Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.2, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Google holds a 2.3% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 26.5% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.5%, up from 25.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Jul 27, 2022

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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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

May 28, 2024

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.

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Amol Rane

Solutions Architect M365 at Sogeti UK

Jul 17, 2024

Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics

The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

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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 main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."

"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."

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

"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."

"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."

"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."

"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

More IBM Cognos pros

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

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

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

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

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."

"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."

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

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

More Looker Studio pros

"The standard BI visualization capabilities are great."

"The scalability overall has been quite good."

"Power BI stands out because it provides considerable flexibility in creating reports, dashboards, and various types of analytics to meet those dynamic requirements. It is lightweight and easy to use with good support."

"The tool's most valuable features are slicer and Microsoft Copilot integration. It also allows users to see reports on mobile devices. The solution can also integrate with various data sources."

"Its seamless integration with Microsoft products, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Excel, is the most valuable."

"The flexibility of the program is valuable. We are able to add other information to the reporting information and expand upon it."

"The scalability is good. We have 20 people in my organization using this solution and plan to increase usage."

"I like all the tools in Microsoft BI because they all have different purposes. There are a lot of people using Microsoft BI, and everybody is using it. The users have adapted well to the technology."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."

"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."

"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."

"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."

"The solution's support could be better."

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

"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."

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

More IBM Cognos cons

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."

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

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

"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."

"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."

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"The cost of the solution can get high."

"One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."

"Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget."

"It should have more integrations."

"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."

"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."

"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."

"Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

"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."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"The solution is affordable."

"It is averagely priced."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

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

"The tool is free."

"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 product is available for free."

"Power BI is cheaper than Tableau and Cognos."

"Costs less than most competing solutions."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."

"The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately."

"Pricing is a big advantage that Power BI has over Tableau. Power BI is three or four times cheaper than Tableau. For my personal use, I will definitely prefer a $20 monthly fee of Power BI rather than a $70 monthly fee of Tableau. If you pay altogether for Power BI, they give you a discount, whereas, with Tableau, there is no discount. There are three versions of Power BI: Free, Pro, and Premium. The Premium version comes with a lot of things. There is no extra or hidden fee. You pay every month, and the software is with you. If you upgrade, there will be some extra charges."

"Power BI is cheaper for smaller groups when comparing to competitors. It requires a monthly per-user subscription."

"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

57%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

41%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

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 ...

See all answers

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 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. W...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicati...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards.

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 45% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Looker vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

QlikView vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 17% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

November 2024

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

November 2024

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Data Studio

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Learn More

IBM

Google

Microsoft

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.”

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.

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

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.

Genesys, Shueisha

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

October 2024

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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