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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 (11th)
SAS Visual Analytics
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.5%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
SAS Visual Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 1.6% mindshare, down 4.4% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.5%
Microsoft Power BI15.3%
Tableau Enterprise15.1%
Other67.1%
Reporting
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAS Visual Analytics1.6%
Tableau Enterprise9.6%
Qlik Sense4.8%
Other84.0%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
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.
AN
Senior Manager: ICT Compliance at DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION
Enables effective data management and reporting with a straightforward setup
SAS Visual Analytics is helpful as it allows us to perform any queries we need. The ability to query information from our Excel data into SAS to view specific data is invaluable. In terms of reporting, it is easy to extract quick reports and provides graphical representations of the data, which is a great feature.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"The speed to display charts and react to users' choices is great."
"It's relatively simple to create basic dashboards and reports."
"The variety of graphs and charts make it easy to show the data in a way that's easy to interpret."
"The best feature is that SAS is not a single BI tool; rather, it is part of an ecosystem of tools, such as tools that help a user to develop artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on."
"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."
"I like SAS Visual Analytics for its ability to provide an initial understanding of data through exploration, even before deep analytics."
"Since it is simply drag and drop it makes data inspection easy."
"The flexibility of the configuration is valuable to me."
 

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."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"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."
"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."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Colours used on report objects"
"Many things are missing, including Infomaps, Facebook connection, and better objects, and forecasting, auto-charting, and correlation are only available in exploration but should be available in reports."
"There is a need for coding when it comes to digital reporting which can be intimidating."
"If there could be 100% feasibility of forecasting feature available then we could be more accurate as it's currently 95%."
"There are scalability issues. It depends on the data volume and number of end-users. VA requires a lot of hardware resources to move volumes of data."
"I haven't come across any missing features."
"Regarding performance, they have some issues. They have always had some issues there."
"A bit more flexibility in the temperatization will be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
"It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
"Licensing is simple."
"SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
"It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
"The product is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Construction Company
8%
University
7%
 

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?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
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...
What is your primary use case for SAS Visual Analytics?
I started to work with SAS Visual Analytics ( /products/sas-visual-analytics-reviews ) in 2015. We use it for analysis on ICT expenditure information and ICT personnel information. The analytics ar...
 

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, IBM and others in Reporting. Updated: March 2026.
886,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.