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Struggling to turn your data into insights? Looker and Looker Studio are both part of Google's analytics ecosystem, but serve different roles. Looker is a powerful enterprise BI tool with a semantic modeling layer, while Looker Studio is a free dashboarding tool designed for easy report creation and sharing. While their names are similar, they serve different purposes. Looker is built for governed analytics with LookML and complex data modeling. Looker Studio, rebranded from Google Data Studio in 2022, focuses on user-friendly visualization and seamless integrations with Google tools.
In this article, we’ll explore key features, walk through how to use the tools effectively, and highlight their benefits for data analytics and visualization.
Here’s what it’s good at:
Note: This article was originally published in June 2023 and has been updated in July 2025 to include new features, enhanced capabilities, and current best practices for using Looker and Looker Studio effectively.
Google Data Studio premiered in March 2016 as part of the Google Analytics 360 Suite. A free, standalone version was rolled out in May 2016, and the tool was rebranded as Looker Studio on October 11, 2022.
Today, it combines powerful analytics and visualization tools and works seamlessly with other Google products to give you a better handle on your data. Despite the shared branding, Looker Studio does not use LookML or share the same semantic modeling layer as Looker. However, both platforms are part of Google’s broader analytics stack.
No matter if you're a startup just getting started or a large enterprise, Looker and Looker Studio can truly empower you to unlock the full potential of your data. The platform is accessible to individuals, teams, and organizations, offering an easy way to create and share reports.
Business Intelligence (BI) is a core component of modern data strategy, enabling companies to convert raw data into meaningful insights. Tools like Looker let you connect to a variety of data sources, like databases, spreadsheets, and cloud services, and build clear, customizable dashboards that bring key trends and metrics to the surface.
Looker Studio takes things a step further with an easy-to-use interface that lets you build interactive reports aligned with your business goals. It’s great for team collaboration and sharing insights. Depending on your use case, Looker or Looker Studio can help analyze and visualize data effectively. Looker supports advanced BI workflows, while Studio is better suited for quick reporting.
Looker is a cloud-based tool that helps you dive deep into your data and turn it into clear, useful insights, no matter where you are. Built with analysts in mind, it makes it easy to explore and visualize information using interactive dashboards, charts, and tables.
Looker utilizes data models to define and organize relationships within your data, enabling you to run scalable, high-performance analytics across even the most complex datasets. It also leverages AI-powered tools to speed up tasks like report creation and data modeling, helping teams work faster and smarter.
Its dashboards are highly customizable, giving users the flexibility to tailor views to their specific needs. Users can also customize and work with dimensions to analyze and visualize data effectively, ensuring that insights are both relevant and actionable.
Teams across functions, including marketing, finance, and ops, rely on Looker to track what matters most, uncover trends, and fine-tune performance. Real-time insights and powerful tools mean smarter decisions that actually move the business forward.
When you first log in to Looker, you’ll land on the main dashboard. It’s customizable, so your layout might look a little different from someone else’s, but you’ll probably see a few core elements, like:
By using these tools together, you can better understand your data and use that knowledge to make informed decisions. Looker dashboard makes exploring complex data sets easy and identifies patterns and trends that might not be immediately obvious.
Looker’s intuitive interface and powerful analytics tools work together to help you unlock the full potential of your data, turning raw information into real, actionable insights.
Looker’s a solid tool for digging into your data and making sense of it visually, but it might feel a bit overwhelming at first. If you’re just getting started, here’s how to ease into it and start making it work for you:
Working with Looker’s features through hands-on practice, such as creating custom fields and optimizing queries, is essential to mastering data analysis and visualization.
To get the most out of Looker, keep these best practices in mind:
Looker is a great tool for businesses looking to make data-driven decisions. Looker makes it easier to spot insights you might miss with other tools, thanks to its powerful analytics and flexible visuals.
Connecting BigQuery to Looker opens up a whole new level of data analysis, making it easier to dig into your data and find answers faster. BigQuery is a robust database solution designed to handle vast amounts of data, making it ideal for companies that need to store and analyze information at scale. Looker makes it easy to connect to your BigQuery data, so you can quickly dive into up-to-date analytics and explore your data in depth, without the hassle.
Looker Studio makes it easy to build custom reports and visuals right from your BigQuery data. You can explore complex datasets, create interactive dashboards, and find key insights, no advanced tech skills required.
This integration allows companies to make data-driven decisions quickly, optimize their operations, and discover new opportunities for growth and innovation. By combining the strengths of BigQuery and Looker, organizations can transform their data into a strategic asset.
Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a separate product from Looker, though they now share a common branding under Google Cloud. It empowers users to create impactful visualizations for better data understanding.
It offers a user-friendly interface with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality for swift data formatting and visualization. It offers a wide range of chart types, including scatter plots, bar charts, line graphs, and heat maps, and even lets you create custom visuals to match your specific needs.
One of the key benefits of Looker Studio is how easily it connects to various data sources, from databases and cloud storage to web services, so you can bring all your data together in one place. As of July 2025, Looker Studio offers over 900 native and partner connectors, making it easier to pull data from marketing platforms, databases, CRMs, and more, with no SQL required. This facilitates data consolidation and analysis, identifying important trends and patterns.
Overall, it helps businesses of all sizes make better decisions by allowing them to analyze and visualize their data effectively.
