Power BI vs Looker Studio vs Tableau: How to Choose BI Tool in 2025

Struggling to pick the right data visualization tool in 2025? Choosing can be tough, especially with various great choices out there like Power BI, Looker Studio, and Tableau.

But having tons of data means nothing if you cannot make sense of it and that is where knowing the best data visualization tool for your business in 2025 is crucial.  

In this article, you will learn a side-by-side comparison of Power BI, Tableau and Looker Studio. We’ll explore how they perform in key areas like:

At the end of this article, you will have a clear idea of what each platform offers and which one best fits your goals, workflow, and budget. Now, before we start comparing them, let’s briefly introduce the tools.

Power BI: Power BI is a unified self-service and enterprise Business Intelligence platform. It is offered on three different platforms.

• Free desktop application for creating reports,
• A cloud-based service for sharing dashboards, reports and apps and
• A handy mobile app for on the reporting.

Looker Studio: Google’s Looker Studio is a free, cloud-based data visualization and business intelligence tool.  It enables users to create interactive dashboards and reports, especially popular for marketing analytics in the eCommerce ecosystem.  

Tableau: A powerful Business Intelligence tool known for its rich interactive visuals and dashboards. Tableau is offered in both desktop and cloud-based service.

Its popular Tableau public means data analyst can easily learn and showcase their dashboard for other to see, comment and possibly employ.

Community Backing Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

Power BI: Backed by Microsoft, Power BI enjoys long-term stability, frequent updates, and seamless integration with Microsoft 365 tools like Teams, SharePoint, and Azure.

What sets it apart further is its massive and active user community. From beginner tutorials to advanced DAX discussions, users have access to a wealth of forums, blogs, videos, and local user groups.

This strong combination of corporate support and community resources makes Power BI incredibly accessible and scalable. 

Looker Studio: Powered by Google Cloud, Looker Studio fits naturally into the Google ecosystem which makes it integrate well with Sheets, Google Adwords, Analytics, BigQuery, and more.

While its user base is still growing, its community is becoming increasingly active. Users are sharing templates, walk through, and use cases, although support for beginners can be limited.

Still, Google’s backing and clean interface make it a reliable, cloud-first option for lightweight reporting. 

Tableau: Owned by Salesforce, Tableau benefits from enterprise-grade support and deep integration with CRM and marketing platforms.

Its backing fuels constant innovation and features aimed at large organizations. Meanwhile, its long-established community is one of the strongest in the industry.

Tableau Public allows users to share dashboards and explore others’, while events like Tableau Conference and an extensive forum base keep the learning and support ecosystem rich and dynamic. 

Now, let move next to these tools compare in their cost of usage.

Cost and Pricing for Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio 

Cost is a crucial factor for businesses and individual users when choosing a data visualization tool. A tool might have impressive features, but if the cost is too high or too complex, it may not be a practical choice for many organizations. 

Power BI: is one of the most affordable options. It has a free version, a low-cost Pro plan, and fabric option for larger organizations. Its pricing is flexible and can grow with your needs.

For a one tenant account used by everyone in the organization, a free account or single Pro account can serve.  Power BI Pricing here 

Are you considering setting up Power BI for your business? Let us help you set it up with a cost friendly plan for your immediate business need. Let’s talk 

Looker Studio: Is free to use, but its advanced features are part of a paid enterprise package under Google Cloud. This makes it a great entry point, though the full version may not suit smaller teams.

For most eCommerce businesses, the free account does all the job. Find pricing for Looker Studio here . Let’s help you with all the data visualization you need on Looker Studio. 

Tableau: Provides rich features but has fixed pricing levels based on user roles. Costs can rise quickly depending on the team size.

A free public version is available, though it lacks privacy and professional and adequate data governance and security. Tableau pricing can be quite complex, let us help you choose the right plan for your business 

Entry Price Comparison Table 

Support for Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

No matter how easy a tool is to use, there will always be moments when help is needed. Whether it is figuring out a feature or resolving an issue, good support matters. Here is how these 3 tools compare: 

Power BI: Users get access to tutorials and forums. For many issues, the Power BI community forum is a quick first resort, but for critical problems, Microsoft’s support is available to paying customers.

Also, regular updates and product improvements make the tool feel well supported. Overall, users benefit from robust Microsoft backing. 

Looker Studio: It has limited free-tier support. It provides basic support through Google’s help center. Looker studio also offers personalized support for enterprise users under Google Cloud in the Pro version.  

Tableau: Combines solid support with a large community. Official support includes live chat, ticketing, and webinars. Users can also turn to the active community for additional help and resources. 

Excellent! You have a clearer picture of supports they have, let’s move on to how easy it is to use them.

Ease of Using Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

Not every user is a data expert, so how easy a tool is to learn and use really matters. A platform should help users focus on gaining insights, not slow them down with a steep learning curve.

Let’s look at how Power BI, Looker Studio, and Tableau compare when it comes to ease of use. 

Power BI: Power BI is often considered the most beginner-friendly option, especially for people already familiar with Microsoft tools like Excel. Its interface feels familiar and makes it easy to build charts and dashboards using simple drag-and-drop actions.

Tools like Power Query and Power Pivot are included to help with cleaning, transforming and dimensional data modeling in a way that’s clear and accessible.  

Looker Studio: Looker Studio has a clean and straightforward layout. It is designed to support both technical and non-technical users.

However, using it effectively often requires some understanding of Looker modeling language (LookML) and SQL, especially when custom reports or data models are involved.

For teams with technical experience, Looker Studio offers a flexible environment that supports deeper data exploration. 

