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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 …
Continue reading
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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 (94)
    8.7
    87%
  • Report sharing and collaboration (96)
    8.5
    85%
  • Drill-down analysis (93)
    8.2
    82%
  • Formatting capabilities (94)
    7.4
    74%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

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?

  • No setup fee
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
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.4
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.

6.7
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 7.9
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Product Details

What is Looker?

Looker is a business intelligence application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. The Looker platform includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for creating data discovery experiences and an extensible API set so the data can exist in other systems.

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 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 Multi-User Support (named login) highest, with a score of 8.8.

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

(381)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Jasmeet S Babra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is used company-wide, and it allows any analyst or business user to make smart decisions backed by data. Looker connects to all of our databases, be it AWS or GCP, and helps us to mash and analyze it in a single space.
  • Email schedules for reports.
  • Dashboard reporting.
  • New and advanced charting, and analytical capabilities.
  • It does very well with query optimization and displaying results.
  • More charting colors and default scheme options.
Looker is the best BI tool for an enterprise-level company. It allows everyone to work on their space and create reports and dashboards. They have done a great job with their own simpler version of SQL like language to set up tables, called lookml, which is very easy to write, and the documentation on it is excellent! Their customer support is phenomenal! What could be better are their filtering options and visualization options.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Pixel Perfect reports
90%
9.0
Customizable dashboards
80%
8.0
Report Formatting Templates
90%
9.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
67.5%
6.8
Drill-down analysis
90%
9.0
Formatting capabilities
90%
9.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
N/A
N/A
Report sharing and collaboration
90%
9.0
Report Output and Scheduling (3)
90%
9.0
Publish to Web
90%
9.0
Publish to PDF
90%
9.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
90%
9.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (2)
85%
8.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
90%
9.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
80%
8.0
Access Control and Security (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Multi-User Support (named login)
80%
8.0
Role-Based Security Model
90%
9.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
90%
9.0
Mobile Capabilities (2)
N/A
N/A
Responsive Design for Web Access
N/A
N/A
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
N/A
N/A
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
The connection setup is very easy, and our team has set it up with little or no difficulty!
Sharing is a robust feature of Looker. I like how we can share just bare links, and the other end-user just takes off from there to do their own version of the analysis. Scheduling reports and dashboards with a plethora of options like pdf, email, csv and html files is just a breeze.
Looker support specialists are heroes. They are knowledgeable, smart, and always vouch for your success. The availability is super quick, and even if there is no current solution for my problem, they will address it and voice it as feedback for a product.
Yes, over an issue when my data was not displaying correctly due to some issue with the lookml behaving differently. This resulted in a big email chain with support and product, and our IT team going back and forth and getting use cases. They followed us and kept us in the loop the entire time!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is used by the entire organization as a tool to make data driven decisions across all departments. Our executives use it to track high level KPIs. Each department uses it to track their team specific KPIs and to create custom reports to answer business critical questions.
  • Looker makes it easy for executives to track KPIs in real-time
  • Looker makes it easy for all team members to create custom reports to answer questions with data, without relying on the analytics team
  • Looker makes it easy for the analytics team to build reporting views for each team in the organization so that individual team members can be self-sufficient in their data needs
  • Looker makes visualizing data easy, so all team members can recognize trends and make decisions based on data
  • Looker's visualization options are continually improving and will be better in the near-future, but most standard visualizations are available
  • Looker is constrained by the functions that your flavor of SQL provides, so make sure you choose wisely when building your data warehouse
Looker is flexible and allows you to provide a clean view into your data warehouse, even if your database has become unruly. That said, the cleaner your DB is the faster your Looker queries will run.
  • Mode,Tableau
I chose Looker because it was more flexible and easier to use. The biggest advantage it had over the competitors was ease of use for all of the members of our organization and the flexibility Looker has for giving each team member the ability to create custom reports. This frees our analytics team to work on high-level projects instead of answering every data question that comes up.
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
83.33333333333334%
8.3
Pixel Perfect reports
80%
8.0
Customizable dashboards
100%
10.0
Report Formatting Templates
70%
7.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (3)
100%
10.0
Drill-down analysis
100%
10.0
Formatting capabilities
100%
10.0
Report sharing and collaboration
100%
10.0
Report Output and Scheduling (3)
100%
10.0
Publish to Web
100%
10.0
Publish to PDF
100%
10.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
100%
10.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
80%
8.0
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
100%
10.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
100%
10.0
Predictive Analytics
40%
4.0
Access Control and Security (3)
100%
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
100%
10.0
Role-Based Security Model
100%
10.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
100%
10.0
Mobile Capabilities (1)
80%
8.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
80%
8.0
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
Looker is easy to connect to a data source (SQL DB), allows all SQL functionality and provides additional functionality through their LookML language. Looker run queries in real-time but also allows for scheduling queries so that performance can be optimized. Looker allows you to use multiple data sources and models and allows for flexibility in permissioning users and access.
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.
No
The support that Looker provides is probably the support I have found in a product. They are responsive, friendly, helpful and go above and beyond to make sure that I am satisfied with Looker
I can get responses to questions in minutes through their in-app chat feature. They have provided 6 months of LookML training to our analytics team, with weekly calls. They also provided in-office business user training for our entire organization.
Yes
I reported the bug using their chat feature and received a response the same minute. They researched the issue and responded with a fix that went out the same day. They also provided a work-around that I was able to implement within an hour.
Looker offers 6 months of LookML training that includes weekly calls with a team of four support staff that answer questions, help you code complex problems and help you optimize all of your queries. They go above and beyond to make sure that Looker is implemented in the best way possible and then do a training for all business users so that everyone in your organization knows how to use Looker for self-service reporting. This is all included as part of the standard subscription.
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