Looker Studio vs Tableau comparison

Google and Salesforce are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.6, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Google holds a 2.9% mindshare in RT, compared to Salesforce’s 21.7% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Looker Studio

Read 13 Looker Studio reviews

975 Views
255 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 306 Tableau reviews

10,182 Views
1,685 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Tableau and Looker Studio compete as robust data visualization tools. Tableau has an upper hand due to its flexibility and user-friendly visualization capabilities, appealing to larger enterprises, while Looker Studio offers cost-effective integration with Google products, suiting smaller organizations.

Features: Tableau provides drag-and-drop analytics, real-time decision-making, and flexible data handling. It supports extensive data visualization and complex analytics for enterprises. Looker Studio offers strong connectivity with Google products, ease of integration with existing systems, and simpler analytics solutions beneficial for smaller organizations.

Room for Improvement: Tableau can improve by reducing its premium pricing, enhancing large dataset management, and expanding data preparation features. Looker Studio can enhance real-time data integration, improve report loading speeds, and introduce more advanced features to better compete in complex business needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau offers versatile deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid models. Customer service is generally positive but has noted gaps due to high demand. Looker Studio focuses on seamless integration with Google's cloud systems, offering user-friendly deployments but relies heavily on community support with varying response quality.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau is considered expensive compared to competitors like Power BI, but delivers strong ROI by reducing manual reporting efforts. Looker Studio's free base model appeals to budget-conscious users, but advanced features may require a Google Cloud subscription, affecting cost-effectiveness for larger projects.

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

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Tableau

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 856,873 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 Studio

Ranking in Reporting

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tableau

Ranking in Reporting

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

306

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 21.7%, down from 23.1% 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.

Read full review

Nattawat Choosuwan

Senior Data Consultant at a government with 11-50 employees

Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process

An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

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

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."

More Looker Studio pros

"Tableau is an advanced specialized tool. One of the best features I've seen is the lack of an intermediate semantic layer. I think that's an advantage compared to any other tool like BusinessObjects or Power BI, which are Tableau's biggest competitors."

"It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers."

"The use of a storyboard helps the flow of the data visualisation."

"The solution allows for the possibility for end-users to do their own reporting."

"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."

"The solution has a lot of customization when comparing to Microsoft BI."

"Tableau has greatly enhanced our organization's data-driven decision-making processes by enabling us to create visually compelling reports and dashboards."

"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"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."

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."

"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."

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

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

More Looker Studio cons

"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."

"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."

"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."

"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."

"Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau."

"Overall, the only major frustration that I have had so far is with Tableau Public. I first used Tableau Public when I was building capacity, and when there was a later release to download and you wanted to upgrade, all your work would have to be manually re-entered."

"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."

"The development part should be better. We are putting a lot of effort in during development, so if we face any struggles, we have to find workaround solutions on the internet."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."

"The tool is 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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The pricing for Tableau is the same as the other products in the market."

"The license is very expensive."

"Its licensing cost should be improved."

"The licensing model of Tableau has changed since we initially purchased it three years ago and it is more complicated, and I have found it to be more expensive. They have lost market shares to Microsoft BI. My company will probably change solutions this year because of the increased pricing model."

"The cost is high."

"At $70 per month, I think the price is a bit scary. I have a small consulting firm in Ghana, working in about 15 different African countries, and when it comes to our part of the world, $70 a month is a lot of money for software."

"Tableau has reasonable pricing."

"In Korea, the tool's pricing depends on the scale of usage. For instance, it's reasonable for a department with fewer than 50 users to adopt Tableau, like sales. However, the pricing becomes an issue when considering an enterprise solution for a larger user base, say 10,000 people."

More Tableau 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

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Educational Organization

38%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

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

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...

See all answers

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?

Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 44% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 18% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 3% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 18% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

June 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

May 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

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

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Tableau

June 2025

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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