Tableau: Tableau is widely appreciated for how approachable it feels at first. With its drag-and-drop interface, new users can quickly build dashboards and explore their data.

Creating simple visualizations is fairly easy and does not require coding. But as users move toward more advanced features like complex calculations, the tool becomes more technical. 

Ease of use may not be Tableau’s strength, nonetheless, next topic is where Tableau shines the most

Visualizations with Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

When it comes to data visualization, these tools differ in the types of visuals available, their customization capabilities, and how intuitively users can explore data. 

Power BI: Comes loaded with around 30 built-in visuals, including clustered bars, doughnut (donut) charts, KPI indicators, and combo charts.

It also connects to a vast visual marketplace (Microsoft AppSource), which unlocks 100+ custom visuals like bullet charts, sunburst diagrams, and heatmaps. These visuals are interactive, support drilldowns, and respond to slicers in real time. 

                                                                     
different chart types available in PowerBI through visualizations panel 

Looker Studio: keeps things minimal and simple. It offers basic visuals like bar, pie, line, tables, and scorecards. While this helps beginners avoid visual overload, it does limit analytical depth.

However, users can add community-developed plug-ins and charts to extend functionality. Although, not all of them are stable or officially supported. 

             different chart types available in Looker Studio through ”Add a chart” panel 

Tableau: Strikes a balance between built-in depth and customization. With over 24 native chart types, it supports dual-axis charts, treemaps, story points, and advanced features like parameter controls and dashboard actions.

Tableau’s strength lies in visual storytelling, allowing users to create narratives and walk-through within a dashboard, ideal for analyst-grade storytelling.

So, let’s talk about the collaboration among these tools in the next section

                                                                  
different chart types available in Tableau through the “Show Me” Panel. 

Collaboration Within Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

Collaboration is everything. The ability to co-edit reports, share dashboards, control permissions, and integrate with workplace tools determines how insights spread across teams. 

Power BI : Integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, making collaboration easy for organizations already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

You can publish reports to a shared workspace, schedule updates, and tag teammates in comments. The versioning and user access control features also support large-scale governance. 

collaborative feature in PowerBI 

Looker Studio: Emphasises simplicity. Sharing is as easy as clicking “Share” and assign view or edit access. It supports embedding websites, links with Google Workspace, and even real-time commenting.

However, finer access control and audit trails are more robust in the paid Looker platform under Google Cloud. 

                                                                    
the collaborative feature in Looker Studio 

Tableau: Allows collaborative analytics via Tableau Server and Tableau Online. Dashboards can be shared as interactive links, embedded in portals, or exported as PDF.

Users can set subscriptions for automated email reports and use Ask Data for natural language queries.

Team members can annotate, comment, and drill into shared dashboards making it ideal for fast-paced, insight-driven discussions. 

Fig 6 showing the collaborative feature in Tableau 

Data Connectors Available in Power BI, Tableau & Looker Studio

Power BI is a highly versatile tool with strong connectors across a broad spectrum of data sources. It integrates especially well with Microsoft products and Azure services, making it a natural fit for organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Supported sources include Excel, SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Google Analytics, Salesforce, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and many others. 

Power BI offers the flexibility to either connect directly to data for real-time access or import and transform it into optimized extracts for better performance. 

                                                        different data connectors on PowerBI 

Looker Studio: It supports connections to all Google based data sources and analytics. It is also stable for traditional SQL databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, as well as modern cloud warehouses like Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and Snowflake.  

Rather than importing data into the platform, Looker works through direct connections to these databases, allowing users to query data in real-time near real-time.

For performance optimization, data can also be cached using Looker’s proprietary engine. 

                                                        Fig 8 showing different data connectors in looker studio 

Tableau: Offers an extensive range of data connectors and it’s well-equipped to handle large datasets efficiently.

It connects seamlessly to a wide variety of sources and databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SQL Server, as well as cloud data warehouses like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake.

It also supports flat files, spreadsheets, and popular cloud applications. Users can choose between live connections, which query data directly, or data extracts, which cache data for better performance, offering flexibility based on your need for speed or real-time accuracy. 

                                                Fig 9 showing different data connectors available in Tableau 

Now that we’ve reviewed each tool’s strengths individually, let’s bring them side-by-side. 

Power BI vs Looker Studio vs Tableau Showdown

The table below conveys a concise yet detailed comparison of Power BI, Looker Studio, and Tableau, highlighting their key features: 

As the comparison shows, each tools excels in different areas. But, choosing the “best” tool isn’t about the tools that has the most features or capabilities. it’s about understanding your specific needs, your team’s skills, and the big picture of what you intend to do with your data. 

Conclusion

Choosing the “best” data visualization tool in 2025 depends on your needs and user profile

Each of these tools, Microsoft Power BI, Google Looker Studio, and Tableau has something unique to offer, and the right choice depends on your goals, experience level, and existing ecosystem. 

Power BI is an excellent option if you’re already within the Microsoft ecosystem. It combines strong data modeling, AI features, and real-time capabilities at a competitive price point.  

Looker Studio is good for users who rely heavily on Google products and want a free, easy to use, quick-start solution for visualization.

It’s particularly great for individuals, marketers and small businesses who need simplicity and fast integration. 

Tableau stands out for its visual storytelling, flexibility, and analyst-grade capabilities. While it comes at a higher price, its rich visualization features and advanced analytics make it a top choice for data  

If you’re a beginner or working solo, Looker Studio could be a practical starting point.  

Are you still confused on which tool to use?  Reach out to us, and will help access your native business tools, team size, and technical know-how and advice on the best tool for you 

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