Best Looker Alternatives 2024 (2024)

The best Looker alternatives to consider in 2024

Table of Contents:

1. Looker Overview
2. Best Looker Alternatives

• Tableau
• Knowi
• ThoughtSpot
• Sigma

3. Final Thoughts

Looker Overview

Looker is a web-based BI tool for data collection, analysis, and visualization. It enables organizations to extract key business metrics from their data and use the metrics to drive actions. It was launched in 2011 and acquired by Google in 2019. At the core of Looker is LookML, its unique modeling language. It is a lightweight markup language that enables Looker users to define their sources of data and how the data will be combined with data from other sources to compute business metrics from a single source of truth. Looker is compatible with various databases and big data platforms, allowing users to pull data for analysis and visualization.

However, Looker has some challenges, such as lacking artificial intelligence features and connectors to NoSQL data sources. LookML is also proprietary and requires some learning curve. Looker has reduced US customer support after its acquisition by Google. There’s also some confusion around Looker Studio (Old Google Data Studio) to Looker. Hence, companies looking to migrate off Looker have been increasingly common over the last year. In this article, we have compiled a list of some of the best alternatives to Looker in 2024 that you should consider for data analysis and visualization.

Best Looker Alternatives

Tableau

Tableau is a BI tool that allows users to connect, explore, and share their data. It was launched in 2003 and acquired by Salesforce in 2019. Tableau is the leading BI tool in terms of the user base. Tableau users can use a wide range of beautiful visualizations to present their data and extract insights. It is also a good tool for real-time data analysis. It comes with advanced features that let users dig deeper into their data and present their findings visually for easy understanding by all users.

Tableau Features

Tableau comes with the following features:

1. Integrations

Tableau comes with native connectors for relational databases and other sources such as spreadsheets, big data, PDFs, and files, on-premises or in the cloud.

To pull data from NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, users must rely on third-party connectors that can translate into SQL.

2. Visualizations

Tableau users can generate beautiful and powerful charts, maps, dashboards, and stories from their data. They can also customize the visualizations to meet their specific needs.

3. Cross-database Joins

Tableau allows users to perform joins on tables in different databases. It supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, and full outer join. The join operations depend on a common field between the data sources.

4. Analytics

Tableau comes with the Ask Data feature that offers powerful advanced analytics. Through this feature, users can type their questions in a natural language such as English and get immediate answers.

5. Embedded Analytics

Tableau allows its users to embed their dashboards and visualizations on web pages using a simple HTML embed code. Users can embed their visual analytics into third-party applications, custom web portals, and custom-facing software and data products.

6. Alerts/Anomaly Detection

Tableau users can set up data-driven alerts to receive notifications when data meets important thresholds for their businesses. The alerts can be sent via email, as a notification on your Tableau site, or a connected Slack workspace. The data-driven alerts can be set up on views and dashboards, but not on story points.

7. Customer Support

Tableau comes with a knowledge base that features an extensive list of written materials on how to use the BI tool. Users can also search within the knowledge base by typing their questions, and Tableau will suggest articles that are most likely to answer their questions as they type.

Users can also post their questions on the Tableau community forum and get answers from other Tableau users.

8. Pricing

Tableau has three pricing plans namely Creator, Explorer, and Viewer. Their prices are quoted per user/per month, billed annually.

The Creator plan has all Tableau features and it costs $75 per user/per month. The Explorer plan delivers the full power of self-service analytics into the hands of users and it costs $42 per user/per month. The Viewer plan helps users to view and interact with dashboards and visualizations and it costs $15 per user/per month. Tableau also offers its users a 14-day trial period.

Benefits of Tableau

The following are the benefits offered by Tableau.

1. Beautiful visualizations

Tableau is well-known in the BI industry for its ability to generate beautiful visualizations. Users can also switch between visualizations to create a greater context.

2. User-friendliness

Tableau comes with a user-friendly design, making it suitable for use by users of all backgrounds. Tableau users can simply create visualizations via its drag-and-drop interface. Its Ask Data feature helps non-technical users such as business analysts to draw insights from their data.

3. In-depth insights

Tableau users can visualize their data and view it from different angles. They can drill data into their data to answer “what if” queries and create components for analysis and comparisons. Tableau is also a good ad hoc analysis tool and possibly the best BI tool in the market for exploratory analysis.

Limitations of Tableau

Tableau comes with the following challenges:

1. Doesn’t integrate with NoSQL data sources

Tableau doesn’t support integration with NoSQL data sources such as MongoDB. Users have to depend on third-party ODBC connectors capable of translating into SQL.

2. Doesn’t work with unstructured data

Tableau is only suitable for handling structured data. This is caused by limitations in its architecture.

