Looker Pricing: What Are the Costs?

Disclaimer: We source public information for Looker’s pricing, including its own site. All pricing information within this resource is accurate at the time of publication.

Looker is a data discovery platform deployed both on premise and via the Cloud. It first came onto the Business Intelligence scene in 2011 and is headquartered in Santa Cruz.

Looker has gained a reputation for being an easy-to-use system that utilizes proprietary data modeling language to shorten the implementation time period. Looker can get your implementation done in mere hours instead of the days or weeks that it might take some other platforms. 

But how much does Looker cost? 

That’s not an easy question to answer, since Looker does not publicly release their exact pricing information. 

In this Looker pricing guide, we will nonetheless explore the various factors that dictate Looker’s customized pricing, while giving you ballpark estimates based on past experience. 

We will determine if Looker is the right data discovery platform for your business. 

How Much is Looker?

• Does not release pricing
• Pricing is customized
• You work with a Looker pricing specialist to create your ideal pricing based on your needs and budgets
• Have to contact Looker in order to get a quote

Pricing Factors:

A number of factors will contribute to your price on Looker. 

• Number of users in your company
• Number of database connections
• Scale of your deployment
• Also offers a free trial period

What it gives you/features:

• In-database and browser based platforms
• Integration with any SQL database or data warehouse
• Self-service functions like pivoting, filtering, dashboard creation, and data visualizations.
• User collaboration – Access through browsers and mobile devices. 
• Share data through email or URL generation. 
• Integration with standard applications like Microsoft Office and Google Docs. 
• Export of reports as .csv or text files
• Unlimited data sets via the Web
• Search, favorites for users to help bookmark important data

Average Pricing:

• Reported by third-party site
  • https://financesonline.com/comparison-looker-tableau-two-leading-business-intelligence-solutions/ 
• Estimated to fall somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 per month for 10 users with an additional $50 per month for any additional users over that. 
• Ranked by reviewers to be in the 56 percentile cost wise as compared to other BI platforms.

To learn more about Looker, check out our full Looker review here

Is Looker right for you?

Small businesses and startups:

Based on the information we gathered from third-party sources, Looker would be an expensive venture for small businesses or startups. While it is an efficient system, there aren’t many startups that can afford to sink $3,000 to $5,000 per month into data analysis for 10 users. 

Medium-sized businesses:

A medium-sized business with more complicated needs and more of a budget would find Looker an ideal and affordable option for data analysis as long as they don’t require a large number of users. The base pricing for 10 users should fit into a medium-sized business budget, but anything more than that might get overly pricey. 

Enterprise-level businesses:

As an enterprise-level business with a lot of complicated data to manage, you can get a lot out of Looker’s software. While there are more affordable alternatives, paying more for the speed and efficiency of Looker makes sense for such a large company, considering the massive amount of data that they have to sift through. 

If you’re looking for a complete rundown of Looker’s services or software to find the one which is right for your business, check out our BI buyer’s guide.

Final thoughts

At the end of the day, Looker is a highly efficient BI platform, despite its secretive pricing. 

As we mentioned above, the pricing that we’ve listed comes from third party accounts, and Looker works with each individual client to iron out a pricing plan that works for their needs and budget. For more specific information about pricing, you’ll have to contact Looker directly.