Looker vs. Tableau Cloud

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 8.1 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 billed annually 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
NoNo
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
Looker seems friendlier and more accessible.
Chose Looker
Looker was the most customizable option for our business and cost wise made the most sense. They do have a free tier option that some of the other weren't offering to us at the time. Looker has a great- mobile app solution while tableau is a desktop-based platform. Tableau also …
Chose Looker
The biggest advantage that Looker Studio has is that it's really easy to use and to distribute to other use. You can have a really complex report set up in a couple of minutes with an extract data source that enables Looker to update really fast.
Chose Looker
Looker is less complex to use and links directly to google suite which we use across the business and personally think is a better user experience than microsoft.
Chose Looker
We have not used any other products; we've only ever needed to use Looker Studio and didn't need to demo anything else because it provided everything we needed.
Chose Looker
Looker stacks up well against other data providers for usability and friendly interfaces, plus the ability to customise. We actually integrate Looker with other analytics tools in the same sphere (power bi, dreamdata and others) so that we can have one comprehensive dashboard …
Chose Looker
In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, …
Chose Looker
Looker is a free and easier analytics and dashboard tool. It provides enough data and features to get things done and analyze marketing data. The other tools have more advanced features and are more suited for other things besides marketing.
Chose Looker
Tableau provides additional visual functionality and is great for more in-depth visuals or further data exploration, but it is costly and an extremely robust solution for simple data reporting. Looker can't be beat when it comes to integrating with other G-Suite tools. All in …
Chose Looker
Looker is a lot less overwhelming and lets you take the data that you have in Google analytics to make it understandable, focused and specific to the audience that is viewing the content. I haven’t used any other tools, but feel because of the ease of accessibility and cost, …
Chose Looker
I prefer agency analytics as it has a lot more agnostic integration options and is much speedier but does come at a cost. I would recommend this over Looker studio for sure. It has great templates to use too and allows for more customisation and racing benchmarks which is a …
Chose Looker
We'll still use Semrush's reporting for some clients - depending on the metrics which are important for them and whether they have an interest in live reporting or simply monthly PDF reports.
Chose Looker
If you company is using Google suite products, Looker is a no-brainer. Tableau is probably the most flexibly but as a result it has the least governance capabilities. Power BI is kind of old-school in terms of how it feels to use it. I think in general, Looker brings a lot of …
Chose Looker
Better in terms of data configuration with slight harder learning curve, available help material is not that much and we usually have to connect with Looker Help with chat for our data and analysis questions. While Looker offers a wide range of visualization options, there were …
Chose Looker
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, …
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 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 …
Chose Looker
I chose Looker because can incorporate multiple sources, mostly which are Google owned. The data can sync automatically, and the graphs are visually appealing.
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
Technically, Power BI is much more complete and powerful, but it's like an ocean liner. I didn't need all that equipment. In my case, I needed to move more quickly, like on a speedboat, to build a page with several data sources in a single source of truth that could be easily …
Chose Looker
Looker is a free tool to use on the basic level, which can't really compare apples to apples since all of the other services are paid services. Looker already has a leg up because of that. The other platforms definitely have more features and capabilities off the bat because it …
Tableau Cloud
Chose Tableau Cloud
We formally used Microsoft Power BI as our reporting software throughout our organization. I believe Tableau Cloud is a step above Power BI and is our preferred program. The end reports are look cleaner and are easier to work with than Power BI. There are more options and …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau CLoud is much more user friendly and easy to use.
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Cloud is ery powerful and user friendly with minimal cost when compared with other BI tools.Its robust features like switching toggles, supporting SQL queries for buiding charts and all stands out as the best.It reduces time in creating difficult and complex dashbords …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Cloud offers easier ways to make the content browsable by users. It also offers more flexible ways to set up self-service governance. Standard filtering functionalities are easier to use.
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
Tableau has a way easier Intuitive UI compare to Power BI or Amplitude. AMplitude is great since anyone could create their own dashboard, but building it it's a different thing.
Chose Tableau Cloud
When weighing the pros and cons of Tableau Online vs. SAP ERP, two key considerations emerged as clear winners. SAP ERP is a powerful data purification tool, but it doesn't measure up to the competition in terms of data presentation. When it came to data visualization and …
Chose Tableau Cloud
In my opinion, while Microsoft Power BI is a bit easier to build reports and dashboards with in part to its shared traits and connectivity with other Microsoft products, Tableau Online allows for a greater depth of customization, data sourcing, and most of all the sharing of …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Google Analytics is better for ad-hoc reporting but it's easier to create a uniform, standardized portfolio of reports in Tableau Online. We still use Google Analytics from time to time for quicker data requests.
Chose Tableau Cloud
In determining whether to go with Tableau Online versus Alteryx, two important factors stood out in determining our go-to solution. First, while Alteryx is an impressive tool for data cleansing, it did not stack up in terms of data visualization capabilities. Tableau, on the …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Compared to SPSS, the report visualization and output far exceeds what SPSS offers, as well as R. We typically find that while there is a bit of a steep learning curve to get the formulas and modelling correct, once done, it's easy to maintain and adjust as needed to …
Chose Tableau Cloud
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 …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Prior to Tableau [Online], we were using complicated excel formulas and reports that were prone to break or were not easy to format. We used a few free tools before moving forward with Tableau. The free tools also had limitations but we found that the reports, ease of use …
Chose Tableau Cloud
We selected Tableau Online as it was more easy to integrate it with our SaaS platform and get going in no time. It is much more intuitive, easy, and quick to create dashboards using Tableau than other competitors. Also the pricing provided by Tableau to us was very competitive …
Chose Tableau Cloud
I do like to still use Google Analytics for certain things, because its faster to do it in Google Analytics rather than build the report I need in Tableau. While it's helpful, we just don't have the bandwidth as an organization to be able to create every report we would need on …
Chose Tableau Cloud
  • Breadth of services offered is good with Tableau Online
  • Tableau Online offers advanced analytics and visualisations with easy implementation
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Online provides better data visualizations (especially when comparing out of the box visualizations that are available) than MS Power BI and historically we have connected more of our data sources to Tableau vs. other platforms like Google analytics.
