What is Looker used for?

Looker is a Google Cloud business intelligence platform that uses a governed semantic modeling layer to define metrics once and reuse them across dashboards and reports. It is a good fit for governed company-wide reporting and self-service data exploration for business users.

How much does Looker cost?

Looker doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request.

Is Looker open source?

No. Looker is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Looker include Lightdash, Superset and Metabase.

What are some alternatives to Looker?

Looker competes with Tableau, Power BI and Qlik. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Looker alternatives.

Looker: features, pricing and alternatives

About Looker

Looker is a business intelligence platform that is part of Google Cloud. Its defining idea is a semantic modeling layer, where data teams describe tables, relationships and metrics in a central model so that dashboards and ad-hoc analysis draw on the same governed definitions.

Looker queries data in the connected database or warehouse rather than keeping a separate copy, and it is typically used by analysts and data teams who want consistent metrics across an organization. It is a commercial product delivered as a hosted Google Cloud service.

Key features

Central semantic model for shared metric definitions
Dashboards and reports for business users
Ad-hoc data exploration on governed data
Queries run against the connected database

Good fit for

→Governed company-wide reporting
→Self-service data exploration for business users

Tags: business-intelligence; dashboards; semantic-layer; google-cloud; data-modeling; analytics

Looker: questions and answers

What is Looker used for?: Looker is a Google Cloud business intelligence platform that uses a governed semantic modeling layer to define metrics once and reuse them across dashboards and reports. It is a good fit for governed company-wide reporting and self-service data exploration for business users.
How much does Looker cost?: Looker doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request.
Is Looker open source?: No. Looker is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to Looker include Lightdash, Superset and Metabase.
What are some alternatives to Looker?: Looker competes with Tableau, Power BI and Qlik. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Looker alternatives.