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What is Google Looker Studio?
Looker Studio is a user-friendly business intelligence tool owned by Google. It's completely free to use but they do have a Pro option for a small monthly fee ($9 at the time of writing) that has some additional benefits. However, it's not needed for building dashboards.
Looker Studio dashboards
Looker Studio can create very effective, clean, and digestible dashboards. Given how user-friendly and developer-friendly it is, it’s relatively easy to create a good looking dashboard, even for beginners!
We’ve been using Looker Studio for years (back to when it was called “Data Studio”) and it quickly became a favorite. My first data visualization tool I learned was Tableau, and I still like Tableau for a variety of use cases, but for your average dashboard, or one that doesn’t have millions of rows of data being funneled into it, it’s tough to beat Looker Studio.
Looker Studio was made to handle 85% of all use cases for dashboards. That number is probably even higher for most small businesses. They have a variety of great visual options, and lots of customizability for date ranges, comparison periods, KPI displays, etc.
When you look at a good dashboard, some key items it should include are clearly defined KPIs, comparisons to a prior period, trends, and breakdowns. Looker Studio was built for all of that, and they've nailed it with being user friendly.
I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of our clients don’t fall into that extra 15% of use cases - most people and small businesses don’t. And if they do need something really unique, we can probably get creative enough to make something usable in Looker Studio.
There tends to be a lot of hesitation over switching/using a free tool like Looker Studio, but hopefully, by the end of this article you will see, there is no need to be hesitant. With the right knowledge, you can get exactly the dashboard you want for your company without the software cost!
Advantages of Looker Studio over Tableau and PowerBI
Looker Studio is a highly effective and cost-efficient tool, making its value (and cost-to-benefit calculation) the top option for a lot of businesses.
Looker Studio cost wins every time - it's free!
One of the main advantages is the cost of Looker Studio. Again, it’s free to use and to share with whoever!
Most other platforms can get really expensive really quickly. If we go back to the majority of use cases for a dashboard, Looker Studio can handle them easily. If you need something very special, unique, or have millions and millions of rows, then it might be worth paying for one of the other options. But until then… why not test out the free one?
Tableau quickly gets to $1,000 per year if you have one Creator license and one viewer license (and most companies need way more than that).
PowerBI is in the middle, cost-wise, at around $120/year per license which also gets up there quickly if you have a team that needs access.
Looker Studio is truly free. Free to build, free to view. Even Looker Studio Pro (which a lot of folks won't need because the free version is almost just as powerful) is only $9/month per developer but you don't need a Pro license to view a Pro created dashboard.
Looker Studio’s date functionality is incomparably easy
Looker Studio has a default “control”, as it’s called, that is a date control.
Any visual with a date range dimension can be tied to that date selector. That’s not common. It’s even less common to have it be that easy.
Plus, the date control can default to move with your options like “this month”, “last month”, “Today - 2 months”, etc. That one date range can control everything in the dashboard, but you can also have unique date ranges for each visual or multiple date range controls.
Almost every dashboard needs a time component to it, especially if you’re using it to continuously monitor and manage your business. The simplicity of this date control and how effective and useful it is can’t be overstated.
You can create the same functionality in platforms like Tableau and PowerBI, but it can take some creation effort. Both have relative date (ex. “this month” or “last quarter”) capabilities and absolute date capabilities (picking two specific dates), but in Tableau, for example, if you want the flexibility to have it default to “this month” but also be able to change it to a custom date range, you can’t do it without creating custom fields.
In that instance in Tableau, you have to create two parameters (start date and end date), two calculated fields (what to default the start date and end date to), and then a calculated field for each metric you want impacted by that date range. Essentially saying “if the date is between these two parameters, then include it”.
For PowerBI, you have to do some similar gymnastics to get true date flexibility but it's less intuitive - to me, at least (even as an expert), and certainly to most beginner dashboard creators.
To have that date apply to multiple data sets in PowerBI, you have to build a central date table that links to all datasets.
Once you get the hang of that in Tableau or PowerBI, sure it’s not super hard. But it is FAR from intuitive, and depending on how many metrics you’re looking at, it can be laborious to create.
Having one date control with complete flexibility in terms of date selecting (relative or fixed dates) and connecting dates to multiple data sources in Looker Studio is by far the easiest date functionality I’ve seen in a business intelligence tool. It’s genuinely not even close.
Looker Studio dashboard development is so simple to navigate
In Looker Studio, there are essentially 3 places to look if you want to do anything.
If you want to create a metric, change the format, or adjust a visual, it’s all contained in the side panels.
The first panel is the Visual panel. What metrics and dimensions do you want displayed? What kind of visual do you want? Etc. - all the main questions essentially.
The next panel is the Style panel. If you want to style anything (colors, size, background, etc.) it’s all in that one panel.
The last panel is the data panel. This is where you see all of your data fields, sources, and can create new metrics or parameters.
95% of what you need is all in one area.
