Tableau vs Looker

The majority of the companies and professionals are confused while choosing between Tableau and Looker as both are powerful BI tools and offer exciting features and services.

So, are you one of those companies? - If yes, you are in the right place!

This article will help you choose the best BI tool that suits your organizational needs by comparing all the features between Tableau vs Looker.

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Nowadays, many organizations around the world are adopting BI tools for analyzing data. Among these, Tableau and Looker are the most famous ones and the majority of companies prefer either of these two tools as they analyze the data efficiently and offer quick results when compared with other BI tools.

Looker vs Tableau: Which BI Tool Is Better?

Following is the list of comparison elements that we are going to discuss in this Tableau vs Looker blog:

• What Is Tableau
• What Is Looker
• Data Visualization
• Integration
• Data Modeling
• Reporting
• Speed
• Security
• Operating System
• Mobile Support
• Pricing
• Comparison between Looker and Tableau

Now, let's start this article with a brief introduction to Tableau and Looker. 

What Is Tableau?

A Tableau is a powerful BI tool that enhances the visualization of data. Using Tableau, users can analyze the large volume of data and they can create reports quickly and efficiently.

[Related Article: Tableau Tutorial For Beginners]

What Is Looker?

Looker is a big data analytics platform and business intelligence software that shares, explores, and analyzes real-time business analytics easily to the user.

 

Key Differences Between Looker vs Tableau In Detail

Let dive into the key comparison between Tableau Vs Looker

Tableau vs Looker#1. Data Visualization

Data visualization comes in many forms such as graphs, charts, dashboards, worksheets, widgets, infographics, heat maps, treemaps, and funnels. 

Tableau: A Tableau is a powerful BI tool used for data visualization. Data analysis can be done quickly and effectively using Tableau. Visualizations of data can be created in the form of dashboards, graphs, and worksheets. Tableau has ready-made templates; so you can easily prepare dashboards with drag and drop features. It allows the user to create visuals and graphics without the help of any programmer. Any professional can understand the data that is created using Tableau.

Looker: On the other hand, Looker is also a BI tool used for data visualization. Looker helps in creating and configuring the charts and graphs with the drop and drag function. You can also put your desired elements and assign roles such as Users, Developers, and Administrators so that the visualization of the data looks efficient. Using mapping, feature non-technical users can also prepare highly technical data visualizations.

[Related Article: What Is Data Visualization]

Tableau vs Looker#2. Integration

Tableau: Tableau integrates with a broad range of data sources like CSV, spreadsheets, SQL databases, Google Analytics, and many more. It also connects with the R to provide control to the analytical tools.

Looker: Looker is an open API to integrate with SQL database and third-party applications such as Green plum, Amazon Athena, etc. Looker has wonderful extension features that allow you to work with other products and systems.

Tableau vs Looker#3. Data Modeling

Tableau: Tableau has snowflake and dimensional data models to analyze a large volume of data. These models are used in a data warehouse to integrate the data with different sources and helps to improve the performance of analytical queries. 

Looker: Looker provides a LookML data model that is powerful, reusable, and flexible. LookML is the replacement for SQL because SQL is not reusable and flexible. So, LookML provides analysts with sophisticated tools to build high-end analytics. 

Tableau vs Looker#4. Reporting

Tableau: Tableau is the best tool to create reports. You can prepare the customized reports according to user requirements. Tableau uses extensive connectors and fast authoring environment to create and publish dashboards and reports in multiple output formats. 

Looker: Looker provides standard reporting templates to the user. Using standard templates, users can create reports quickly and efficiently. Looker enables ad-hoc reporting to build custom reports according to user specifications.

Tableau vs Looker#5. Speed

Tableau: Tableau allows users to create interactive and effective visualization reports within a few minutes. You can make the entire process fast and easier because it will enable you to share the reports online and offline. 

Looker: Looker is slow in processing the data and creating the reports when compared to Tableau. It takes hours to share the reports with the user.

Tableau vs Looker#6. Security

Tableau: Tableau provides security to your data at any level. You can secure your reports, dashboards, and worksheets whenever you want to secure them. You can give permissions to specific users for whom you want to provide access to the reports.

Looker: Looker has a section in the admin panel to change security settings such as two-factor authentication, HDAP & Google authentication, and HTML sanitization.

Tableau vs Looker#7. Operating System

Tableau: Tableau supports Windows and Mac operating systems. 

Looker: Looker also supports Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.

Tableau vs Looker#8. Mobile Support

Tableau: Tableau has a mobile web application that supports devices such as Android and iOS.

Looker: Looker can be accessed by any browser on web-connected mobile devices.

Frequently Asked Tableau Interview Questions

Tableau vs Looker#9. Pricing

Tableau pricing: Tableau provides different subscription plans to the users. Prices vary depending on deployment and version. Tableau provides a free trial version. 

Looker pricing: Looker also provides a different kind of subscription plans to the users. You can use a free trial version of Looker.

Comparison Between Looker and Tableau: 

Tableau	Looker
In Tableau, users can easily analyze the data and they can create the reports using drag and drop options.	In looker, users can create reports easily using drag and drop features and can assign roles such as Developers, Users, and Administrators to analyze the data efficiently.
Tableau integrates with CSV, spreadsheets, worksheets, SQL databases, Google analytics, and many more.	Looker integrates with third-party applications such as Green plum and Amazon Athena etc.
Tableau has snowflake and dimensional data models that help to improve the analytical queries.	Looker has a LookML data model that is reusable and provides sophisticated tools to build high-end analytics.
Using Tableau users can create customized reports according to user requirements.	Looker has standard templates so users can create reports quickly and efficiently.
Tableau sends the reports to the user very quickly within a few minutes.	Compare to Tableau, Looker is slow and takes time to send the reports to the user.
Tableau provides security to your data at any level.	In Looker users need to change the security settings according to the user requirements.
Tableau supports Windows and Mac operating systems.	Looker also supports Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
Tableau has a mobile web application that supports devices such as Android and iOS.	Looker can be accessed by any browser on web-connected mobile devices.
Tableau offers a subscription price of $70 per month for a single user.	Looker offers subscription pricing that ranges from $3000 to $5000 per month for 10 users.

Conclusion:

Now, you have got an overview of Tableau & Looker and the key difference between their features. Even though both Tableau and Looker provide a set of features, every service is designed for different organizations. So choose one of these two BI tools that best suits your organization's requirements.