3. Legacy Architecture

Tableau’s architecture is a bit legacy, reflecting its founding DNA. Tableau Desktop has to be used to publish workbooks to a server (or cloud). Even though it is a good tool for exploratory analysis, it requires that all your data is structured and ready to be analyzed.

4. Costly

Tableau can be a very expensive BI tool. It’s based on per-user licensing for the cloud, hence, costs can add up as the user base grows.

Knowi is a unified business intelligence tool that shortens the distance between raw data and insights that drive action in your team. It achieves this using a data virtualization feature that relieves users from the need to move raw data around. With Knowi, you don’t need to lift raw data and store it in a separate data warehouse or transform it. It supports a direct connection to SQL, NoSQL, API, and other data sources, without the need for data transformers and data transporters in between, allowing users to analyze unstructured data directly. Knowi also comes with a search-driven analytics feature powered by natural language processing, allowing non-technical users to ask questions in plain English and get instant answers. Knowi was founded in 2015.

Knowi Features

The following are the key features offered by Knowi:

1. Data-as-a-Service

Knowi supports integration with SQL, NoSQL, REST APIs, files, and other data sources. It talks natively to NoSQL databases without having to “relationize” the data. Knowi achieves this through its “data virtualization” feature that allows it to work with any type of data, whether, structured, unstructured, small, or big data.

2. Visualizations

Knowi gives its users access to 40+ visualization types that they can use to present their data visually. You can create a dashboard by putting multiple visualizations on a single page. Knowi also allows you to create customized visualizations with your own look and feel using CSS/JavaScript. It also offers filters, ad hoc slice & dice analysis, drill downs, and more to help users extract fine-grained details from their data.

3. Ask Questions of your Data

Knowi has a search-driven analytics feature powered by Natural Language Processing for non-technical users. They can ask questions within Knowi in plain English across all their data and get immediate answers.

Knowi has also added this feature to Slack and Microsoft Teams, allowing users to ask data questions directly from these apps and get immediate results.

Users can also implement this feature into their own applications, ask data questions directly from the applications, and get immediate answers.

4. Multi-source Joins

Knowi supports joins across multiple data sources to help users process, blend, and store combined data. The joins can be performed across the same or disparate SQL or NoSQL data sources to stitch the data back together into a single result and be able to store and track it. It supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, full outer join, and loop join. Inner join is the default join operation in Knowi.

Knowi was designed to support large-scale join operations involving millions of records across multiple databases. Users can optimize the join operations for faster performance.

5. Embedded Analytics

Knowi has made it easier for users to create and embed visualizations and analytics into their own business applications or into cloud applications such as Salesforce and Shopify. Users can customize the user experience of the dashboard interaction and the functionality of the embedded applications.

Knowi supports simple URL-based embedding, secure URL embedding with encrypted request payload, and Single SignOn API embedding that allows token exchange from your system users to map to Knowi with user rights and permissions.

6. Alerts/Anomaly Detection

Knowi’s alerts help users receive real-time notifications when certain conditions and thresholds are met, or when anomalies are detected within their data. This keeps them updated on important changes to their businesses in a single location to drive actions. The alerts can be received via email, Slack, Webhook, or Microsoft Teams.

7. Customer Support

Knowi comes with release notes detailing how to use the BI platform. It also has a knowledge base where users can type their questions and get answers in the form of articles. Users get the top article suggestions while typing their questions.

Knowi also features a community forum with sourced questions and answers that may help you. You can also submit a support ticket via its chat feature powered by Zendesk and the Knowi team will get back to you via phone or email.

8. Pricing

Knowi has not made its pricing information available to the public. However, users can fill out a form on their website to request pricing information. It has packages to fit startups and enterprises. Knowi offers three pricing plans namely Basic, Team, and Enterprise. Each plan comes with technical support, full onboarding, and everything else needed for success. Knowi is committed to “no-surprise” pricing and it offers discounts to early-stage startups and non-profits. It also doesn’t charge for email reports that require a user and such in other systems.

Benefits of Knowi

The following are the benefits of using Knowi:

1. Supports many integrations

Knowi comes with native connectors to a wide variety of data sources, including NoSQL data sources, allowing users to pull data from them without relying on third-party tools.

2. Visualizations are customizable

Knowi allows users to customize their data visualizations to meet their specific needs in terms of look and feel.

3. Good for non-technical users

Knowi’s search-based analytics feature makes it a suitable BI tool for non-technical users. They can ask data questions in plain English and get immediate answers in the form of visualizations, without the need to master the underlying query language.

4. Works well with unstructured data

Knowi performs well with any type of data, including unstructured data, without considering the underlying data structure. This has been made possible by its data virtualization feature.

Limitations of Knowi

Knowi users encounter the following challenges:

1. Not open source

Knowi is a commercial tool.

