Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Databricks vs Looker Studio 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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (7th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
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 7.8%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Looker Studio, on the other hand, focuses on Reporting, holds 2.4% mindshare, down 2.7% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the features provides nice interactive clusters, or compute instances that you don't really need to manage often."
"The solution is an impressive tool for data migration and integration."
"We can scale the product."
"The solution is easy to use and has a quick start-up time due to being on the cloud."
"It's great technology."
"I like cloud scalability and data access for any type of user."
"Ability to work collaboratively without having to worry about the infrastructure."
"I like the ability to use workspaces with other colleagues because you can work together even without seeing the other team's job."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"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."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
 

Cons

"There has been a significant evolution in databases. One area of improvement is the Databricks File System (DBFS), where command-line challenges arise when accessing files."
"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."
"This solution only supports queries in SQL and Python, which is a bit limiting."
"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."
"I would love an integration in my desktop IDE. For now, I have to code on their webpage."
"Databricks is not geared towards the end-user, but rather it is for data engineers or data scientists."
"As a data engineer, I see cluster failure in our Databricks user databases as a major issue."
"Databricks may not be as easy to use as other tools, but if you simplify a tool too much, it won't have the flexibility to go in-depth. Databricks is completely in the programmer's hands. I prefer flexibility rather than simplicity."
"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."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is around $600,000 for 50 users."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"There are different versions."
"It is an expensive tool. The licensing model is a pay-as-you-go one."
"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"The pricing depends on the usage itself."
"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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 product is available for free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Data Warehouse solutions are best for your needs.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Data Studio
 

Overview

 

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: March 2025.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.