Google Data Studio (Looker Studio) vs Microsoft Power BI

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Native PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, BigQuery with custom queries, Redshift and Snowflake beside Google's own ads stack, a claimed 1,470 connectors, documented blending and a developer platform — breadth is proven. But the captured pages give no refresh schedules or minimum interval, no live-versus-extract trade-offs, no gateway or tunnel for databases behind a firewall and no per-plan connector quotas, and the business-application connectors beyond Google's own products come from third parties like Supermetrics and Windsor.ai, sold separately on their own trials.

Microsoft Power BI

The documentation points to per-source connector articles that state whether live queries are supported and describes query and caching behaviour, and the REST API exposes gateways, dataflows, imports and push datasets. But the captured pages name no individual connector, state no refresh interval, and say nothing about combining several sources, so what is shown is a documented connector framework rather than a connector list I could check a warehouse or ERP against.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Interactive reports with filters and multiple pages, a drag-and-drop editor with pixel-perfect or snap-to-grid canvas, real-time collaboration, a mobile app and chart alerts are all documented. We found no public information on the chart library itself, pivot tables, maps, drill-down, localised number and date formats, or accessibility of the charts — I score the interaction shell, not an imagined catalogue.

Microsoft Power BI

The product page shows drag-and-drop authoring in Desktop, both interactive and paginated reports, consumption on web and mobile, and a claim of scaling to thousands of users, with dashboards and reports as API objects. Nothing captured describes the chart library, filters, drill-down, cross-filtering, theming or number and date formatting, so I credit the basics plus the paginated-report capability and no more.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Gemini in the Pro edition takes natural-language questions and creates calculated fields, and analysts can write custom queries through the BigQuery connector — but nothing shows the query an AI answer ran, which is exactly where I stop trusting it. We found no public information on a shared metric layer, version-controlled definitions, certified datasets or forecasting with a stated method; semantic models appear only by connecting out to a separate Looker instance.

Microsoft Power BI

Desktop authoring via drag-and-drop and a Power Query connection layer are shown, and datasets and dataflows appear as managed objects in the API. On a query builder for business users, a SQL editor, metrics defined once and reused, natural-language answers that show the query they ran, and definitions under version control, I found no public information in the captures — and shared, consistent definitions are the difference between self-service and every department inventing its own revenue.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Sharing with individuals, teams or the world, personal links giving each recipient an editable copy, embedding on any web page, up to 200 delivery schedules per report into Google Chat, and threshold alerts on charts are documented. We found no public information on email delivery as PDF or image, export of a report to PDF, Excel or PowerPoint, comments, white-label styling, row-level filtering per embedded viewer, or an embedding licence model.

Microsoft Power BI

Sharing reports for web and mobile use and folder-level access management on the report server are stated, and the REST API documents embedding content, issuing embedding tokens and managing dedicated embedded capacity, with a.NET SDK offered as a next step. Scheduled email or chat delivery, threshold alerts, export to PDF or Excel, external sharing and white-label or per-viewer embedding are not described on any captured page.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

Team workspaces with Manager, Content Manager and Contributor roles, project-level IAM permissions, organisation-owned assets, customer-managed encryption keys and data residency are documented for the Pro edition, and a content export at Google-account level exists. Against that, the management API reaches metadata only — the vendor's own documentation states filters, sections and dimensions within a report cannot be retrieved — and it is restricted to Google Workspace or Cloud Identity organisations; we found no public information on row-level security, single sign-on, SCIM, audit logs or development and production environments.

Microsoft Power BI

A documented REST API covers administration, workspaces, users and deployment pipelines, the report server edition runs on the customer's own servers behind the firewall, and reports are organised in folders with managed access. Row-level security, single sign-on and provisioning, audit logs, and — the question I always ask before recommending anything — export of dashboards and definitions in a format another tool reads, are not described on the captured pages, so what leaving would cost is unknown.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

For users in the EEA or Switzerland the controller is Google Ireland Limited in Dublin, a Cloud Data Processing Addendum is published and incorporated into the agreement, a Google Cloud subprocessor list exists, and Pro adds data residency with extracts storable in your own BigQuery dataset and uploads in your own Cloud Storage bucket. But the privacy policy states servers are operated worldwide, the parent company is Google LLC of Mountain View, the captured subprocessor entries carry no locations, and no ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certification appears on these pages; the policy itself acknowledges delays between deletion and removal from active and backup systems, with no timeline published.

Microsoft Power BI

The German legal notice names Microsoft Corporation of Redmond as the provider and expressly disclaims that the German subsidiary represents it, while a published data processing addendum does exist. The EU Data Boundary documentation names fifteen European datacenter countries but applies only to designated services depending on signup location, billing address and configuration, excludes Multi-Geo customers, and itself acknowledges continued limited transfers outside the boundary, with the API documentation adding that request and response data may be processed outside the home region. No subprocessor list is captured and nothing states where extracts and caches are stored, so the European chain is conditional and cannot be verified from these pages.

Google Data Studio (Looker Studio)

The core is unusually clear: the free tier covers creators and report viewers alike, and Pro is $9 per user per project per month with a 30-day trial that bills automatically afterwards unless cancelled, and a self-service upgrade. We could not compute from the captured pages how "per project" scales across an organisation, the price for longer subscription lengths beyond the stated $9 figure, the cost of the separate Google Cloud support plan that technical support requires, or what partner connectors such as Supermetrics add to the bill; VAT treatment is not on these pages either.

Microsoft Power BI

The captured product page offers a free trial download and a "show prices" link but states no figures — no seat or viewer prices, no tiers, no capacity or usage pricing, no minimum term or VAT treatment. From these pages alone a buyer cannot compute even a starting annual cost, and nothing says what sits behind the link.