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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
83
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (5th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Looker
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 14.0%, down 25.1% compared to last year.
Looker, on the other hand, focuses on Embedded BI, holds 8.0% mindshare, down 10.4% since last year.
Predictive Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alteryx14.0%
Anaplan13.8%
SAP Analytics Cloud12.7%
Other59.5%
Predictive Analytics
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker8.0%
Tableau Enterprise26.6%
Qlik Sense12.2%
Other53.2%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
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 scheduling within the solution is excellent."
"Good data transformation."
"There are a lot of good customization capabilities."
"I like that I can merge data from different sources into one place."
"It helps clean messy data and provides spatial analysis."
"It's super easy to learn how to use it — the learning curve is very small."
"The solution offers excellent predicting power. The accuracy and confidence have been great."
"Alteryx significantly reduces the time spent searching for specific information."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"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."
"The product is easy to use."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
 

Cons

"The pricing seems high for my current needs. However, considering the benefits, it is easier to justify to management for broader company usage."
"Alteryx could be improved in the area of analytics and central governance."
"The only area where the product lags is documentation and videos on the analytical app and the batch macro."
"The price of the solution could improve by being lower."
"The technical support could have a little bit of improvement."
"The solution can be quite complex in some aspects."
"It seems to me that it is not always user friendly."
"Alteryx can improve the model management and deployment processing of large workloads."
"Stability needs improvement."
"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 visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The product does not have documented material."
"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."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price for Alteryx Designer is reasonable but the price for Alteryx Server for universal collaborations is too expensive."
"The solution has a more costly license than other tools in the market."
"The price could be better."
"My organization pays for it, and I do not look into the financial aspect of the licensing, but I know it is pretty expensive."
"The cost of the solution could be reduced."
"Alteryx is an expensive solution."
"There are some implementation services and internal effort costs at the beginning but there is nothing else."
"It is cheap."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Media Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise51
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...
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

 

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, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.