Looker VS Plotly

Compare Looker VS Plotly and see what are their differences

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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.

Plotly

Low-Code Data Apps

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.

Landing page //
2023-07-31

Looker

Website: looker.com
Pricing URL: Official Looker Pricing
Startup details
Country: United States

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Plotly

Website: plotly.com
Pricing URL: Official Plotly Pricing

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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.

Plotly features and specs

Interactivity
Plotly offers highly interactive plots that allow users to pan, zoom, and hover over data points for more information. This enhances the user experience and provides deeper insights.
High-quality visualizations
It provides aesthetically pleasing and highly customizable charts, making it suitable for publication-quality visuals.
Versatility
Plotly supports multiple chart types including line charts, scatter plots, bar charts, and 3D plots, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
Python integration
Plotly is well-integrated with Python and works seamlessly with other popular data science libraries like Pandas, NumPy, and Scikit-learn.
Web-based
The plots can be easily embedded in web applications or dashboards, making it ideal for sharing insights over the internet.
Open-source
Plotly offers an open-source version, which allows users to create and share visualizations without any cost.

Possible disadvantages of Plotly

Performance
Rendering very large datasets can sometimes be slow, which may not be suitable for real-time data visualization requirements.
Learning curve
Even though the library is well-documented, the extensive range of features can have a steep learning curve for beginners.
Cost for advanced features
While the basic functionality is free, more advanced features, such as export to certain formats and additional customizable options, require a paid subscription.
Dependency management
Plotly has a number of dependencies that need to be managed properly, which can sometimes complicate the setup process.
Complexity
For simple visualizations, Plotly might be overkill and simpler libraries like Matplotlib or Seaborn could be more appropriate.

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 Plotly

Overall verdict

Overall, Plotly is a strong choice for those looking to create dynamic and interactive data visualizations, thanks to its range of features and ease of integration with web technologies.

Why this product is good

Plotly is considered good because it offers a comprehensive suite of tools for creating interactive visualizations that can be used in web applications, reports, and dashboards. It supports many different types of plots, is easy to use for both beginners and experienced developers, and integrates well with popular programming languages like Python, R, and JavaScript.

Recommended for

Plotly is recommended for data scientists, analysts, and developers who need to create interactive and visually appealing data visualizations. It's particularly useful for those who work with Python or R and want the ability to embed their visualizations in web applications or dashboards.

Looker videos

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Looker Review

Plotly videos

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Create Real-time Chart with Javascript | Plotly.js Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Looker and Plotly)

Looker

Plotly

Data Dashboard

87 87%

Data Dashboard

13% 13

Data Visualization

70 70%

Data Visualization

30% 30

Business Intelligence

100 100%

Business Intelligence

0% 0

Charting Libraries

0 0%

Charting Libraries

100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Looker and Plotly. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

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

Looker Reviews

Top 10 BI Tools in 2026 (with Pricing, AI Features & Enterprise Fit)

Looker like business intelligence platforms include tools that offer governed data models, embedded analytics, real-time dashboards, and scalable cloud performance. These platforms are ideal for organizations that need consistent metrics, strong data governance, and customizable analytics similar to what Looker provides.

Source: supaboard.ai

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.

Source: www.sigmacomputing.com

Plotly Reviews

Best 8 Redash Alternatives in 2023 [In Depth Guide]

Plotly is specifically designed for companies who want to build and deploy analytic applications like dashboards using Python, Julia, or R without needing DevOps or Javascript developers.

Source: www.datapad.io

5 Best Python Libraries For Data Visualization in 2023

Plotly is a web-based data visualization toolkit that comes with unique functionalities such as dendrograms, 3D charts, and also contour plots, which is not very common in other libraries. It has a great API offering scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, error bars, box plots, and other visualizations. Plotly can even be accessed from a Python Notebook.

Source: www.technotification.com

Top 8 Python Libraries for Data Visualization

Plotly is a free open-source graphing library that can be used to form data visualizations. Plotly (plotly.py) is built on top of the Plotly JavaScript library (plotly.js) and can be used to create web-based data visualizations that can be displayed in Jupyter notebooks or web applications using Dash or saved as individual HTML files. Plotly provides more than 40 unique...

Source: www.geeksforgeeks.org

5 top picks for JavaScript chart libraries

Plotly is a graphing library that’s available for various runtime environments, including the browser. It supports many kinds of charts and graphs that we can configure with a variety of options.

Source: blog.logrocket.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Plotly should be more popular than Looker. It has been mentiond 34 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: over 3 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 3 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 / over 4 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 4 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 4 years ago

Plotly mentions (34)

How to Analyze 47 Million Hacker News Posts: A Data Scientist's Dream Dataset Just Got Better
Let's dive into some practical examples. First, you'll need to set up your environment with the right tools. I recommend using pandas for data manipulation and plotly for visualization. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
Python for Data Visualization: Best Tools and Practices
Plotly is perfect for interactive visualizations. You can create interactive charts and graphs that allow users to hover, click, and zoom in. Plotly is also great for web-based visuals, making it easy to share your findings online. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Generative AI Powered QnA & Visualization Chatbot
Front End: A React application that leverages React-Chatbotify library to easily integrate a chatbot GUI. It also uses the Plotly library to display the charts/visualizations. The generative AI implementation and details are entirely abstracted from the front end. The front-end application depends on a single REST endpoint of the backend application. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Build a Stock Dashboard in less than 40 lines of Python code!🤓
In this tutorial, Mariya Sha will guide you through building a stock value dashboard using Taipy, Plotly, and a dataset from Kaggle. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
Essential Deep Learning Checklist: Best Practices Unveiled
How to Accomplish: Utilize visualization libraries like Matplotlib, Seaborn, or Plotly in Python to create histograms, scatter plots, and bar charts. For image data, use tools that visualize images alongside their labels to check for labeling accuracy. For structured data, correlation matrices and pair plots can be highly informative. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Looker and Plotly, 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.

D3.js - D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.

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

RAWGraphs - RAWGraphs is an open source app built with the goal of making the visualization of complex data...

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

Domo - Domo: business intelligence, data visualization, dashboards and reporting all together. Simplify your big data and improve your business with Domo's agile and mobile-ready platform.

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker

Microsoft Power BI vs Plotly