Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Looker VS NocoDB

Compare Looker VS NocoDB and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Looker logo Looker

Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

NocoDB logo NocoDB

The Open Source Airtable alternative
  • Looker Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-11

Looker is a business intelligence platform with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. The Looker platform includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for creating data discovery experiences, and an extensible API set so the data can exist in other systems. Looker enables anyone to search and explore data, build dashboards and reports, and share everything easily and quickly.

  • NocoDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29

Looker features and specs

  • Powerful Data Modeling
    Looker uses LookML, a proprietary modeling language, making it possible to transform raw data into meaningful metrics and dimensions, providing deep insights without needing SQL expertise.
  • Ease of Use
    Its intuitive user interface enables non-technical users to create visualizations and reports with relative ease, reducing the workload on data teams.
  • Customization
    Looker offers extensive customization options for data exploration and visualization, allowing dashboards and reports to be tailored to specific user needs.
  • Embedded Analytics
    Provides robust capabilities for embedding analytics into applications or portals, broadening the scope of data-driven decision-making throughout the organization.
  • Real-time Data
    Supports real-time data analytics by querying live data, which ensures up-to-date insights and helps in making timely decisions.
  • Integrations
    Looker integrates seamlessly with a wide range of databases and cloud data warehouses, including Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and Snowflake.

Possible disadvantages of Looker

  • Learning Curve
    LookML, while powerful, can be complex for beginners who are not already familiar with data modeling or SQL, resulting in a steep learning curve.
  • Cost
    Looker can be expensive, especially for small businesses, as pricing is typically based on the number of users and the data volume processed.
  • Performance
    Query performance can sometimes be slow, especially with complex data models and large data sets, which may impact the user experience.
  • Customization Constraints
    While Looker offers great customization, certain advanced customizations may require significant expertise and time, posing a potential barrier.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Looker is primarily designed for online use, so it lacks robust offline capabilities, which can be a limitation for users who need access to data in situations without internet connectivity.

NocoDB features and specs

  • Open Source
    NocoDB is an open-source platform, making it highly customizable and cost-effective for both individual developers and organizations.
  • User Friendly
    The interface is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, lowering the barrier for non-technical users to create and manage databases visually.
  • Integration Capabilities
    NocoDB supports a wide range of integrations with other popular tools and services, enabling seamless workflows and data synchronization.
  • Collaboration
    The platform allows multiple users to collaborate on projects in real time, which is beneficial for team-based projects and remote work setups.
  • Data Security
    Being open source, users can handle their own data security and privacy as per their specific requirements, which can be advantageous over cloud-dependent solutions.
  • Extensible
    Offers an API-first approach, allowing developers to extend its functionalities and integrate it into existing systems easily.

Possible disadvantages of NocoDB

  • Limited Community Support
    As a relatively new player, the community and third-party support may not be as vast and well-established as more mature platforms.
  • Self-Hosting Requirements
    Requires users to manage their own hosting environment, which can be a drawback for those looking for a fully managed service.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic features are user-friendly, utilizing advanced functionalities may require a steeper learning curve, particularly for those unfamiliar with database management.
  • Performance Concerns
    Being dependent on the hosting environment and configurations, performance might not be optimal compared to proprietary SaaS solutions.
  • Scalability Issues
    Scaling the application might require significant technical expertise, particularly in configuring and managing the underlying infrastructure.
  • Inconsistent Updates
    Reliance on community contributions for updates can lead to less predictable release schedules, which might delay access to new features or bug fixes.

Analysis of Looker

Overall verdict

  • Looker is generally considered a robust solution for organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities. Its flexibility, extensibility, and ease of use make it a strong contender in the BI space, though it may require some learning and setup effort to fully utilize its features.

Why this product is good

  • Looker is a data analytics platform that provides powerful tools for data exploration, visualization, and business intelligence. It offers a user-friendly interface and is known for its ability to connect to a wide variety of data sources. Looker's LookML, a modeling language, allows users to define data relationships and calculations, making it easier to create custom reports and dashboards. Additionally, it integrates well with other tools and supports collaboration with data teams.

Recommended for

  • Companies seeking scalable and flexible business intelligence solutions.
  • Organizations that need to integrate multiple data sources.
  • Teams looking for a collaborative platform with custom reporting capabilities.
  • Users who prefer a code-based approach to data modeling and analysis.

Analysis of NocoDB

Overall verdict

  • Yes, NocoDB is a good option for users who want a no-code or low-code solution to manage databases efficiently. It provides a powerful alternative to more complex database management systems, especially for small to medium-sized projects or teams. It's highly regarded for its ease of use, extensive features, and active open-source community.

Why this product is good

  • NocoDB is a feature-rich, open-source platform that allows users to convert their databases into smart spreadsheets. It's an appealing option for those looking to manage databases with a user-friendly interface without deep technical expertise. It supports a wide range of database systems like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and several others. It also offers REST APIs, which make it flexible and extendable for various application needs.

Recommended for

    NocoDB is recommended for small businesses, startups, non-developers, and teams who wish to streamline database management with an easy-to-navigate interface. It's also suitable for developers or organizations looking to integrate no-code solutions into their applications without heavy investment in additional software infrastructure.

