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
Pentaho
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.N/A
Pricing
LookerPentaho
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerPentaho
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerPentaho
Considered Both Products
Looker
Chose Looker
Looker was easier to use, better integration with non-standard datastores, such as Prestodb, and Snowflake, and BigTable. Ease of manageability. Creation of reports faster and easier compared to QlikView. Tableau has better heat maps, however, Looker has better drill down in …
Chose Looker
Looker was, hands down, better than any other products we looked at. It was far easier to get started and keep moving because of Looker's internal programming language and data definition language, LookML. We were up and going in just a few days and were creating advanced …
Chose Looker
I think Looker is easier to use than Business Objects, Domo, Pentaho and Tableau. Tableau offers better visualizations than Looker but the overall package in Looker is better.
Pentaho

No answer on this topic

Features
LookerPentaho
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.8
128 Ratings
4% below category average
Pentaho
9.0
20 Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.0104 Ratings8.618 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.6127 Ratings9.918 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.8109 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.5
126 Ratings
7% below category average
Pentaho
8.7
19 Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.4122 Ratings7.618 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.2124 Ratings8.319 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages6.651 Ratings9.312 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.9125 Ratings9.717 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.2
122 Ratings
1% below category average
Pentaho
9.7
20 Ratings
16% above category average
Publish to Web7.9100 Ratings9.618 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.4109 Ratings9.819 Ratings
Report Versioning7.579 Ratings9.713 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.1104 Ratings9.917 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings9.310 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.6
122 Ratings
19% below category average
Pentaho
8.1
17 Ratings
2% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.7118 Ratings7.916 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.5104 Ratings8.216 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings8.314 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.7
122 Ratings
10% below category average
Pentaho
9.1
20 Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.3114 Ratings9.320 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.699 Ratings9.619 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.5116 Ratings9.918 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.654 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.610 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.5
91 Ratings
34% below category average
Pentaho
8.3
11 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.087 Ratings9.710 Ratings
Mobile Application5.01 Ratings6.97 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.281 Ratings8.711 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Pentaho
8.6
10 Ratings
11% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.310 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings7.39 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.79 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.910 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings9.610 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerPentaho
Small Businesses
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.8 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LookerPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(128 ratings)
9.1
(31 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(8 ratings)
8.8
(11 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(12 ratings)
9.3
(6 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
9.3
(7 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Looker is ideal if you are heavily invested in Google Services, particularly marketing related services, and you with to quickly create reporting dashboards for that data. It gets more difficult when you try to tie in data from other services, and I would not use this were I already using BI package - it is not anywhere near as well supported or as widely known as some of its major competitors, but what it does do, it does do well.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
  • Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
  • Import data from any sources and different databases
  • Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
  • Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
  • Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
  • Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics
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
Hitachi Vantara
  • I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
  • Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
  • Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.
Read full review
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).
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
The Pentaho tools are designed so you can start playing around on your own. Of course, you will need guidance at some point, but the training teams are good at guiding new users, and the online documentation is usually pretty up-to-date.
Some of the tools, such as the Pentaho Data Integration tool and the Pentaho Server, are pretty self-explanatory. The other tools maybe are not so quickly and obvious to use, but again, with some documentation and some customer support, you can find your way around them.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
No objections
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
They were responsive to our questions when we raised issues. They gave us workarounds when required. They were quite knowledgeable when it came to issue analysis and providing fixes. They were forthright in informing us if a bug was not due for release soon.
Read full review
Online Training
Google
No answers on this topic
Hitachi Vantara
Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Google
Looker Studio, you can easily report on data from various sources without programming. Looker Studio is available at no charge for creators and report viewers. Enterprise customers who upgrade to Looker Studio Pro will receive support and expanded administrative features, including team content management. So it's good.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal department. It also supports many of our BI use cases as required by company management or the business user. Last but not least, the Pentaho license is cheaper than their competitor.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
Perfect price to performance
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Hitachi Vantara
  • Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
  • Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
  • We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.