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Alteryx vs Looker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (6th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Looker
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 7.6%, down 22.8% compared to last year.
Looker, on the other hand, focuses on Embedded BI, holds 6.4% mindshare, down 9.0% since last year.
Predictive Analytics Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alteryx7.6%
Anaplan6.9%
SAP Analytics Cloud6.7%
Other78.8%
Predictive Analytics
Embedded BI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker6.4%
Tableau Enterprise17.6%
Qlik Sense8.6%
Other67.4%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Rajneesh Prajapati - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Rpa Consultant at Accely Consulting
Time-saving workflows have transformed data preparation and predictive analysis for my team
Some of the best features Alteryx offers are its no and low-code capabilities. It delivers massive time-saving and includes spatial and predictive analysis. Alteryx includes built-in tools such as drive time analysis and linear regression, which are much harder to achieve in standard BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau. In addition to these features, Alteryx provides built-in spatial tools that can calculate drive time and location-based insights with minimal effort through drag-and-drop spatial tools, low complex coding, faster, and more accurate results. Linear regression predicts sales based on marketing spend, estimates costs based on usage, and identifies trends in historical data. Alteryx has positively impacted my organization by saving time, improving accuracy, and enabling better decision-making. Using Alteryx, complex tasks such as data cleansing, joining datasets, drive time analysis, and linear regression can be done much faster compared to manual Excel or SQL work. This reduces dependency on manual effort and lowers the risk of human error. Drive time analysis helps my organization make better location-based decisions, such as identifying optimal service areas or improving customer reach.
Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Alteryx is the intelligence suite."
"It's super easy to learn how to use it — the learning curve is very small."
"The product is very stable and super fast, five-star. It's significantly more stable than it's nearest competitor."
"Automation is the most valuable aspect for us. The ability to wrap business logic around the data is very helpful."
"All of the data science features in terms of unioning and joining data together are valuable."
"Predictive models, which are easy to use, and help a lot with fast design and deployment​."
"The drag-and-drop functionality, the ready-to-use analytics module, and the ability to track my data pipelines visually are the solution's most valuable features."
"There are a lot of good customization capabilities."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"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."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"The product is easy to use."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 GUI interface functions but it could stand to be updated to a more modern look and feel."
"There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason."
"There is currently no cloud solution and this would be valuable for many clients."
"I mostly used it for flat files, but I have many colleagues who reported that to tune a query, in case they want to directly connect to the database, there is no option to optimize the performance of the query, as we have in Informatica."
"If there is any way to make the learning curve less steep, that would be ideal."
"The tool could include more native connectors, such as for global ERPs, instead of requiring additional fees for these connections."
"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."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"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."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Stability needs improvement."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a good price."
"The price for Alteryx Designer is reasonable but the price for Alteryx Server for universal collaborations is too expensive."
"The price could be better."
"There are some implementation services and internal effort costs at the beginning but there is nothing else."
"In order to have designers, and, if you want to collaborate, you have to buy a server. If the designer is $5,000, and if you want a server, you have to pay $80,000."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"Alteryx isn't extortionately expensive, but it's not cheap either."
"I don't know much about the licensing, but there are some additional costs for certain features."
"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
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
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Comparisons

 

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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, Anaplan and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: March 2026.
883,896 professionals have used our research since 2012.