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Looker Studio vs SAS Visual Analytics 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

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (10th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 3.4% mindshare, down 5.2% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio3.1%
Microsoft Power BI23.8%
Tableau Enterprise20.2%
Other52.9%
Reporting
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAS Visual Analytics3.4%
Tableau Enterprise19.2%
Apache Superset9.2%
Other68.2%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
Renato Vazamin - PeerSpot reviewer
Single environment for multiple phases saves us time, and has good visualizations
We had that solution installed previously in another solution, Selvaya, but I don't think we used it at the time. We are now using SAS Detect Investigation as a complementary solution, in which we have part of the process, use a gene, SAS collects information and identifies some business situations, and the business guys use Visual Analytics to explore the results of the process. We previously used the FICO platform, but we switched because FICO's pricing was not scalable. Bringing more data or workloads to the platform required a significant investment in order to scale. We needed to change because we have a lot of data to process every day. FICO was also a little more complicated than SAS Visual Analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"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."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution."
"It integrates well with SAS, making it simple and quick for developers."
"It's relatively simple to create basic dashboards and reports."
"I believe that the possibilities for exploring data and formulating visual results are quite good because it allows the business analyst to have different perspectives on the data."
"Visual Analytics is very easy to use. I use Visual Analytics for all the typical use cases except text mining. I used it to analyze data and monitor statistics, not text mining. I also use it for data visualization as well as creating interactive dashboards and infographics."
"It's a stable, reliable product."
"Simplifies report designs and quickly displays tables and graphs."
"I would rate the overall solution a ten out of ten."
 

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 challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"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."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The visualization should be better in SAS Visual Analytics. It is easy to use but when compared to other solutions it is lacking and the support is not very good."
"The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."
"The installation process can be a bit complex."
"A bit more flexibility in the temperatization will be helpful."
"SAS Visual Analytics could be more user-friendly."
"SAS Visual Analytics could improve by making it more accessible for users outside the organization."
"I haven't come across any missing features."
"The product is expensive and needs the integration of more languages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"$10,000 per annum for an enterprise license."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"I work with the tool's free version...The tool's corporate version is very expensive and requires a monthly hire."
"The product is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
 

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...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a template or create a template, which can take significant time, it's not the most u...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
Regarding the product, I was doing research for a client in the LMS industry. I was seeing what else was out there and why certain things were pulling for certain reasons. I wouldn't say I'm techni...
What do you like most about SAS Visual Analytics?
The most solution's notable aspect, in my view, is the ability to integrate various data sources and harness advanced technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Visual Analytics?
It's about an average of five. It's easy to scale, but it comes with cost.
What needs improvement with SAS Visual Analytics?
In terms of configuration, I would like to see AI capabilities since many applications are now integrating AI. It may be that our current subscription does not include AI-enabled features, but I wo...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
SAS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Qlik and others in Reporting. Updated: September 2025.
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