As a BI consultancy we have developed 1000+ dashboards in both Looker Studio and Power BI. Here is a quick overview of Looker Studio vs Power BI based on our experience:
| Feature | Looker Studio | Power BI |
| Owned by | Microsoft | |
| Best For | simple visualizations, marketing analytics | Advanced analytics & enterprise BI |
| Integrations | Most free integrations are with Google services. Need to buy third-party software to connect to data sources outside of the Google ecosystem. | 250+ native integrations. Many integrations are with Microsoft tools like Sharepoint and OneDrive. |
| Data connectivity | Data is refreshed every time users change filters or open a new page | Data can be cashed (Import mode) or refreshed upon a change in filters (Direct Query mode) |
| On-Prem Data | Requires third-party connectors | Power BI Gateway enables direct access |
| Data Transformation | Limited data transformation capabilities, therefore there is a need for external ETL tools | Advanced data transformation capabilities through Power Query |
| Visualization | Easy to use, limited customization | Highly customizable, 50+ visual types |
| Interactive Design Elements | Limited | Advanced (drill-through, bookmarks, tooltips, AI charts) |
| Cost | Free; Pro plan at $9/user/month | Free for personal use; Pro at $10, Premium at $20/user/month |
| Sharing | Easy and free. Every user requires a Google-hosted email. | Requires Power BI service and a paid plan. |
| Embedding | Free for public websites | Need a Power BI Pro license for public websites. Requires Power BI Embedded plan |
| Integration with Ecosystem | Part of Google Cloud & Looker platform | Part of Microsoft Fabric |
| Ideal For | Agencies sharing reports with clients | Enterprises, Microsoft users, more advanced analytics |
Choosing between Looker Studio and Power BI ultimately depends on
Not to mention, choosing the wrong BI tool has consequences: spending more working hours on analysis, difficult integrations, inefficient BI workflow that translates into low BI adoption in your company, lots of effort to migrate reporting to another tool, and the list goes on.
In this blog, we’ll compare two solid BI solutions—Looker Studio and Power BI—to guide you in choosing the right tool for your business.
You might also be interested in learning about other BI software options. We also have experience in Tableau and Domo. Check out our guides:
Looker Studio, formerly known as Google Data Studio, is a web-based BI tool owned by the tech giant Google.
It allows businesses and individuals to easily create and share visual reports and dashboards based on their data.
It is accessible on any operating system to users with an internet connection.
Power BI is an end-to-end BI solution created by another tech giant – Microsoft.
It is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that streamline the entire process of business intelligence; from data integration, management, and transformation to data visualization, dashboard creation, and insight sharing.
You can use Power BI to create and edit reports via Power BI Desktop (Windows-only application). You can then consume reports through Power BI Service (online web application) which is available on any device.
In Looker Studio and Power BI, you can connect your data sources through:
Both BI tools make data connection generally very simple but each tool shines over the other when it comes to certain data sources.
Looker Studio natively and more easily connects to ~15 Google services like Google Analytics, Google Sheets, BigQuery and Google Ads.
For non-Google sources, Looker Studio has 1000+ connectors via third-party integrations (e.g. Salesforce, Snowflake, Semrush). Those integrations come at extra cost and the software providers that develop them are responsible for the customer support.
Another important thing to note is that Looker Studio refreshes the data in the reports every time that a user changes filters or opens a new page. This is makes the reporting more real-time but also slows it down. Unfortunately there is no way to schedule refresh of your reports instead of making them real-time in Looker Studio. This may lead to slow loading speed for some reports.
Power BI has 250+ free native connectors which include Microsoft services (e.g. Azure SQL, Dynamics 365) and popular platforms like Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle.
Additional Power BI connectors can also be found from different software vendors allowing to extract data from more data sources.
Importantly, Power BI has 2 data refresh modes which helps to load data efficiently.
Import mode cashes your data once it is loaded. This way once the filters of your Power BI report are changed, Power BI doesn’t have to send new requests to your database. If you are fetching data from SQL this keeps your query costs to the minimum. If you are connecting to an API this minimises the number of API requests and reduces the risk of hitting API limits.
