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Looker

Looker

Overview

What is Looker?

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…

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Recent Reviews

Look no further!

10 out of 10
March 25, 2024
Incentivized
We use Looker as a business intelligence tools that translates our data into meaningful insights for consumption by internal and external …
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Great reporting tool

8 out of 10
March 15, 2024
Incentivized
We are using Looker Studio to create dashboards that’s can be shared with other departments. We can include information from different …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 21 features
  • Customizable dashboards (92)
    8.7
    87%
  • Report sharing and collaboration (94)
    8.6
    86%
  • Drill-down analysis (91)
    8.2
    82%
  • Formatting capabilities (92)
    7.4
    74%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Looker?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee required
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.google.com/resources/look…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is SAP Crystal?

SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.

What is SAP Lumira Discovery?

SAP Lumira Discovery is SAP’s data visualization and discovery application. It facilitates data discovery, visualization, and analysis by assisting users with creation of dashboards, infographics, presentations, data facets, tag clouds, and more.

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Product Demos

How To Use Looker as a Business User

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.1
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.1
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.6
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

6.8
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.5
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

5.8
Avg 8.0
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Product Details

What is Looker?

Looker, Google Cloud’s business intelligence platform, enables users to chat with data. Organizations are given self-service and governed BI to build custom applications with trusted metrics, or to bring Looker modeling to their existing environment.


Looker vs. Looker Studio


Looker Studio is a part of Google's Looker Suite for business intelligence. Looker Studio is a self-serve BI solution where less technical users can create charts and reports, while Looker is a complete, enterprise BI platform, where technical users can build complex models that consider every aspect of the business. Looker Studio offers both free and pro versions, while Looker is not available for free. Looker and Looker Studio integrate with each other to support both types of analysis at businesses.

Looker Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: ParAccel
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Sage 500
  • Supported: SAP

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.

Looker Video

The future of Looker is powered by generative AI—Google's vision for what's next in business intelligence

Looker Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, Canada, United Kingdom, Mexico, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Domo, MicroStrategy Analytics, and Tableau Server are common alternatives for Looker.

Reviewers rate Report Delivery Scheduling and Multi-User Support (named login) highest, with a score of 8.9.

The most common users of Looker are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(377)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 51)
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Henri Allik | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is really easy to share Looks(single query/visualization) and Dashboards built in Looker. It is possible to this via URL so you don't even need to save them or send the results directly to someone via email. Looker also has a Slackbot, but unfortunately have not used it yet. Looker also supports embedding you Looks and Dashboards.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Access Control - Looker can restrict access based on user as well as based on data.
  • Report Automation - Reports can be scheduled to run automatically.
  • Report Sharing - Reports can be shared even to teams and employees that do not use Looker or do not have access to certain data on Looker. Reports can be sent via PDF, Email, dashboard, etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is probably my favorite feature of Looker, and the reason it makes such a difference in our organization. Not only can we quickly write queries and cobble together reports, but we can share them quickly with each other. Data visibility has increased dramatically since adopting Looker.
Christian Lubasch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Collaboration is very easy in Looker. You can always share "looks" (analyses), reports, dashboards etc. with co-workers. Everybody has his/her own "space" to play around. People can simply share and schedule all pieces or have them delivered as CSV, HTML, etc.. Even collaboration on data modelling layer is possible! Access control and permission settings are very detailed and granular.
August 21, 2015

Looker lookin' good

Tom Hosford | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's nice that you can publish reports. However, I would find it much more secure if you could publish a report but have simple password control to restrict access. Otherwise a bot for instance could always discover a public report.
Adam Rhuberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Ease of sharing is great. I love that any report that has been built can be shared via URL, regardless of whether that report is itself saved to any particular collaboration space or dashboard. Even and ad hoc data pull can be shared with a link.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is awesome, interface is very comprehensive (after few days using, it's pretty automatic), tools and configuration are very impressive and your personalization of a dashboard screen is something amazing. I shared my experience with some friends and they loved it. =)
Michael Shostack | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Each Look has a permalink that is shareable, and all of the report details are visible in the query string. This is both a good and bad thing. You can generate a shortened URL by hitting cmd-U (on Macs) on a Look which helps tame really long filters. However the other issue is that if you filter off say, user email addresses or other sensitive information, and then accidentally paste that link somewhere you shouldn't, that data is now out in the wild even if they can't access the actual Look without logging in.

Beyond that, one thing Domo did much better was collaboration. You could easily comment on data and annotate it, and annotations are a huge missing feature in my opinion. If we have issues with our data for a certain period of time, or need to highlight a certain date with a note, there is currently no way to do that natively with Looker chart visuals outside of a general comment in the box of the chart object in the dashboard, or in the Look description. There's also no way to do things like set general annotations/alerts that appear on all reports using a given chunk of data from a given timeframe. If I know data was broken for a certain period, I want to flag that somewhere so it becomes visible to anyone who generates a Look using data from that period.

I'd also love for there to be an option to create and store a report snapshot at a preset date (such as 90 days after a promotion ends) where it automatically emails me a PDF or ideally a link to a static Look of things up to that point since data can change over time. Right now the only way to do it is either schedule reports (that run indefinitely, so less than ideal), or make a note to pull a PDF at a given date and save that to Google Drive or something.



Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker has customizable access controls so users can be provisioned to access only certain data sources. It also allows for sharing reports and dashboards across teams and allows for scheduling reports and dashboards to be emailed to team members. Reports can also be exported to Google sheets or Excel and can then be updated in near real-time.
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