Does that mean that its functionality is limited compared to Tableau, PowerBI, or Looker? Not really. If your question is “Can PowerBI do more things?”, then the answer is yes, of course. If you were to ask me, "Of all the features that PowerBI can do that Looker Studio can’t, how many get used frequently?" I’d say one or two. And that’s a loose definition of “frequently” too.
So the simplicity of Looker Studio’s development panels doesn’t mean it’s less capable. Again, you can do what you need for 85% of use cases with relative ease and $0 cost.
Looker Studio's sharing functionality is the easiest, without a doubt
Have you ever shared a Google doc before? You click the big share button in the upper right, put in the emails, and select whether they can edit or not. Done!
Looker Studio is the same.
It’s so simple, it’s silly that the other names are still so complex.
But here are those other options and situations…
In Tableau, you have to give everyone a license to view it. If you want someone to help develop the dashboard, they need a separate (much more expensive) license. It’s somewhat straightforward, but it gets costly.
In PowerBI, it’s similar to Tableau, but I’ve found it even more complicated because of how complex they make the ordering and licensing process. If you were to try sharing outside of your organization… good luck. I know there are ways, and some people find it easy, but as someone who is very experienced in creating dashboards, granting access in all sorts of ways, and grew up with Microsoft, it’s still WAY more complicated than it should be.
Bottom line… Looker Studio requires about 3 button clicks. Others can feel like they require an act of Congress.
Disadvantages of Looker Studio over Tableau and PowerBI
Now that I’ve praised Looker Studio for an entire article, let’s make sure both sides are covered and talk about some areas where it does fall a little short.
Big data can be big problems
Let me start by saying that an enormous data set will cause issues regardless of the platform.
However, Looker Studio does tend to have a harder time with big data sets and custom SQL queries.
I've had Tableau spin for hours trying to load data and PowerBI crash repeatedly, and Looker Studio is no exception. Looker Studio falls to third on the list in terms of capabilities with large data sets.
Normally, the solution for most data size issues is to create a simpler dataset or a simpler query. None of the main platforms are great with complex custom SQL queries, so a simple query that makes a smaller dataset is always going to be the goal, whenever possible.
I'm not saying Looker Studio can't do any large data sets or queries at all (I've done some wildly complex ones that are slow but work), but when all three struggle with something like this, Looker Studio does, unfortunately, struggle the most.
Merging data within the platform
When you can't combine data sets into a dashboard-ready database in SQL somewhere before it gets to the dashboard, you have to do some merging or blending within the dashboard itself.
As much as PowerBI is probably my least favorite of these three, it is the best at merging data sources. If for no other reason than the ability to create custom tables based on information in other data sets. It's very handy, and the USERELATIONSHIP function can get you out of a lot of jams too.
Tableau is pretty good with its blending feature and probably comes in second here because it's slightly less intuitive than PowerBI.
Looker Studio is just a bit more limited with its options. You can absolutely still combine, merge, and blend data sources but there are some limitations. For example, at the time of writing, you can only bring 10 dimensions from one table into a blend (and there's a limit on metrics too). There are some creative ways around that, but it's not perfect.
In a blended data source, you can't create new calculated fields that apply to multiple visuals either. You can create a field on one visual, but if you want that same field on another visual, you have to create it again. It's just a copy and paste, but it does get slow and a bit tedious.
Looker Studio ultimately just operates notably slower when blending data sources than the other two.
Tooltip flexibility
One thing on the visual side is the tooltip capability. This can be big if you're trying to convey more information than the dashboard can handle (real estate-wise on the page) and is a very fancy touch for some dashboards.
In Tableau, you can create unbelievable tooltips that have all sorts of info, you can have another sheet pop up in the tooltip, and with some level of detail calculations, you can have significantly more info in the tooltip than what's being shown in the graph itself.
PowerBI also has some really neat functionality, similar to Tableau in terms of customization and adding information that's not explicitly in the visual, but for me, Tableau does come in first for this category.
Looker Studio is more simple. What's in the visual is what's in the tooltip.
This isn't a bad thing, but sometimes a good tooltip can really bring together a dashboard and impress your stakeholders. Most folks won't know what they're missing in a Looker Studio tooltip, so it may not be a big deal, but this is certainly an area that's lacking in Looker Studio and it firmly comes in third place of these three.
Summary
Looker Studio is a phenomenal tool that's easy to use, easy to develop in, and free!
It truly does stack up against the giants that are Tableau and PoweBI in so many ways to where it's a no-brainer for a lot of small businesses, intermediate-level developers/analysts, and Google Suite users.
It's not as powerful as the other two, but you can still absolutely get the point across with a very effective dashboard.
We offer training in Looker Studio for folks that want to learn and we build dashboards in it for people that just want the end result!
We're also happy to tell you if your use case is good for Looker Studio or not - just ask!
Ready to Start Building Your First Dashboard?
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Reach out and let's get started!
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