Looker Studio Pro gives teams more powerful reporting tools, with added control, better collaboration options, and greater flexibility to customize reports to fit their needs. Looker Studio Pro is a licence‑based upgrade (complimentary for Looker platform users; otherwise from US $9/user/mo, 30‑day free trial). It’s a great fit for teams looking to maintain consistent data visualizations and scale them easily as they grow.
OWOX BI is a powerful all-in-one data analytics tool that offers a wide range of features to help businesses make data-driven decisions. From data collection for your marketing and sales data into Google BigQuery.
It also provides the most accurate server-side streaming for your website user behavior data, through seamless data transformation with plug-and-play templates to your data, to attribution modeling capabilities, and robust data preparation by OWOX BI, which powers dashboards in Looker Studio. This allows users to analyze data in real-time, track performance, and identify trends and patterns so they can make data-driven decisions and grow ROI
A major advantage of OWOX BI is its ability to process large volumes of data from multiple sources. It lets businesses analyze data from:
This makes it ideal for consolidating marketing and operational data into a unified view.
Looker Studio then offers a range of reporting features that allow users to create custom reports and automate reporting processes. OWOX BI helps users to prepare the data for ad-hoc reports on the fly or set up scheduled reports to be updated regularly.
One of the best features of OWOX BI is its ability to identify trends and patterns in your data using advanced analytics and data modeling. It helps uncover connections across datasets and delivers insights that traditional reports often miss.
Looker Studio provides businesses with powerful data visualization tools that help communicate complex data clearly and effectively. It’s designed to make building custom, interactive dashboards simple and impactful.
Looker Studio's data visualization features can help businesses identify patterns, trends, and correlations in their data that may not be immediately obvious. By using the platform's visualization capabilities, businesses can gain deeper insights into their data, enabling them to make more informed decisions.
Creating a custom visualization in Looker Studio is simple. You can drag and drop to add or remove data sources, tweak metrics, and set filters, all without needing to write a single line of code.
Looker Studio also provides the ability to create custom dashboards, allowing you to visualize your data in a way that suits your needs. These dashboards help you monitor key metrics, identify trends, and pinpoint areas that require attention.
Depending on your needs, Looker or Looker Studio gives you the tools to build custom visuals—either with enterprise-grade modeling or user-friendly drag-and-drop dashboards. By using these tools, businesses can gain deeper insights into their data, identify patterns and trends more easily, and make more informed decisions.
For companies using cloud-based data platforms, keeping cloud costs under control is a big deal. Either Looker or Looker Studio can help visualize cloud spending, depending on your team’s need for advanced modeling or fast dashboards. By linking to cloud billing data, users can build detailed dashboards and reports that show where money’s going, what’s driving costs, and how spending aligns with the budget.
Custom visualizations, like line and bar charts, make it easy for business users to identify unusual spending, predict future costs, and decide where to allocate resources more effectively. Automated alerts and scheduled reports keep stakeholders informed about cloud spending, enabling them to address issues and manage costs effectively, proactively.
With Looker’s analytics and visualization tools, companies get a clear view of their cloud spending, making it easier to spot inefficiencies and optimize how they use cloud resources.
Looker Studio helps you see what’s going on in your data, so you can make smarter decisions and keep things moving forward.
Using Looker Studio with data from OWOX BI helps teams save time and reduce manual work. You get fast, easy access to clean data, can analyze it on the spot, and build clear visuals, no deep tech skills needed. That way, your team can spend less time wrangling data and more time on what matters, like building products or improving the customer experience.
OWOX BI provides comprehensive and reliable data, while Looker Studio provides businesses with the visualization of the information they need to make better decisions. With real-time data analysis, businesses can spot trends, monitor performance, and make smarter decisions that fuel growth.
Looker Studio makes it easy to build custom reports and dashboards that highlight what matters, so teams can quickly zero in on areas that need attention.
OWOX BI and Looker Studio make it easier for teams to work together. They allow you to share data, build custom reports, and collaborate on insights, all in one place. This type of visibility helps teams stay aligned and work more efficiently, resulting in improved outcomes across the board.
Another big plus of Looker Studio is how it brings complex data, prepared by OWOX BI, to life. It lets teams turn dense datasets into clear, easy-to-grasp visuals, making it simpler to spot patterns, trends, and opportunities they might have missed in raw numbers.
Looker Studio is a great tool for turning complex data into clear, easy-to-grasp visuals that actually make sense at a glance.
OWOX BI and Looker Studio help businesses work smarter by automating much of the data analysis and reporting process. With less time spent on manual tasks, teams can focus on making decisions faster, boosting productivity, and keeping workflows running smoothly.
Many companies have successfully incorporated OWOX BI and Looker Studio to improve their data analytics and visualization capabilities. Here are a few examples:
These case studies demonstrate how Looker and Looker Studio can be used in different industries to solve various data-related challenges and achieve measurable results.
"OWOX BI has revolutionized the way our team analyzes and interprets data. The ability to create custom reports and dashboards has helped us make more informed decisions and improve overall performance." Christophe Lemaire, VP of e-marketing, Acquisition and CRM at Chantelle Group
Connect Looker Studio directly to trusted data marts in BigQuery using OWOX BI. Deliver governed metrics, automate updates, and build interactive reports, without writing SQL or duplicating logic.
Designed for marketing, ops, and analytics teams, it’s already powering dashboards for 100,000+ users. Ready to make reporting easier, faster, and more reliable?
