Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker
Score 8.3 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
Tableau Cloud
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.
$15
per month per user
Pricing
LookerTableau Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Viewer
$35
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Explorer
$70
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Creator
$75
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Creator
$115
per month billed annually per user
Tableau+
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerTableau Cloud
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
LookerTableau Cloud
Considered Both Products
Looker
Chose Looker
The learning curve for Tableau Cloud was too steep for our team. After watching a couple of YouTube videos, anyone can begin connecting data sources and creating reports with Looker. Looker is also free with Google Workspace, making the decision between Looker and Tableau a …
Chose Looker
Looker Studio is not as robust as Tableau or Microsoft BI. So it does not provide quite as much insight or depth and it has more limitations overall then the other major reporting products. However, it is also free and connects perfectly with other Google products. Plus, all of …
Chose Looker
I don't remember much about Tableau, but it was chaotic and poorly set up for our company.
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 …
Chose Looker
I choose Looker when I need quick charts. It is easier to start and configure, browser-based, and easy to connect with Google Sheets. This gives it a good competitive advantage when comparing pricing—other similar tools have expensive licenses. In a corporate Google …
Chose Looker
We use both Looker and Tableau. It depends on the specific team. However, there is a clear correlation that we use Tableau more often when there are more data sources, including financial data.
Chose Looker
Looker is considerably easier to learn than any of the other tools listed above. For example, Tableau does offer a robust selection of visualizations, however setting them up and plotting the data correctly is considerably harder than in Looker. Another major advantage of …
Chose Looker
Tableau is also a great BI tool, but it felt a lot less flexible to me in terms of customization of data. As a visual platform, Tabluea is incredible; it can produce unbelievably rich visualizations and dashboards. It's also easier to get set up on Tableau too, but ultimately …
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 is cheaper, by far. Easier to manage. In the end, Looker was a better choice for us, even with its maintenance warts and the headaches with the APIs. Tableau licensing is difficult to manage, at the very least, whereas Looker is not. User management is much easier to …
Chose Looker
Looker is a lot easier to connect with our data pipelines and for users to create their own scalable Explores. Before, analysts would have to create separate Tableau dashboards for each ask, but now with Lookers Explores, some teams are able to self serve and create their own …
Chose Looker
Looker empowers users to create their own views/dashboards from its web application. The last time I used Tableau (in 2015), only certain license holders could create content from the desktop application. Everyone else was a view only user. On that theme, we found Looker to be …
Chose Looker
Looker stacks up very well against the other tools we have evaluated and used. All the tools have their own pros and cons. Looker had a better edge in terms of visualizations when we chose to use it. After several updates, other tools began to have newer features. Looker still …
Tableau Cloud
Chose Tableau Cloud
I like Looker's interface a little more and it updates quicker.
Chose Tableau Cloud
Looker ended up as the winning product due to its easy to use and flexibility. It's easy for nontechnical stakeholders to learn how to create their Explores. But Tableau gives us more flexibility in creating highly customized visualizations so analysts still rely on it.
Chose Tableau Cloud
It seems more robust then the other platforms. There is a lot you can do from merging many different data sets together by joining them at like points, to creating visualizations of the data, or by showcasing some important data to any number of people within your organization. …
Chose Tableau Cloud
I would say that Tableau Online has the most sophisticated capabilities, but not the most straightforward UI or path to learn and operate within it quickly. It felt more technical than the other products I used and did not look as good, but I also found that it could answer a …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Online is much faster to get data sets integrated and being used, accordingly. From almost day one, we were able to integrate our data warehouse and pull data directly into Tableau Online. This made us aware of some of the data details that we had been missing and were …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau does a great job compared to all of these mentioned tools. Other tools also have a great shape-up of dashboards but obviously all have their advantages and disadvantages. The reason Tableau has an edge over all the other tools is because of its excellent visual design …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
LookerTableau Cloud
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
115 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.0
69 Ratings
15% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.494 Ratings7.051 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.7114 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.998 Ratings6.058 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.1
115 Ratings
1% above category average
Tableau Cloud
6.9
69 Ratings
15% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.1111 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.4113 Ratings6.066 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.147 Ratings6.043 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.7115 Ratings7.567 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
111 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Cloud
7.1
67 Ratings
15% below category average
Publish to Web8.293 Ratings7.063 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.899 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Report Versioning8.274 Ratings7.050 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.996 Ratings8.055 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings6.034 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.7
112 Ratings
17% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.8
65 Ratings
16% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9108 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.596 Ratings6.561 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings6.553 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings6.52 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.3
111 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.0
64 Ratings
19% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.8105 Ratings7.058 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.092 Ratings7.051 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.2105 Ratings7.054 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.144 Ratings6.52 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.549 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.8
83 Ratings
30% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.4
54 Ratings
20% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.780 Ratings5.552 Ratings
Mobile Application5.01 Ratings6.039 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.574 Ratings7.046 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.4
36 Ratings
20% below category average
REST API00 Ratings6.031 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings6.529 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.529 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.026 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.530 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.029 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerTableau Cloud
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
LookerTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(116 ratings)
8.4
(70 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(12 ratings)
8.0
(23 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 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
LookerTableau Cloud
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.
Read full review
Tableau
We just need to refresh our data once a day for our unique use case, which allows the complete online system to run on extracts. For us, this is critical because our daylight hours are spent focusing on new updates and implementations rather than worrying about excessive database traffic (which would be required with a direct connection to the online system). The process of importing extracts is straightforward and sturdy enough to handle massive amounts of data.
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
Tableau
  • Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
  • The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
  • The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
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
Tableau
  • Can be a steep learning curve for new users
  • Modeling and building algorithms aren't always intuitive and take some testing/retesting to ensure it's working as it should
  • Inability to integrate easily with our HRIS platform. Reports are pulled from HRIS at various intervals and uploaded into Tableau
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Google
We are very haooy with Looker, it provides us with all the funciomalities we need for both the day to day oerformance tracking and longer periods reporting. It is easy to use for account managers, configurable and customizable for soecialists and what is most imoortant, our clinets generally really love it
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Tableau
From an end user perspective Tableau Online is overall very easy to navigate once you get used to it, my only complaint is that when expanding or contracting a graph, the "plus" and "minus" on the bottom left is sometimes hidden, and should always be visible. From a builder perspective, it can take some getting used to but the sheer depth of customization makes it all worthwhile.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
No objections
Read full review
Tableau
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
Tableau
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
Tableau
In times where the system is down, support has always been quick to notify and keep us apprised of the latest developments. It's crucial for our system to always be available, but when emergencies have arisen, I don't recall a time where the Tableau Online Support hasn't been able to address our concerns in a timely manner.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
Read full review
Tableau
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
Tableau
Googles dashboard suite is very user-friendly and anyone can edit and make changes with very little knowledge or practice. But nothing I’ve worked with compares to the customization and multi streams of data in a user-friendly package like tableau does. It’s a really cool piece of software and I would choose that again.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
Perfect price to performance
Read full review
Tableau
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
Tableau
  • When we release new products, we are now able to quickly see data and toggle between current periods and previous to see performance
  • Generating new reports requires less IT time to build
  • Data can be shared across many different device types
  • We now have integration where our customers can extract data from our software more easily-this was a big ask from our customers
Read full review
ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.