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 Server
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
LookerTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerTableau Server
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerTableau Server
Considered Both Products
Looker
Chose Looker
It takes forever sometimes to have data ready in Tableau dashboard, and also it takes effort to maintain each dashboards. We do not have so many efforts to maintain all. Also, we need to be able to see data faster and therefore take actions and work faster. With Looker we might …
Chose Looker
Looker was not as flexible as Tableau, but it provides more customization through code and it provides a consistent data model which can be nice.
Chose Looker
Looker is easier to use, faster helps save time at work, Robust data connections with R Studio are very important because we use this application in the company and other applications do not allow it, it has a scalable machine learning with integration of Google TensorFlow, …
Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
The choice to use Tableau Server is really made for you if you already have adopted Tableau Desktop. If you're focused on an on-premise solution, Tableau is probably the way that you'll have to go. Looker and Mode are cloud-based (so is Tableau Online) and offer a true …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
LookerTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.9
113 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Server
9.5
94 Ratings
15% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.392 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.7112 Ratings9.793 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.896 Ratings9.780 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
113 Ratings
1% below category average
Tableau Server
9.1
94 Ratings
12% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.0109 Ratings8.994 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.4111 Ratings8.892 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.946 Ratings9.058 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.7113 Ratings9.788 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.4
109 Ratings
1% above category average
Tableau Server
8.4
90 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web8.191 Ratings9.884 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.797 Ratings9.683 Ratings
Report Versioning8.072 Ratings9.169 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.894 Ratings8.276 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.6
110 Ratings
19% below category average
Tableau Server
8.7
89 Ratings
9% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.8106 Ratings8.985 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.395 Ratings8.984 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings8.463 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.2
109 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Server
8.2
94 Ratings
3% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.8103 Ratings8.292 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.991 Ratings8.289 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.2103 Ratings8.291 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.042 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.261 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.7
82 Ratings
32% below category average
Tableau Server
8.4
78 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.579 Ratings8.176 Ratings
Mobile Application5.01 Ratings8.160 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.273 Ratings8.967 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.2
45 Ratings
8% below category average
REST API00 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.036 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerTableau Server
Small Businesses
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cyfe
Cyfe
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
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
LookerTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(114 ratings)
8.1
(110 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(6 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(12 ratings)
5.2
(16 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 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 Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
It's great for clients who don't have a huge reporting budget and/or want to add voiceover insight and analysis to the report. I love Looker for weekly updates. The client gets a general overview and can compare data against any time period that works for them. Plus, it's a free tool - who doesn't love that?
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
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
  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • I’d like a bit more personalization, particularly in the “Style” section (e.g., fonts, paragraph settings, the ability to map the axis labels to shorter names…).
  • Performance can be quite slow when there are many graphs on one page, even making the page unresponsive sometimes.
  • I’d love to be able to easily embed a dashboard in the Google Sheets it comes from (without injecting code to embed the HTML).
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
  • Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
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
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
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
Tableau
I think the use case we described earlier about a non-technical user that was copying/pasting data into Word during emergencies is our best reason. This person had little technical ability, and the Tableau mobile solution powered by Tableau server completely resolved the issues. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of Tableau.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
No objections
Read full review
Tableau
Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
Read full review
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
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
Read full review
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
I think the folks that work in support are generally pretty good at what they do (when you get them on a WebEx). But the process of reporting issues to them and waiting for a response (via email only) is a hassle. I never understood why you can't just call them up and discuss the issues with them. It would take a handful of email exchanges before they would agree to a WebEx session. That was frustrating.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Google
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
Read full review
Online Training
Google
No answers on this topic
Tableau
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
Read full review
Tableau
Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
Read full review
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
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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
  • Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
  • There are some significant setup for the server product.
  • Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.