Looker vs MotherDuck

Looker helps organizations explore, share, and visualize company data for business decisions. Its LookML semantic models define dimensions, aggregates, calculations, and relationships, then use those definitions to generate SQL queries. Gemini-powered natural-language analytics lets users ask questions, while Dashboard Agents provide summaries and explorations grounded in governed metrics. Looker connects to BigQuery, Spanner, Cloud SQL for MySQL, Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, and other Google services. The Looker Marketplace offers applications, prebuilt LookML models, visualizations, and actions for delivering data to third-party services. Listed capabilities include hourly refresh, row-level security, scheduled reports, and embedded analytics. Deployment is hybrid, with web, Android, iOS, API, and self-hosted options. Mobile apps let users view Looks and dashboards. Google documents TLS 1.2 or later for data in transit and AES-256 encryption for locally stored sensitive application data. A free 14-day trial is advertised, but there is no free plan. Standard, Enterprise, and Embed each list one production instance, 10 Standard Users, and two Developer Users; their API call allowances differ. Pricing is on request.

MotherDuck is a serverless cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB for data teams, app developers, and AI agents. Hypertenancy gives each user, customer, or agent an isolated DuckDB instance, called a Duckling. Teams can share databases through read-only objects that let recipients query data without exporting files or making another copy. The MotherDuck MCP Server enables AI agents to inspect catalogs, run SQL, read Guides, create Dives, and manage Flights. Flights are scheduled Python pipelines that run inside MotherDuck; Dives are interactive visualizations that users can filter, drill into, share, or embed in an app. Listed integrations include dbt, Airflow, Fivetran, Hex, Tableau, and Omni. Access is through web and API, with SQL notebooks, team query sharing, and AI query assistance. The Lite plan is free and includes up to 3 internal active users, 2 service accounts, 10 GB of storage, and 10 hours of Pulse compute per month. Business costs $250 a month per organization plus usage, with a 7-day free trial. Lite includes community support; Business includes expert support.