Direct Query mode is more real-time and refreshes your data every time that your filter is changed or you load the page. It is only available for several data sources like Azure SQL Server, Big Query and SAP Hana but it is there if you need it.
Read our guide if want to better understand import vs direct query in Power BI.
If you have a complex data ecosystem, Power BI’s connectivity is hard to beat.
Do you wrangle your data at the source or do you want a BI tool that can handle that for you?
Looker Studio is all about simplicity.
It has some built-in data transformation capabilities such as filtering, aggregation, regex, and so on.
However, it assumes your data is already cleaned and structured.
For extensive data preparation, you may need to integrate with tools like BigQuery, or third-party ETL tools.
This may not be a big deal if quick visualization is your priority.
Power BI shines in data preparation thanks to Power Query, its very own ETL engine.
You can clean, reshape, and merge datasets right within the tool – no coding required for most tasks.
Power BI has end-to-end control over data pipelines so it’s a beast for businesses that need heavy data prep.
Do you want to easily visualize your data and share it with your team or do you care more about customization?
Looker Studio and Power BI both have simple and user-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces for creating visualizations.
Looker Studio Dashboard created by Vidi Corp
You can definitely create good-looking dashboards in Looker Studio. In fact, many design elements are quite quick and easy to create. For example, you can create the up/down arrows for all the KPIs with no coding at all.
Another very useful feature is that you can sort the values inside of your filters by any metric. In the example below you can let your users see the mediums with the highest number of users first.
On the other hand, there are many limitations that we have faced with Looker Studio in our projects. Specifically blending data sources inside of Looker Studio is a challenge. It is often easier to blend data in SQL before loading it to Looker Studio.
Similarly, creating more complex calculation logic is often not possible in Looker Studio. Many times we have had to create our calculated columns in SQL and then load them to Looker Studio for visualisation.
There are many more ways to customise your data visualisation in Power BI based on our experience.
Power BI has 30+ visualization types, AI-driven charts, dynamic interactivity features plus more third-party visuals to choose from.
There are also many more visualisation formatting options available in Power BI such as assigning colors to every element of your chart, creating hierarchies, etc. This is something you would probably expect from any BI tool but sadly not all of them provide this.
Features like bookmarks, drill-through pages, tool-tip pages, and custom themes let you build highly custom reports in Power BI.
While the learning curve is steeper, Power BI seems the better choice for enterprises that need polished analytics.
Looker Studio is free. You can create, embed to a website, and share Looker Studio dashboards easily without paying a dime.
If you need more customization and features like:
Then, you need to upgrade to Looker Studio Pro which costs $9 per user per project per month.
Other costs you should expect with Looker Studio are third-party connectors (as those are nearly impossible to avoid) and Google Big Query costs (since it is the most efficient data source for Looker Studio reports)
You can create as many reports as you need for free on Power BI.
But if you ever need to share your report with your team or embed it to a website then you’ll have to upgrade to one of Power BI’s paid plans.
Power BI paid plans give you more storage, sharing capabilities, and data refresh rates.
The subscription plans available are:
| Plans | Price | Features |
| Power BI Pro | $10 per user per month | Create and Share/ publish reports |
| Power BI Premium | $20 per user per month | Everything in Power BI pro plus more data storage and refresh rates. |
| Power BI Embedded | Varies | Embed a Power BI report/ dashboard to a website |
| Power BI as part of Microsoft Fabric | Varies | Access Power BI services and more via Microsoft’s larger data ecosystem called Fabric. |
Read our guide about Power BI licensing if you want to learn more.
Neither Looker Studio nor Power BI is universally “better”—your choice hinges on existing tech stacks, analytics maturity, and the budget of your business.
You can start with free tiers of your chosen tool to test usability, then scale as needed.
Still unsure? Vidi Corp offers tailored BI consultations to align your choice with business goals. Contact us!
