Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.
N/A
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month per user
Pricing
Looker
Tableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker
Tableau Desktop
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
Must contact sales team for pricing.
All pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Looker
Tableau Desktop
TrustRadius Insights
Looker
Tableau Desktop
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
Looker and Tableau Desktop are Business Intelligence tools designed to help users perform data analysis and create visualizations to display their findings. Both Business Intelligence tools are used by businesses of all sizes, though large enterprises prefer Tableau Desktop while Looker is most popular with mid-sized businesses.
Tableau Desktop offers strong visualization features that allow data analysts to create sophisticated visualizations. Looker has robust analytics features that enable non-technical users to create simple queries, while technical staff can create complex, customized queries.
Features
Looker and Tableau Desktop both provide essential business intelligence features such as data visualization and analysis, but they also both have some standout features.
Looker includes a library of analytics code blocks that allow new users to perform analysis on stored data easily. These code blocks are entirely customizable as well, so advanced users can create custom queries. Looker also offers many built-in integrations and has a flexible system for pulling in data from applications that don’t have a native integration. As a result, Looker can collect data from many sources without issue.
Tableau Desktop includes OLAP compatibility, allowing for web-based analytics and data collection. Additionally, Tableau Desktop has APIs for many big data analytics tools, allowing for visualizations based on data analysis performed by big data software. Lastly, Tableau has robust visualization features that help users to create simple visualizations, or use advanced features to create complex, interactive visualizations.
Limitations
Though Looker and Tableau Desktop both have comprehensive features for business intelligence, they also have a few important limitations.
Looker doesn’t have any support for OLAP, which makes web-based analytics more difficult. Companies that need to make use of OLAP may not be able to use Looker. Additionally, Looker doesn’t offer as many tools or integrations for big data analysis. Lastly, though Looker offers visualization features, they are not as sophisticated as the advanced visualizations that Tableau Desktop provides.
Tableau Desktop doesn’t offer analytics tools that are as straightforward as Lookers analytics blocks. Performing analytics using Tableau requires technical staff to write queries using Tableau Desktop’s visual query language. Tableau Desktop’s tools for third-party data collection are not as robust as Looker’s multiple integrations and tools for third-party data collection.
Pricing
Looker pricing depends on the size and user needs of the business. Quotes from Looker can include or remove features as needed by the organization.
Tableau Desktop pricing depends on the number of licenses purchased. The Viewer license costs $12.00 per month per user and allows for data viewing and interaction. The Explorer package costs $35.00 per month per user and allows for data querying and content sharing. Lastly, the Creator package costs $70.00 per month per user and allows for the creation of sophisticated visualization.
Features
Looker
Tableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.4
Ratings
3% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.3
Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports
8.00 Ratings
8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards
9.00 Ratings
8.40 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates
8.30 Ratings
7.80 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis
8.10 Ratings
8.60 Ratings
Formatting capabilities
7.80 Ratings
9.20 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8.80 Ratings
7.70 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration
9.20 Ratings
9.20 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.1
Ratings
3% below category average
Publish to Web
8.30 Ratings
7.30 Ratings
Publish to PDF
9.10 Ratings
7.90 Ratings
Report Versioning
8.60 Ratings
8.20 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling
9.10 Ratings
9.20 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers
00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
When you need to create a centralised dashboard for multiple stakeholders that blends cross-channel reporting. As an SEO agency reporting for clients - Looker is a great solution. It's less appropriate depending on the intended users. For instance, in my experience Looker reports have been under-utilised because they're not accessed regularly, provide too much noise or often simple PDF reports are preferred
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
The Visualizations graphics are really good and the color options help in designing attractive charts. They help to convey more information and can be made interactive.
You can add filters with offer you to plug and play with values and understand different outcomes.
You can drag and drop options while creating charts and dashboards. also it is a very fluid layout.
We are very haooy with Looker, it provides us with all the funciomalities we need for both the day to day oerformance tracking and longer periods reporting. It is easy to use for account managers, configurable and customizable for soecialists and what is most imoortant, our clinets generally really love it
Because right now its the best option out there (disclosure: I haven't used Qlikview or some of the other direct competitors of Tableau). The big investment is in Tableau Server not desktop. For the cost of the license of Tableau desktop, its a pretty good deal. You can hook it up to pretty much any data source easily. You can easily share the visualizations with your team/colleagues easily. Tableau Desktop is generally easy to use for business users. But the more advanced stuff is better suited for a analyst or someone with a IT/CS background.
Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
The Tableau Desktop's support team has been very helpful and tend to response very quickly. After all you have paid very premium price for the product and it goes to the services. This makes using the tool much easier for these who doesn't have such experience to get help quickly.
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
Time needs to be spent ahead of implementation to make sure data sources are set up and ready. Consultants need to understand the data sources and the goals before setting foot on-site. Installation is easy, learning to use it takes time. The training resources available are great.
In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, especially for internal databases, but will gladly use Looker for our marketing information for AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and YouTube.
Tableau Desktop is clearly one of the best in the business. It has incredible capabilities, and many features are extremely useful. The intuitiveness of the dashboards and the graphical nature of the visualizations are widely used features and super helpful. One of the other benefits is that both programmers and non-programmers can equally explore and create their own opportunities, and seamless integration is possible.
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
Other than some people not liking the numbers, I don't see any negative impacts; we haven't experienced that.
The reports help us unravel the story of our users and how they are sifting through our pages.
Our clients enjoy seeing the numbers to understand better what stands out on their sites.
The reports have helped us see what campaigns are working and where we need to tweak things.
The reports have enabled us to have better conversations with stakeholders about how their web pages should be modified, edited, etc., to reflect the data.