Chose Tableau Cloud
Microsoft Dynamics is the only other product I have interacted with that is similar to Tableau Online. I receive reports from Microsoft Dynamics on a weekly basis. I receive really valuable statistics that help me realize how I am interacting through email. Dynamics send me …
Chose Tableau Cloud
[My selection was more determined] by the legacy files from the previous data scientists who build the dashboard with Tableau rather than I decided to choose Tableau from all other options.
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau provides more robust system to perform data analytics as compared to the alternatives like Power BI and Qlik. Moreover, Tableaus is super simple to use and is very reliable in terms of its connection with databases. The ability to manipulate data is another big reason …
Chose Tableau Cloud
We used to use an internal tracking platform, and it wasn't nearly as reliable or accurate as Tableau Online. Tableau Online has way more functionality and is able to report on so many more metrics that our old platform was unable to.
Chose Tableau Cloud
There are lots of excellent products are available in market for data analysis like SAP BusinessObjects, IBM Cognos, Microstrategy Analytics, Microsoft Power BI, etc. I found other products are specific to their tools like SAP BusinessObjects suits great with SAP Products …
Features
LookerTableau Cloud
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.5
Ratings
9% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.6
Ratings
7% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.50 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.30 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.50 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.9
Ratings
15% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.6
Ratings
5% below category average
Drill-down analysis6.50 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Formatting capabilities6.70 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages5.70 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.80 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.8
Ratings
5% below category average
Publish to Web7.70 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.90 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Report Versioning7.90 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.40 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.6
Ratings
19% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.9
Ratings
1% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.70 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.50 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.60 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.4
Ratings
14% below category average
Tableau Cloud
8.4
Ratings
1% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)7.60 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.30 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)7.30 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.40 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.3
Ratings
38% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.5
Ratings
3% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access5.20 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Mobile Application5.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile5.90 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.9
Ratings
11% below category average
REST API00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.80 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerTableau Cloud
Small Businesses
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.6 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.6 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
LookerTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
When data drives potential for new orders, Looker earns its place in our tech stack. If, on the other hand, we are hoping for pipeline generation, Looker is useful if you are willing to repeatedly go check customer utilizations .... it is not appropriate if you are hoping to automate data analysis for this purpose.
Read full review
If you're using Tableau as the primary BI tool, then Tableau Cloud is well suited to publish and share the results with a wide(r) audience. It is well suited for various degrees of self-service proficiency, from pure consumers of analytical work to more advanced users who can use web editing for smaller or larger adjustments, and even for desktop power users who will publish their work to Tableau Cloud. It has many good ways to organize the content and make it easily accessible via search, favorites, folders, collections ("playlists for your data"), or history ("recents"). It might not be ideally suited if there are many on-prem sources to be used (even though there are options to connect them) or if you have very special requirements regarding custom server setup, which is limited in a shared cloud environment like Tableau Cloud.
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Pros
  • It is very easy to start a new dashboard and configure what you want to display by just selecting/dragging from the list of available columns.
  • It is intuitive, mainly if you use other Google services like Google Sheets.
  • The look and feel is modern and nice.
  • It it very useful to have an immediate visual overview of the data in a spreadsheet.
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  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
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Likelihood to Renew
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
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No answers on this topic
Usability
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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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.
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Reliability and Availability
No objections
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No answers on this topic
Performance
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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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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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I have no had a lot of experience with the support team, but I know that it’s hardly necessary for the end-user to contact. Usually, the main questions I get are on how to read a certain dashboard or how to navigate to a certain place. Overall, the simplicity of the software is what helps out with less need for support.
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Implementation Rating
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, especially for internal databases, but will gladly use Looker for our marketing information for AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and YouTube.
Read full review
When weighing the pros and cons of Tableau Online vs. SAP ERP, two key considerations emerged as clear winners. SAP ERP is a powerful data purification tool, but it doesn't measure up to the competition in terms of data presentation. When it came to data visualization and analytics, Tableau was our go-to tool. The price is the second consideration. Tableau, on the other hand, was the more cost-effective option for our requirements.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Other than some people not liking the numbers, I don't see any negative impacts; we haven't experienced that.
  • The reports help us unravel the story of our users and how they are sifting through our pages.
  • Our clients enjoy seeing the numbers to understand better what stands out on their sites.
  • The reports have helped us see what campaigns are working and where we need to tweak things.
  • The reports have enabled us to have better conversations with stakeholders about how their web pages should be modified, edited, etc., to reflect the data.
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  • No need to hire a team of developers to deliver our product, a huge cost savings for a start up company.
  • The ability to work off data extracts allows us to "set in and forget it" so to speak, which allows our customers to use the system during business hours with almost no cost in terms of database usage.
  • It has been a great internal tool for dashboarding company metrics and helping us track goals and implement solutions to meet those goals through efficient data analysis.
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.