Looker vs SAP Analytics Cloud
Looker
cloud.google.comSAP Analytics Cloud
sap.comSide by side
| Figure | Looker | SAP Analytics Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $36/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 3 | 2 |
| Spec score · Business Intelligence Tools | 8.5 (#20) | 9.2 (#2) |
| Spec score · Ai Analytics | 8.1 (#7) | 8.5 (#3) |
| Spec score · Business Intelligence & Analytics - Midmarket Software | 8.2 (#9) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Compliance | Google says Looker products maintain ISO, SOC, and other security certifications through its compliance program, with certification details available to customers and prospects under NDA. | SAP states that its cloud infrastructure uses ISO 27001 and SOC reporting, with compliance evidence available through the Trust Center. |
| Deployment | hybrid | hybrid |
| Embedded analytics | Looker APIs, SDKs, and iframe embedding let developers build analytics and conversational experiences into applications. | Yes |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Natural-language queries | Yes | Yes |
| Refresh frequency | hourly | real-time |
| Row-level security | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduled reports | Yes | Yes |
| Security | Looker documents TLS 1.2 or later for data in transit and AES-256 encryption for locally stored sensitive application data. | The product supports user, role, and access administration, and its help documentation describes single sign-on and folder access and privacy settings. |
| Support | Developer user licensing includes access to Support, while standard and viewer user licensing does not. | SAP identifies partner specialists, SAP experts, and its extended developer community as support resources for deployment and questions. |
| Trial | Google advertises a free 14-day Looker trial. | The basic trial is a no-cost, 30-day experience on a shared tenant using sample data; it omits some administration, customization, master data management, and integration capabilities. |
| What it does | Looker helps organizations explore, share, and visualize company data to support business decisions. | SAP Analytics Cloud is a SaaS product combining business intelligence, planning, predictive analytics, reporting, and collaboration. |
Plans
SAP Analytics Cloud
- Business Intelligence$36 a month
- SAP Analytics CloudPriced on request
In their own words
Looker
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.
SAP Analytics Cloud
SAP Analytics Cloud brings business intelligence, analytics and enterprise planning together in a cloud service. It supports financial, supply chain and operational planning, with real-time data refresh, scheduled reports, embedded analytics, natural-language queries and row-level security. Joule can automate reports, model scenarios, surface insights and handle analytics and planning tasks through conversation. More than 100 prebuilt business content packages are available across lines of business. Named data sources include SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW/4HANA, SAP BusinessObjects, SQL, OData and Google BigQuery. Live connections analyze data at its source without replication; import connections bring data in for modeling. The service offers web, iOS and Android access and hybrid deployment. Mobile apps require an SAP Analytics Cloud account and mobile services enabled by the user's IT department. Pricing is on request, and there is no free plan. A no-cost 30-day trial uses sample data on a shared tenant and excludes some administration, customization, master data management and integration capabilities.