used for anything data-related across organizations. Accordingly, our organization has also implemented Microsoft Excel as a first-step tool. We recently adopted Microsoft Power BI (the free version), and use it occasionally (mostly for creating dashboards), but it is less commonly understood by stakeholders across our organization and by our clients. Accordingly, Microsoft Excel is more user-friendly and because of its popularity, we can easily look up how to do things in the program online. Google Sheets is a comparable alternative to Microsoft Excel, but because it's cloud-based and we have sensitive data that needs to be protected, we chose against using this software. Finally, a few users (including myself) have access to and utilize IBM's SPSS. For my role, it's a helpful tool to do more rigorous analyses. However, because of its cost and limited functionality as a simple spreadsheet, we only use it for more complex analyses.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
Perfect price to performance
Read full review
Microsoft
N/A I was not involved in this process.
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Scalability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Each user can use it to whatever level of expertise they have. It remains the same so users can contribute to another's work regardless of whether they have more or less expertise
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Looker has a poignant impact on our business's ROI objectives. As an advertising exchange we have specific goals for daily requests and fill, and having premade Looks to monitor this is an integral piece of our operational capability
  • To facilitate an efficient monthly billing cycle in our organization, Looker is essential to track estimated revenue and impression delivery by publisher. Without the Looks we have set up, we would spend considerably more time and effort segmenting revenue by vertical.
  • Looker's unique value proposition is making analytical tools more digestible to people without conventional analytical experience. Other competing tools like Tableau require considerably more training and context to successfully use, and the ability to easily plot different visualizations is one of its greatest selling points.
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Microsoft
  • Excel has positively impacted the business as it has increased our efficiency.
  • It also saves us the time that we would have spent on making the calculations that it does for us.
  • Since it works on all devices and is compatible with both Windows and Mac, we do not have to invest in any other alternative.
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.