Amazon QuickSight vs Looker comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #3 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.1, and holds a 8.3% mindshare in the category. Google is ranked #5 in EBT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 25.9% mindshare. Additionally, 57% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Google users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon QuickSight and Looker based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

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Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department

I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

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Anoop Jose

Senior Manager - Architecture and engineering excellence at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

Helpful for visualization purposes but delayed drill-downs feature

Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area where we found QuickSight lacking. Especially for root cause analysis, the ability to drill down from a high-level problem to its root is crucial. Aside from that, QuickSight is a good service.

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Subramani R

Software Data Engineer at PayPal

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."

"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."

"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Amazon QuickSight can provide insights from the available data. It supports various rule types. We get the options of machine learning and insights, which are not available in other intelligence tools. It is easier to use, more stable, and cheaper than other solutions."

"The ease with which it integrates with different data sources is most valuable. Especially when everything is on AWS, it is easy to connect to the data source and organize different dashboards."

"It works well with the AWS ecosystem."

"Compared to other reporting tools, it is very effective but does require an understanding of certain concepts in QuickSight. This understanding is crucial for creating dimensions, changing metrics, and visualizing reports."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its flexibility to visualize certain logs."

"From an analytics perspective, it's really good for self-service analytics."

"Easily able to connect with our other services and easy to manage."

"The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there."

More Amazon QuickSight pros

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

"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."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."

"We can centralize all our data models."

More Looker pros

Cons

"Need improvement towards Visualization."

"It could have more options for themes."

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."

"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."

"The charts and graphics are weak."

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."

More IBM Cognos cons

"The product is quite expensive because the price is too close to QlikView's prices but it does not ring as well as QlikView."

"The product has some storage and SPICE data issues."

"The cost of queries is very high."

"The solution must be more user-friendly."

"There could be an end-to-end pipeline for data cleaning as well as presenting it using different visualizations."

"It's not ideal for reports that are more complex."

"The number of features in the product is limited in comparison with the other tools in the market, like Power BI."

"One area where Amazon QuickSight could improve is its formatting features for dashboards."

More Amazon QuickSight cons

"Stability needs improvement."

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"The product does not have documented material."

"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 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 integration with different databases must be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing should be improved."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."

"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."

"It is averagely priced."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"It's affordable compared to other long-term contractor business tools available in the market."

"Amazon QuickSight you subscribe and you use the service."

"The solution's pricing is cheaper than the other products in the market."

"I wouldn't say that it is an expensive product, but to stay competitive they would need to bring down the prices."

"The standard edition is free to use for exploration purposes while the enterprise edition needs to be paid for. The pricing for this solution is very reasonable."

"I'm using a paid version of Amazon QuickSight, paying about $22 monthly. As I have yet to learn about the pricing for other tools, such as Power BI, I won't be able to compare."

"I rate the price of Amazon QuickSight a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The product pricing is better than other vendors."

More Amazon QuickSight pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is cheap."

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

36%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

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What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?

The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?

Competition pricing is high for query processing, however, the Data Lake cost is nominal as it is on top of S3.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?

The cost of queries is very high. Improvements in drill-down ability and evolving it as an OLAP tool would help more.

See all answers

What do you like most about Looker?

With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.

See all answers

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 adva...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Looker?

The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 25% of the time

Tableau vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 20% of the time

Looker Studio vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 10% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon QuickSight Competitors

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 14% of the time

Tableau vs Looker

Compared 12% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Looker

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Looker

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon QuickSight

November 2024

Download Amazon QuickSight product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker

November 2024

Download Looker product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

QuickSight

No data available

Learn More

IBM

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business analytics service that makes it easy to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from your data. Using our cloud-based service you can easily connect to your data, perform advanced analysis, and create stunning visualizations and rich dashboards that can be accessed from any browser or mobile device.

Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time.

With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations.

The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

November 2024

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