Looker vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared Google and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. Google is ranked #5 in EBT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 9.3% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 21.6% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Looker

Read 19 Looker reviews

1,537 Views
1,260 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,103 Views
17,369 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Looker

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI.

To learn more, read our detailed Embedded BI Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Embedded BI

March 2025

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Helped 845,589 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded BI (5th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker is designed for Embedded BI and holds a mindshare of 9.3%, down 11.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.6% mindshare, down 22.4% since last year.

Embedded BI

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala

Sr Analytics Consultant at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive

Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."

"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."

"The product is easy to use."

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."

More Looker pros

"I like the fact that Power BI lets me use Excel data. At least 90% of my state data is in Excel spreadsheets. Having the ability to just attach a spreadsheet as a data source is very, very important. It's also good for training and teaching. Sometimes you don't always have access to a live production database, so having a spreadsheet with sample data is always nice."

"It's easy to create reports and it's easy to download the data from the corresponding report."

"It's a very easy-to-use solution."

"We have found the product very stable and reliable."

"I also find connecting to different data sources is quite simple. Other solutions we were using before were complicated."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Power BI is the drill-through feature that takes you to a details page the users want to see."

"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."

"My favorite feature is the power query editor, where it can do the data transformations."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"Stability needs improvement."

"The product does not have documented material."

"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"The maps in Power BI could be improved. You deal with many maps over the years, like maps of America and Saudi Arabia. The maps aren't detailed enough, and there aren't enough visualization tools. Whenever I want to use a map, I struggle with choosing the right visualization."

"They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly."

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

"Microsoft BI could improve by allowing large-size data sources. We have large data sources, and we have problems loading them in Microsoft BI."

"From an improvement perspective, I think if the Power BI developers of that platform would really focus on being more detailed and specific on the error messages, it would help a lot of developers troubleshoot and maintain the report ECT or the dashboard ECT."

"The solution could improve by having more attractive graphical charts."

"I'm missing collaborations functionality to operate or to work connected with multiple people on a data source or on virtualization. There should be more collaborations functions, such as in Confluence. We haven't explored the solution sufficiently in this area, but at this time it doesn't look sufficient."

"The integration with other solutions could be improved for reporting aspects."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."

"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."

"It is cheap."

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."

"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."

"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."

"This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license."

"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."

"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."

"The current licensing model that Microsoft BI has is expensive. My customers have told me the cost is approximately $20 per user and this can get expensive fast. There should be a one-time purchase option if the customer has a lot of users."

"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."

"Their price is good."

"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."

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

33%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?

With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?

I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Looker?

The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, ...

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

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 information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

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 fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker

Compared 14% of the time

Tableau vs Looker

Compared 13% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Looker

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Looker

Compared 6% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker

March 2025

Download Looker product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time.

With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations.

The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

Google

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.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI. Updated: March 2025.

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We monitor all Embedded BI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.