Looker vs MicroStrategy comparison

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Looker

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

MicroStrategy and Looker compete in the business intelligence category. MicroStrategy appears to have the upper hand in handling complex data requirements and enterprise scalability, while Looker excels in its ease of use and ability to democratize data.

Features: MicroStrategy is known for its strong data integration options, a powerful SQL engine, advanced mobile solutions, and enterprise scalability, making it suitable for large-scale data processing. It also offers robust metadata management and advanced report customization. Looker shines with its intuitive data modeling language, LookML, which simplifies data modeling for business users. It also provides effective data democratization and seamless integration with cloud platforms, offering a modern approach to business intelligence.

Room for Improvement: MicroStrategy users mention challenges with report performance and complex licensing, often desiring more user-driven customization and quicker feature rollouts. On the other hand, Looker users want more customization options, improved visualization variety, and greater interactivity in reports and dashboards.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MicroStrategy offers both on-premises and hybrid cloud solutions, with customer support quality varying by location. Looker, primarily a cloud-based solution, benefits from a strong community but has limited direct support, with some users finding its issue resolution process complicated.

Pricing and ROI: MicroStrategy is noted for its significant upfront costs but is considered cost-effective long-term for enterprises due to strong feature sets and scalability. It requires careful licensing assessment to manage expenses effectively. Looker offers a flexible pricing model perceived as lower-cost and higher-value, especially suitable for large operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: June 2025).

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Looker vs. MicroStrategy

June 2025

Helped 861,524 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

Ranking in Embedded BI

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

MicroStrategy

Ranking in Embedded BI

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 8.9%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 11.4%, up from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Embedded BI

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.

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AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

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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

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

"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."

"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."

"We can centralize all our data models."

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

"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 have had a lot of projects where we had a lot of users, like thousands of users, and the data was in one report which could bring in six million records. MicroStrategy is doing a good job on scalability."

"It plays a vital role in establishing a connection with predictive continuous improvement."

"The mobile for MicroStrategy is the best of all the BI platforms. As a separate product for the mobile device, MicroStrategy is the entire BI platform. It is an enterprise solution, a separate unit, etc."

"The most valuable features are ad hoc reporting and the ability to create dashboards."

"Dependency on development teams, as well as managing the platform, has reduced a lot with Visual Insight."

"The hyperintelligence is the most valuable feature."

"The most valuable features are drill down, dashboards, documents, bringing everything under one roof, and visualizations."

"Tech support has been great, very responsive. We usually hear back within a day. We usually email them and that works out perfect. The right person always gets back to us."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

"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."

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"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."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"The product does not have documented material."

"Stability needs improvement."

"We had some problems with customer service and support."

"Sometimes you can do something in reports, but you cannot do the same thing in documents."

"Lacks a thriving community"

"Needs tighter mapping integration."

"Training would be an area that they could improve upon."

"Preparation, data loading and data management application is challenging with MicroStrategy. It lacks cube-based analytics as it is outdated, meaning there is no memory or fast processing analytics or MMA deployment."

"Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly."

"MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheap."

"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."

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

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

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

"The licensing is a bit high per user."

"Now, the price is high."

"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."

"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."

"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

"Pricing, in general, is high. With Power BI, you get mobile with the license, whereas with MicroStrategy, you have to purchase mobile for extra."

"The solution’s licensing cost is expensive."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

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.

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...

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, ...

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs MicroStrategy

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Looker product report

Looker

July 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

June 2025

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

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

Sample Customers

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

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.