Looker videos

Looker Review

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Use Looker as a Business User
  • Review - Looker Review - Off The Shelf Reviews

NocoDB videos

No NocoDB videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Looker and NocoDB)
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Spreadsheets
0 0%
100% 100
Business Intelligence
100 100%
0% 0
Productivity
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Looker and NocoDB. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Looker and NocoDB

Looker Reviews

Explore 7 Tableau Alternatives for Data Visualization and Analysis
Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is a user-friendly business intelligence tool that transforms raw data into interactive, customizable dashboards and reports. It integrates seamlessly with Google's ecosystem and supports various data sources, including Google Analytics and BigQuery. Looker Studio offers robust visualization capabilities and real-time collaborative...
Source: www.draxlr.com
Explore 6 Metabase Alternatives for Data Visualization and Analysis
To find the best Metabase alternative for your business, start by listing your specific requirements, such as customer support, data integrations, visualization options, user access controls, and budget. Compare these needs with the features of other BI tools like Draxlr, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, or Holistics. Once you've identified a few suitable options, take advantage...
Source: www.draxlr.com
5 best Looker alternatives
In this blog, we’ll dive into the best 5 Looker alternatives currently dominating the market. Whether you're seeking a Looker alternative with enhanced features, better pricing, or a more tailored fit for your analytics needs, this guide will help you discover BI tool that could be a perfect match for your business.
Source: www.draxlr.com
10 Best Alternatives to Looker in 2024
Exploring alternatives to Looker isn't just about finding a different tool; it's about uncovering solutions that better address your specific business challenges and operational workflows. Here, we highlight five areas where Looker's limitations might lead you to consider other options.
6 Best Looker alternatives
So who are Looker’s competitors? Our top 5 Looker alternatives provide data visualisation and exploration for business intelligence but also offer lower price points, less of a learning curve, and more accessibility for your non-tech team.
Source: trevor.io

NocoDB Reviews

We have no reviews of NocoDB yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, NocoDB should be more popular than Looker. It has been mentiond 35 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Looker mentions (14)

  • edit home page to add folder section
    Then in the "foldername" you can have 5 folders, each one for each of the groups. This means that when group1 enters looker.com, his default page will be the "foldername", which contains group1folder (he cannot see the rest of the folders if you have set the permissions correctly for each folder). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Stars, tables, and activities: How do we model the real world?
    Even if you want to make Wide Tables, combining fact and dimensions is often the easiest way to create them, so why not make them available? Looker, for example, is well suited to dimensional models because it takes care of the joins that can make Kimball warehouses hard to navigate for business users. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • dbt for Data Quality Testing & Alerting at FINN
    We take daily snapshots of test results, aggregate them, and send Looker dashboards to the appropriate teams. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • I'm a dev ID 10 T please help me
    Dashboard: I like to use Datastudio because it's easy (just like using google sheets), but you can also try out Looker. Source: over 3 years ago
  • The Data Stack Journey: Lessons from Architecting Stacks at Heroku and Mattermost
    For Growth and larger, I would recommend Looker. The only reason I wouldn't recommend it for the smaller company stages is that the cost is much higher than alternatives such as Metabase. With Looker, you define your data model in LookML, which Looker then uses to provide a drag-and-drop interface for end-users that enables them to build their own visualizations without needing to write SQL. This lets your... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
View more

NocoDB mentions (35)

  • Wikipedia and Stack Overflow Search
    Hi, https://mach3db.com is now a frontend to search Wikipedia and Stack Overflow article titles. Right now I only have simple substring search to reduce load on my server. The results are clickable links that point to lightweight versions of Wikipedia and Stack Overflow articles. Please give it a try! It works best in the Vivaldi browser: https://vivaldi.com/ Stack Overflow results can also be filtered by minimum... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • How to Build Internal Tools 100x Faster
    It is possible to speed up the development and delivery process for many internal applications by using no-code or low code tools. These vary in offerings from open source to SaaS, including popular ones like AirTable, BudiBase, Retool, NocoDB and others. These can all greatly help speed up delivery times. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Show HN: Visual DB – Web front end for your database
    How would you describe the differences with https://nocodb.com/ ? - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Getting my feet wet with Kubernetes
    Inside each namespace, there are K8 services pointing to self hosted tools (at this point, I’ve only got NocoDB setup). Each namespace also has a Postgres database. The database is hostpath storage mounted since I am only using single node clusters and also didn’t have time to look too much into “Stateful Sets” and how to correctly host a database within a K8 cluster. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Pocketbase: Open-source back end in 1 file
    It is great to see the number of good opensource projects in this area. Grist and NocoDB deserve mentions, although more targeted towards database management. It is also amazing that they provide so simple ways to get started (single file/electron) - https://github.com/gristlabs. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Looker and NocoDB, you can also consider the following products

Tableau - Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.

Airtable - Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.

Microsoft Power BI - BI visualization and reporting for desktop, web or mobile

Baserow - Open source no-code database and Airtable alternative. Create your own online database without technical experience. Performant with high volumes of data, can be self hosted and supports plugins

Sisense - The BI & Dashboard Software to handle multiple, large data sets.

Rows - The spreadsheet where teams work faster