With the surplus of BI platforms on the market to choose from, it can be a challenge to figure out which tool is the best choice for your organization. Company size, goals, and budget are all factors that need to be considered before making a partnership decision.
In this article, we’ll take a look at the three major analytics platforms used by data analysts and business intelligence professionals to create interactive data visualizations: Power BI, Tableau, and Looker.
What are the differences between Power BI, Tableau, and Looker? Which is best suited for your business needs? How can you determine which is best for your organization?
Which vendor would provide the most support for your team? And what about the pricing and licensing options?
We'll explore and compare each platform to provide you with the information you need to answer those questions.
We’ll also clarify what data analysts need from a data visualization tool, examining the three platforms from that aspect so you'll be able to answer the overarching question, "What’s the best BI solution for my needs?"

Power BI is a Microsoft, cloud-based business intelligence solution that allows users to rapidly provision datasets and visualize the results with beautiful dashboards.
The platform integrates tightly with Microsoft Excel, Microsoft SharePoint, and SQL Server Analysis Services, which means users can visualize any type of data they have immediately. Because Power BI comes from a market leader like Microsoft, it means there are many resources for getting support when you need it.
In addition, Power BI comes with built-in capabilities for embedding dashboards into corporate portals, as well as embedding analytics into custom applications. With these features, you can use Power BI as a part of your application to provide real-time analytics such as how effective marketing campaigns are performing in the field.
When it comes to creating interactive dashboards, Power BI is very easy to use. Start from a blank dashboard or build upon one of its many visualizations.
Power BI is often the best solution for organizations that use Office 365 and Microsoft cloud solutions.

Marlabs is an official Microsoft Solutions and Microsoft Fabric partner, meaning we have proven expertise in implementing solutions for Power BI, Azure Data Factory, Power Apps, and Copilot. Having done this work for over 18 years, we move clients from strategy through execution.
For more guidance, see Learning Microsoft Power BI, a bestselling O'Reilly book written by a Marlabs engineer to help Power BI beginners understand how to transform data into insights or help current users improve their skills.
Tableau is another popular choice among business intelligence professionals because it has excellent integration with advanced technologies such as Hadoop, Google BigQuery, and popular CRM solutions like Salesforce. Tableau software is also used by analysts to create visualizations, dashboards, and reports.
Like Microsoft, Tableau has many resources for getting support when needed (Tableau Community and Tableau Customer Support).
Tableau is a great alternative to Microsoft Power BI because it gives users more freedom over the data that they would like to analyze.
Tableau allows you to quickly connect your data warehouse with cloud-based storage solutions, such as Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift. Users who value flexibility and work with data from lots of different sources and methods, including custom APIs, usually find Tableau their preferred solution.

