Looker Studio vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

Google and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.6, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.7. Google holds a 2.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

Looker Studio

Read 12 Looker Studio reviews

1,051 Views
1,158 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Pentaho Business Analytics

Read 44 Pentaho Business Analytics reviews

734 Views
525 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Pentaho Business Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Pentaho Business Analytics and Looker Studio are competitors in the business intelligence solutions category. Looker Studio has the upper hand due to its seamless integration with Google products, which enhances data management and visualization.

Features: Looker Studio is favored for its integration capabilities with Google products, effective data visualization, and user-friendly dashboards. Pentaho excels in ETL capabilities, data integration, and connectivity with various databases.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho needs enhancements in user-friendliness, mobile responsiveness, and visual data presentation tools. Looker Studio should improve report loading times, data visualization, and expand live data integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho is effective in on-premises and hybrid cloud deployment but has mixed customer service reviews. Looker Studio performs well in public cloud environments, with reliable technical support but needs improvement in customer service interactions.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho offers a free Community Edition, while its Enterprise Edition can be costly. Looker Studio’s main advantage is being free, although costs can occur when connecting to external sources. Both have promising ROI, with Looker benefiting from seamless Google service integration.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Pentaho Business Analytics Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

March 2025

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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

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pentaho Business Analytics

Ranking in Reporting

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 1.1%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

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.

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Sayan König

Senior Manager, Financial Services at KPMG

Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up

The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

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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

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

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."

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

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

"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."

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."

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

More Looker Studio pros

"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."

"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."

"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."

"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."

"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."

"Easy to use components to create the job."

More Pentaho Business Analytics pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."

"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."

"Version control would be a good addition."

"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."

"The repository should be improved."

"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."

"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."

"Logging capability is needed."

More Pentaho Business Analytics cons

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."

"The product is available for free."

"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."

"Free and commercial versions are available."

"Pentaho is expensive ."

"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."

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Comparison Review

it_user6978

Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)

Jun 10, 2013

Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition

Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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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...

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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

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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?

For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds the pricing to be good.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?

The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and it has brought some issues to the company.

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 45% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 20% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

KNIME vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 37% of the time

Databricks vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 15% of the time

Tableau vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

More Pentaho Business Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

April 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Business Analytics

March 2025

Download Pentaho Business Analytics product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics

Overview

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

Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

Hitachi Vantara

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

March 2025

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

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