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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 …
Continue reading

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
Read all reviews

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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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

(1-25 of 96)
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Hamimah Hamid | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With Looker,it is possible to discover and explore business data proactively.Again,it offers BI capability thus making it simple to create custom reports and dashboards.It is simple to analyze business data with Looker.
Rajender Singh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Features like a variety of visualization options help us make reports that are easily understandable to other department colleagues and give great insights for the decision-making process. Integration with many other software's helps us save time in the migration of data to software that can be easily integrated into Looker.

Looker software requires experienced personnel to handle large amounts of data, which makes it less user-friendly.
March 25, 2024

Look no further!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I would encourage anyone using similar tools like power BI or application dashboards to consider pulling their data into Looker instead. It’s much more comprehensive and from an organizational perspective I am a big proponent on having a standard tool for a specific use case than having multiple ways to demonstrate and manipulate data.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This is a great tool to pull together data from Google products into on source to make easy to use overview charts for your clients. However, they can be buggy to duplicate and change data sources. It's best to start from a template. It's a lot of work to make one from scratch.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is great at providing a semantic layer between your data warehouse and visualisation. It allows the raw data to be sliced and diced in different ways depending on what you want to achieve which is great for keeping the production code base clean and tidy. This can sometimes lead to silo'd data transformation or re-invention of the wheel, but if maintained and regulated correctly can be a real enabler of self-serve analytics. Allowing you to create a data mesh in where each department can look after their own data and allow joining on a set standard across the organisation.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's best for when a lot of people need to look at the same data set. Looker lets you slice the data such that people can have different views and everyone can get the data relevant to them. It's not really good for situations where you want to manipulate data sets. You can also use the scripting functionality to have row-level security on your data set. It's most appropriate when a lot of people need to look at the data set at the same time. It's not appropriate to use for entering and manipulating the data.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Easy to use for the non coders and less techy people. Smooth onboarding on the platform and accessible guide and walkthrough available. The solution is scalable and can answer almost any kind of huge datasets. Looker is doing great for e-Commerce's analytics as it provides out of the box templates for visualizations.
March 15, 2024

Great reporting tool

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It’s a great free platform and is intuitive for first time users. For simple dashboards it’s the best option but if needed to do more complex tables and relate different tables to create graphics, it’s too difficult
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I would highly recommend Looker as a tool. The integrations with our existing CRM and product are great, and the data is almost always accurate. I highly recommend this tool to every organization that wants to monitor their customers' data and understand their usage habits. You can do various cohort analyses with this data.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is well suited for almost every kind of business. That is mainly due to its good pricing structure, which can help cut unnecessary costs. Plus, it helps increase the overall productivity and efficiency of the business.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Quick dashboards from Google Sheets - Easier to do the graphs than in Google Sheets - Operational dashboards to be used in the day-to-day work - It is good both for retrospective data and to do a pulse check of the current status - Better for not giant amounts of data and not multiple data sources. - If you need a lot of graphs to be displayed on the same page, it can be a bit glitchy during configuration (then the use works fine).
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Locker Studio excels in its ability to seamlessly connect to numerous data sources, making it a versatile solution for data integration tasks. Beyond its connectivity features, Locker Studio offers a comprehensive suite of functionalities for aggregating, processing, and analyzing fetched data. Furthermore, its robust capabilities extend to data visualization, empowering users to generate insightful charts, graphs, and dashboards to better understand and communicate their data-driven insights.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is very well suited to environments where you want to empower people at all levels and analytical skillsets to be able to quickly build dashboards at scale, as well as share updates in an automated fashion. It is less appropriate in environments where there is a strong need to have a lot of customizations in the chart/table output.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is an excellent tool when it comes to data manipulation and representation. It allows for custom embeds into existing products which meets the needs of our customers. However, there are a few areas of improvement that should be mentioned. Looker is not ideal for highly complex queries as it sometimes times out or doesn't render the full picture. It also does not allow for multiple people to change the cadence and preset delivery of reports (it removes the previous settings). Also, the lack of documentation and training has made it difficult to onboard additional team members to the product.
David Mynář | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is well suited for:
- Reporting multichannel and complex campaigns
- Medium to large data driven projects
- Google ecosystem data projects (Google Analytics, Big Querry, Google Ads and more)

Not so well suited for:
- Small projects with only one marketing channel
- Huge projects with heavy streaming needs
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We use Looker Studio Pro for embedded Analytics. Looker makes getting started with customized analytics really easy. It has a large number of features and tools that offers for advanced use cases even if Data Studio is still useful for some topics. Unfortunately the free version is a little bit better than the enterprise-embedded BI tools.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We build analytics for a given product. The work involves business, marketing, technical people and trade. Different values are important for everyone, everyone has a different level of knowledge and time to learn individual data from different places. Looker allows you to create one dashboard for everyone, only with agreed and explained values.
Chetan Gavade | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker will help to represent the reports anywhere on the cloud, websites or on any application. The data visualization which is managed by Google Looker is very much interactive & customizable. Looker will provide the best dashboards representation from many data points like SQL, Bigquery. You can also automate the dashboards representation by adding codes as required.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Internally we mainly use Looker to monitor KPI related to development processes and contract profitability: we collect data from other platform (Jira, ERP) and match them in order to see the status of economics and delivery KPIs. This allows us to see if and where there are areas of intervention in our group.

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is well suited for use for our engineering team, and not as useful for non-technical staff who aren't able to intuitively use Looker without some additional training or help from the data analytics team. It is occasionally hard to navigate the filtering and could be easier to use - but serves its current use case with our engineering team.
Billy Heany | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Looker is well suited for any user who would like up their reporting game from what you have situated in Google Analytics. The best part is being able to have everything in one simple to use dashboard vs clicking around multiple sites and pages to get all the data you would like to see at a glance. If you only use GA, then it's probably not necessary
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I think Looker as a platform is very comprehensive and while there is a bit of a learning curve in modeling (LookML, backend structure, etc.), once familiar, the breadth of capabilities is impressive. There are some shortcomings (not being able to replace a dashboard, but instead having to delete and publish a new one if there are edits that need to be overridden if they aren't edited directly on the specific dashboard). Pretty pricey as well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If your company wants to create advanced dashboards from Google Analytics and other integrated sources available through Looker’s API, then this is the right tool. I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re only using Google Analytics as your source, as they’re more than enough to report on web traffic.
Danilo Roberto Zerón | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
An example of a scenario where Google Looker Studio is less appropriate for a business would be a start-up that is seeking to keep costs low, and that is advertising or seeking to report on performance data across multiple platforms. Google Looker Studio has the capability to "blend" cross-channel data into a singular report, but this feature does require a paid "connector" tool, or multiple tools, to successfully complete the integration. Therefore, lower-budget and multi-channel organizations might not be best suited for GLS. On the other hand, any organization seeking to report on Google Data across the Google platform will find tremendous resources in GLS with respect to data analytics and performance reporting!
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