2. Doesn’t have the “Prettiest” Out-of-the-Box Visualizations

Knowi’s out-of-the-box visualizations are not very beautiful. However, users can customize their look and feel using CSS/JavaScript.

3. Complex user interface

Knowi has a friendly interface for business users. However, it has a sophisticated interface for engineers, and users may take some time to get used to.

ThoughtSpot

ThoughtSpot is a BI tool that has established itself in the search-based analytics arena. It allows anyone to leverage natural language search powered by large language models to ask and answer data questions with ease. With ThoughtSpot, anyone in an organization can engage limitlessly with live data in any popular cloud data platform to generate detailed and actionable insights. The BI tool can be accessed via web or mobile. ThougtSpot also allows its users to embed AI-powered analytics into their products and services to engage users and monetize their data.

ThoughtSpot Features

ThougtSpot comes with the following features for its users:

1. Integrations

ThoughtSpot comes with connectors to the leading cloud data platforms, allowing users to connect to live cloud data with just a few clicks. It supports integration with cloud platforms such as Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Amazon RDS, and others. It can also be integrated with SQL-based data sources such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and others.

2. Visualizations

ThoughtSpot has dozens of chart types for data visualizations. It generates automatic visualizations in response to user queries. Thoughtspot has advanced chart configuration options, allowing users to customize their visualizations by adding labels, group axes, and more. The charts can be pinned, rearranged, and shared through a simple drag-and-drop functionality.

3. Search-based analytics

ThoughtSpot has a search-based analytics feature that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with patented search technology to help users uncover insights using a natural language, without knowing any SQL or table relations. Users can analyze their data via search and generate dashboards and reports within seconds.

4. Embedded Analytics

ThoughtSpot has an embedded analytics feature, ThoughtSpot Everywhere, that allows product owners and developers to build interactive data apps and directly integrate ThoughtSpot features into their products, apps, or services. They can also embed search-driven analytics to enrich their portals, websites, or products with Thoughtspot’s analytical capabilities.

5. Multi-source Joins

ThoughtSpot supports join operations across multiple data sources. It supports inner join, right outer join, left outer join, and full outer join. It uses inner join as the default join operation. The joins are based on a common column among the data sources, and they must have the same data type and same meaning.

6. Alerts

ThoughtSpot supports alerts for changes in the key performance indicators (KPIs) for your data. Users can receive notifications when a KPI satisfies a certain threshold condition, or schedule notifications for a KPI on a monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly basis. The alerts can be received on Slack, email, or mobile.

7. Customer Support

ThoughtSpot comes with written documentation and videos guiding users on how to use the platform. You can also post your answer on the ThoughtSpot community forum and get an answer from other ThoughtSpot users. It also allows you to submit your request to the Thoughtspot team by filling out a contact form on their website and they will get back to you via email.

8. Pricing

ThoughtSpot pricing plans are categorized into two, ThoughtSpot Analytics and ThoughtSpot Everywhere. ThoughtSpot Analytics has four pricing plans namely Team, Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise.

The Team plan is good for individuals and small teams who need to use AI-powered search for data visualization. It costs $95/month for 5 users, billed monthly. The Essentials plan is suitable for small enterprises that want to share AI-powered insights across teams and it costs $1,250/month for 20 users, billed annually. The Pro and Enterprise plans are suitable for growing and large enterprises respectively, and their pricing is custom-based.

ThoughtSpot Everywhere has two pricing plans, Pro and Enterprise, and their pricing is custom-based.

Benefits of ThoughtSpot

ThoughtSpot comes with the following benefits for its users:

1. User-friendliness

Thoughtspot offers its users a friendly interface where they can search and create visualizations on their own. However, the user interface is not very interactive.

2. The power of search-driven analytics

ThoughtSpot’s search-driven analytics feature offers quick information search, allowing users to make decisions faster. ThoughtSpot recently acquired Mode to enhance its end-to-end analytics.

3. Integrates with modern data stack

ThoughtSpot integrates well with modern data stack technologies such as Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Amazon Aurora, Google BigQuery, Databricks, and others, allowing companies to leverage the performance and scalability of their data infrastructure.

Limitations of ThoughtSpot

The following are the cons of ThoughtSpot:

1. Poor engineering layer

ThoughtSpot requires data to be loaded into it and indexing needs to happen on top. This process is cumbersome and time-consuming. It also means that everything has to be held in memory, driving up the costs.

2. Doesn’t integrate with NoSQL data sources

ThoughtSpot doesn’t support native integration with NoSQL data sources such as MongoDB. Users must rely on third-party ETL tools for connection.

3. Visualizations are not customizable

ThoughtSpot doesn’t allow users to customize their visualizations to meet their specific needs.

