Databricks vs Looker Studio comparison

The compared Databricks and Google solutions aren't in the same category. Databricks is ranked #7 in CDW , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 7.2% mindshare in the category. Google is ranked #11 in RT , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Google users who would recommend it.

Databricks

Read 88 Databricks reviews

2,446 Views
1,621 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Read 12 Looker Studio reviews

1,124 Views
1,280 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Databricks

Looker Studio

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Databricks and Looker Studio based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Data Warehouse Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Data Warehouse

February 2025

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Helped 838,533 peers since 2012

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

Databricks

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)

Looker Studio

Average Rating

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (11th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 7.2%, up 2.7% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 2.5% mindshare, down 2.8% since last year.

Cloud Data Warehouse

Reporting

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7

Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow

Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

Read full review

Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We like that this solution can handle a wide variety and velocity of data engineering, either in batch mode or real-time."

"The integration with Python and the notebooks really helps."

"A very valuable feature is the data processing, and the solution is specifically good at using the Spark ecosystem."

"Can cut across the entire ecosystem of open source technology to give an extra level of getting the transformatory process of the data."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is its notebook. It's quite convenient to use, both terms of the research and the development and also the final deployment, I can just declare the spark jobs by the load tables. It's quite convenient."

"The solution's features are fantastic and include interactive clusters that perform at top speed when compared to other solutions."

"Databricks is hosted on the cloud. It is very easy to collaborate with other team members who are working on it. It is production-ready code, and scheduling the jobs is easy."

"We are completely satisfied with the ease of connecting to different sources of data or pocket files in the search"

More Databricks pros

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

More Looker Studio pros

Cons

"The query plan is not easy with Databrick's job level. If I want to tune any of the code, it is not easily available in the blogs as well."

"We'd like a more visual dashboard for analysis It needs better UI."

"The product cannot be integrated with a popular coding IDE."

"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."

"The initial setup is difficult."

"The solution could be improved by integrating it with data packets. Right now, the load tables provide a function, like team collaboration. Still, it's unclear as to if there's a function to create different branches and/or more branches. Our team had used data packets before, however, I feel it's difficult to integrate the current with the previous data packets."

"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."

"There should be better integration with other platforms."

More Databricks cons

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."

More Looker Studio cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."

"The pricing depends on the usage itself."

"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."

"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."

"Databricks is a very expensive solution. Pricing is an area that could definitely be improved. They could provide a lower end compute and probably reduce the price."

"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."

"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."

"There are different versions."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The tool is free."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The product is available for free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?

Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...

See all answers

How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?

We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?

Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets take about three to five minutes to reflect in Looker Studio. Overall, the interfac...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and I use it for project plan maintenance and data tracking.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dataiku vs Databricks

Compared 11% of the time

Dremio vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon SageMaker vs Databricks

Compared 7% of the time

More Databricks Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 47% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 23% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

February 2025

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

February 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

Data Studio

Overview

Databricks is utilized for advanced analytics, big data processing, machine learning models, ETL operations, data engineering, streaming analytics, and integrating multiple data sources.

Organizations leverage Databricks for predictive analysis, data pipelines, data science, and unifying data architectures. It is also used for consulting projects, financial reporting, and creating APIs. Industries like insurance, retail, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals use Databricks for data management and analytics due to its user-friendly interface, built-in machine learning libraries, support for multiple programming languages, scalability, and fast processing.

What are the key features of Databricks?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies operations and usability.
Built-in machine learning libraries: Facilitates machine learning tasks.
Support for multiple programming languages: Enhances flexibility.
Scalability: Efficiently handles growing data needs.
Fast processing: Improves performance and speed.
Automated optimization: Reduces manual efforts.
Data visualization: Provides insightful visuals.
Collaborative features: Enhances teamwork.
Delta Lake performance: Boosts data management.
Seamless cluster management: Simplifies system operations.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for in Databricks reviews?

Efficiency in handling large datasets: Ensures smooth processing.
Interactive workspace environment: Improves user collaboration.
Integration with platforms: Provides connectivity benefits.
Performance optimization: Enhances overall system performance.
Support for data governance and security: Ensures data integrity and protection.

Databricks is implemented in insurance for risk analysis and claims processing; in retail for customer analytics and inventory management; in manufacturing for predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization; and in pharmaceuticals for drug discovery and patient data analysis. Users value its scalability, machine learning support, collaboration tools, and Delta Lake performance but seek improvements in visualization, pricing, and integration with BI tools.

Databricks

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Google

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

Genesys, Shueisha

Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: February 2025.

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