Looker, a part of Google Cloud, is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics solution that allows users to create interactive visualizations, dashboards, and reports.
Looker’s simple point and click interface makes it easy to get a visualization up and running in just minutes.
The platform has excellent integration with the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS).
And, just like Microsoft and Tableau, Looker has many resources for getting support when needed (including Looker Community and Looker Customer Support).
Looker combines the best aspects of both lightweight tools like Tableau Desktop and more powerful solutions like SQL Server Analysis Services by offering a powerful analytics platform with the ability to visualize any type of data, anywhere.
This tool allows you to work with all the data that you would like to analyze as long as that data is stored in the cloud (for instance, data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift).
As part of Google Cloud, organizations tied into Google's environment will usually prefer Looker. It is often preferred for web-based or digital marketing-focused needs.
Microsoft Power BI offers Power BI Pro and Premium.
Power BI Pro is the most basic license option for Power BI offering only a per user subscription priced at $9.99 a month for up to three devices.
It allows individual users to produce visual data dashboards and reports for their organization, making it ideal for internal communications.
Whenever there's an increase or decrease in your data volume, you can decide to either increase or decrease the amount of data storage from 50 GB to 1 TB. Additional users are available at the same pricing as the one-time initial price plus a daily rate ($2/user/day).
Microsoft Premium is designed for an organization providing big data solutions on an enterprise scale.
The premium license offers a per user subscription at $20/month per user, and for larger organizations or those with a larger need for the platform, a per capacity monthly subscription is available for $4,995.
To put the pricing of BI Premium into perspective, the per capacity option is ideal for organization with over 250 users.
Tableau offers a slightly different pricing model, with three available subscriptions, all priced monthly per user.
Tableau Creator is the best fit option for analysts. At $70/month per user, the Creator license allows user to “connect your data, build vizzes and publish dashboards.”
This license comes with access to Tableau Desktop and Prep Builder.
Tableau Explorer is recommended for Business users, providing only access to edit existing vizzes, for $42/month per user.
The final and most restricted license option for an organization interested in Tableau is Tableau Viewer. This option is $15/month per user and offers only access to view existing dashboard making it useful for Executives.
Looker has monthly and yearly per user pricing plans. That is an advantage over Tableau, which only offers a subscription-based solution.
Looker does not share their pricing model with the public, but according to holisitics.io, Looker offers Standard, Advanced and Elite Platform options.
The Standard Platform provides access for 10 standard users for $66,600 a year.
The Advanced Platform has all the features of the Standard Platform with an additional 100k Query API Calls and two Looker Servers for $132,000 a year.
The highest and priciest platform from Looker is their Elite Package, coming with all the features of the Advanced platform, plus 100k Admin API Calls and eight Looker Servers.
Looker also offers add-ons for additional viewers for $400/user per year, additional users for $799/user per year and additional Dev/Admin for $1,665/user per year.
Power BI, Tableau, and Looker have all grown tremendously and show us a glimpse of what the future holds for BI software. While it’s a relief to know we have access to a variety of reliable software, the question still remains: what's the best BI solution for your needs?
Power BI offers tight integrations with other Microsoft solutions, up-to-date cloud computing, the widest variety of pricing platforms, and reliable customer service resources. All of this combined makes Power BI the preferred solution for organizations integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem.
To create interactive dashboards with Power BI, you start from a blank dashboard or build upon one of many existing visualizations with an easy-to-use interface. Microsoft's wide variety of subscription options and support make Power BI a great option for organizations with large workloads on the enterprise scale.
Tableau, on the other hand, is a great alternative to Microsoft Power BI because it gives users more freedom over the data that they would like to analyze. Tableau allows you to quickly connect your data warehouse with cloud-based storage solutions such as Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, Hadoop, and Google BigQuery. For flexibility and custom-built solutions, Tableau is a great solution.
Tableau offers a similar variety of subscription options, but only on a monthly basis, often making it a better choice for organizations who are not ready to commit to an annual plan.
Looker offers a simple point-and-click interface, allowing for easy training and quick turnaround. Looker is known to have a combination of characteristics from similar tools, making it both powerful and accessible.
Plus, with the support of its parent company, Google, Looker is a great option for any team facing large quantities of data and working in a web or cloud focused ecosystem.
Looker’s flexible pricing model with both annual and monthly subscription options and individual add-ons make it great for growing organizations.

When examining data analytics and BI visualization software, you also need to consider the end-to-end capabilities that are offered.
There might be a solution that includes all the features you need in a single platform, or it might make more sense to choose individual software for each feature.
For instance, Power BI is the most comprehensive cloud-based business intelligence solution because it has many features like data prep and visualization. However, there might be situations where Tableau would be a better fit because of its advanced visualization features. In this situation, Looker would be needed to fill in the gaps.
In the end, each of these solutions offer advanced, easy-to-use platforms that can aid your analytics team in data visualization, but each one has their unique characteristics that fit a variety of needs, so the best way to determine which is the best fit is to first understand what your organization's needs and goals look like.
Marlabs has vast experience using each of these business intelligence tools. To explore what solution would be the best fit for your organization, contact us and chat with one of our experts.