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Alteryx vs Looker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (4th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Looker
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 24.4%, down 25.7% compared to last year.
Looker, on the other hand, focuses on Embedded BI, holds 25.9% mindshare, up 24.5% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek Vaibhav - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2024
Has a good UI and drag-and-drop features which makes it easy to understand
There have been some issues with licensing, particularly with the increased prices. This has led some companies, including ours, to consider reducing the number of licenses or potentially discontinuing their use of Alteryx. Since most of our team members work with Alteryx, deploying workflows to clients who may not have licenses became a hurdle. Every user needed a license to run the workflows, which could pose difficulties, especially for clients who only needed occasional access for small data analyses. Unlike other software like Microsoft Power BI, which offers free trials or user licenses for basic functionality, Alteryx doesn't provide such options, potentially limiting its accessibility for occasional users. It should improve scalability.
Subramani R - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 5, 2022
The APIs are exposed at every level, so it's highly modular
Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs and different platforms. You can't create very attractive visuals with the built-in features, but I think they're providing some extensions to develop different visualizations. Looker can't create multiple sheets. You can only create one dashboard. It's not that you're able to toggle through different sheets to navigate different visuals. It's just one and people have to scroll through the dashboard. So scrolling is not something that people generally like to do, rather than segregating them in multiple tabs of sheets.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product's Macros probably are one of the most useful aspects."
"Alteryx makes it easy for the end customer to see clean data in a structured form."
"Shortens the time required to start analyzing data and looking for insights, minimizing the tasks that do not add value to the business and maximizing the analysis phase."
"The solution has been stable."
"The scheduling within the solution is excellent."
"Alteryx is a simple and easy-to-use solution."
"It is a stable and scalable solution."
"The design portion of this tool is easy to use without code, which his something that something we can appreciate."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"The product is easy to use."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
 

Cons

"I think sometimes the solution doesn't load properly or takes so much time for the workflows. Though the workflow runs and completes the file in Excel, if you use the same formula, it's a bit slow. Also, the image processing is not so good because I tried to do some image processing and they were like, sometimes they put two to eight. In the document, it was two, but the OCR predicted it as eight."
"The solution can be quite complex in some aspects."
"Alteryx's development environment could be improved as it requires installation locally and can't be developed in the cloud."
"In the database, it should be more functional and connect to more big data, especially using IPI."
"We can't browse multiple files. When we deploy a solution on a gallery, let's say I have ten different files, and I have to upload them all at once. This is something that's difficult in the gallery. So case by case, I see some downsides, but often we do something alternative."
"It seems to me that it is not always user friendly."
"It would be nice if they can provide Alteryx with more options for In-DB connectivity. That functionality is there, but it doesn't include all software we are connecting."
"The formula we currently use in Alteryx can be automated."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"The product does not have documented material."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"Stability needs improvement."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The desktop platform costs $5,000 per year. It's very costly."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Opt for the three year subscription. It is 20% less than the yearly one."
"Its price should be lower. The key thing that we see is that talking about ROI is an important element at the time of purchase. Cost becomes a factor in every discussion. Justifying the ROI for these kinds of workflows is always a challenge, and the only way to counter the challenge is by addressing the pricing."
"The cost of Alteryx is approximately $2,900 annually."
"The seat is too expensive."
"The price could be better."
"ROI is huge. There are some secondary benefits, like analysts getting their post 5 PM time back or the ability to shorten all closing processes to a half or less."
"It is cheap."
"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
35%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me directly if you want to know more.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, R integrations if your team requires this. It can handle over 2 billion rows of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say the following: - An excellent desktop tool for Data Prep and analytics. - Featu...
What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?
I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...
 

Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, RapidMiner and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: November 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.