Sigma

Sigma is a cloud-based BI tool built for data exploration and visualization. It was meant to increase the speed to insights using Snowflake’s lightning-fast computing power combined with the familiarity of spreadsheets. Sigma provides its users with a spreadsheet-like interface where they can experience the full power of SQL. They can also use the spreadsheet formulas they are familiar with to explore live data in the cloud and dive deeper into their data. Sigma users can manipulate and visualize their data without writing any code, and easily slice and dice data in every possible way.

Sigma Features

Sigma users have the following key features to enjoy:

1. Integrations

Sigma supports integration with some external data sources such as Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, and PostgreSQL for pulling data for visualization.

Users can also write SQL queries to pull data or upload their CSVs. Although Sigma doesn’t have an extensive list of integrations, technical users can build custom plugins for establishing connections to data sources of choice and visualize what they can code.

2. Visualizations

Sigma offers various chart options for presenting data visually. Examples include bar charts, line charts, KPI charts, scatter plots, box charts, and several others.

Each visualization comes with a wide set of customizable configurations to enhance its appearance.

3. Workbook Embedding

Sigma has a workbook embedding feature that allows you to present your analysis outside of Sigma in a secure and controlled manner. This requires you to create an embed URL and inject it into your non-Sigma application. The embedded data will update in real-time in response to changes in your data warehouse. Sigma supports three types of embedding, that is, public, private, and user-backed embedding.

4. Multi-Source Joins

Sigma allows its users to perform join operations between datasets or warehouse tables. It supports full outer join, inner join, left outer join, lookup join, and right outer join. The joins depend on a common field between the data sources.

5. Alerts

Sigma comes with an alerts/notifications feature that sends conditional messages to users via email or Slack based on KPIs or missing data. Users can also share workbooks, pages, and elements via these channels through scheduling or as-needed basis.

6. Customer Support

Sigma comes with extensive documentation that includes feature overviews, step-by-step guides, FAQs, and more to help users learn how to use the platform. It also has a knowledge where you can type to start searching for the articles that are most likely to answer your question.

Sigma users can also get help through live chat, Zoom office hours, after-hours support, Sigma community, or by submitting a support request via their website.

7. Pricing

Sigma has not made its pricing information available to the public. They offer a customized pricing approach in which pricing depends on user needs. Sigma offers a 14-day free trial period.

Benefits of Sigma

The following are the key benefits of Sigma:

1. User-friendliness

Sigma users have access to an intuitive spreadsheet interface where they can query their data warehouse using familiar spreadsheet functions and formulas. This allows even non-technical users to work with billions of data rows without any special training.

2. Supports Many Visualizations

Sigma offers its users a wide variety of visualizations for presenting data. The visualizations can also be formatted to improve their appearance.

3. Extensible

Sigma users with technical know-how can extend the BI tool in terms of integrations. This can help them to explore and visualize their data regardless of where it is stored.

Limitations of Sigma

The following are the challenges of using Sigma:

1. Limited Integrations

Sigma only comes with connectors to a few data sources. It does not also connect to NoSQL data sources. However, technical users can create custom data connectors, but this requires technical knowledge.

2. Doesn’t Support Natural Language Processing

Sigma doesn’t have natural language processing features for advanced data analytics.

Final Thoughts

Looker is a web-based BI tool for data collection, analysis, and visualization. It comes with LookML, a unique markup language that enables Looker users to define their sources of data and how to combine the data into a single source of truth.

However, Looker doesn’t have Natural Language Processing capabilities. It also lacks connectors to NoSQL data sources. Looker has reduced US customer support after its acquisition by Google.

Tableau, Knowi, ThoughtSpot, and Sigma are some of the best Looker alternatives that you should consider for your team.

Tableau is a popular BI tool in the BI industry for its ability to generate powerful and beautiful visualizations. Its Ask Data feature makes it fit for use by non-technical users as they can ask data questions in plain English and get immediate answers.

Knowi is a powerful BI tool that shortens the distance from raw data to evidence-based actions. Its Data-as-a-Service feature allows it to work with any type of data, anywhere. It has native connectors to NoSQL data sources, allowing users to connect to such sources without depending on third-party connectors. Knowi’s search-based analytics feature lets non-technical users ask data questions in plain English within Knowi, Slack, or Microsoft Teams and get immediate responses.

ThoughtSpot is an AI-powered BI tool that has competed in the search-based analytics arena. It enables users to leverage the power of natural language search to ask data questions easily and generate visualizations on their own.

Sigma is a cloud-based BI tool that combines a simple spreadsheet-like interface with Snowflake’s lightning-fast computing power to increase the speed to insights. It allows users to analyze data code-free, using spreadsheet formulas and functions.