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Amplitude vs Looker: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amplitude and Looker are two popular analytics tools that provide valuable insights for businesses. While both tools focus on data analysis, there are key differences between the two.

  1. Data Visualization: Amplitude offers a robust and intuitive data visualization suite that allows users to create interactive charts, funnels, and dashboards. Looker, on the other hand, provides a more flexible approach to data visualization, allowing users to build custom visualizations using LookML, a proprietary modeling language. This gives Looker an edge when it comes to creating complex, tailored visualizations.

  2. Data Exploration: Amplitude primarily focuses on providing pre-built analysis and insights through its user-friendly interface. It offers advanced segmentation capabilities, cohort analysis, and event-based analysis to help businesses understand user behavior. Looker, on the other hand, emphasizes data exploration and ad-hoc analysis. It allows users to query and explore data in real-time without having to rely on pre-built reports, giving more flexibility in uncovering insights.

  3. Integration and Data Sources: Amplitude specializes in mobile and web analytics, making it an ideal choice for businesses with mobile applications. It seamlessly integrates with various platforms and SDKs to capture user behavior data. Looker, on the other hand, offers a wide range of connectors and integrations, making it suitable for businesses with diverse data sources. It can connect to various databases, cloud platforms, and external tools, enabling a holistic data analysis approach.

  4. Collaboration and Sharing: Amplitude provides collaborative features, allowing teams to work together and share insights within the platform. It offers role-based access control, dashboards, and reports sharing, making it easier to collaborate on data analysis. Looker also offers collaboration features, including shared dashboards and reports. However, Looker goes a step further by allowing users to embed data visualizations and explorations directly into applications, enabling easier sharing and consumption of insights.

  5. Data Governance: Amplitude focuses on providing a user-friendly, self-serve analytics platform, which may result in less centralized control over data governance. Looker, in contrast, puts a stronger emphasis on data governance and provides more granular control over data access and permissions. It allows administrators to define access levels, restrict data access, and track data lineage, ensuring data security and compliance.

  6. Pricing and Licensing: Amplitude offers a tiered pricing model based on usage and features, making it more accessible for smaller businesses. Looker, on the other hand, offers a custom pricing model that can be more suitable for larger enterprises with specific needs. Looker also offers a free version for limited users, enabling businesses to explore the tool before committing to a paid plan.

In summary, Amplitude emphasizes user-friendly data visualization and analysis, especially for mobile and web analytics. Looker, on the other hand, focuses on data exploration, customization, and collaboration while putting a stronger emphasis on data governance and flexibility in data sources.

Advice on Amplitude and Looker
Mohan Ramanujam
Needs advice
on
AmplitudeAmplitudeData StudioData Studio
and
LookerLooker

We are a consumer mobile app IOS/Android startup. The app is instrumented with branch and Firebase. We use Google BigQuery. We are looking at tools that can support engagement and cohort analysis at an early stage price which we can grow with. Data Studio is the default but it would seem Looker provides more power. We don't have much insight into Amplitude other than the fact it is a popular PM tool. Please provide some insight.

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Replies (1)
Ruben Lozano
Growth Marketing Specialist at Ruben Lozano Me · | 4 upvotes · 19.9K views

Hello Mohan,

To be honest, I don't have experience working with analytics on apps and also I don't have experience with Looker, so I cannot say I will suggest that one. I know that Amplitude is a known product analytics tool for apps. I know that in the #GoPractice course, Oleg (CEO GoPractice) was using Amplitude in all his experience with mobile game apps, so I guess apps could work well too. I have experience using Amplitude for SaaS solutions and it is great to create all kinds of analytics for the product. Then Google Datastudio is the classic solution to create dashboards and reports connect it with any data source. Also, some people, instead of Amplitude are using the new Google Analytics, @GoogleAnalytics #GA4 or Mixpanel. However, my suggestion is to use Amplitude and if there are reports that you cannot answer with Amplitude, use Google Data Studio.

I hope that could help you.

Cheers,

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Decisions about Amplitude and Looker

Very easy-to-use UI. Good way to make data available inside the company for analysis.

Has some built-in visualizations and can be easily integrated with other JS visualization libraries such as D3.

Can be embedded into product to provide reporting functions.

Support team are helpful.

The only complain I have is lack of API support. Hard to track changes as codes and automate report deployment.

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Vojtech Kopal
Head of Data at Mews Systems · | 3 upvotes · 298.5K views

Power BI is really easy to start with. If you have just several Excel sheets or CSV files, or you build your first automated pipeline, it is actually quite intuitive to build your first reports.

And as we have kept growing, all the additional features and tools were just there within the Azure platform and/or Office 365.

Since we started building Mews, we have already passed several milestones in becoming start up, later also a scale up company and now getting ready to grow even further, and during all these phases Power BI was just the right tool for us.

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Pros of Amplitude
Pros of Looker
  • 11
    Great for product managers
  • 8
    Easy setup
  • 6
    Efficient analysis
  • 2
    Behavioral cohorts
  • 2
    Event streams for individual users
  • 2
    Chart edits get their own URLs
  • 2
    Free for up to 10M user actions per month
  • 1
    Fast
  • 1
    Great UI
  • 1
    Engagement Matrix is super helpful
  • 4
    Real time in app customer chat support
  • 4
    GitHub integration
  • 1
    Reduces the barrier of entry to utilizing data

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Cons of Amplitude
Cons of Looker
  • 4
    Super expensive once you're past the free plan
  • 3
    Price

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What is Amplitude?

Amplitude provides scalable mobile analytics that helps companies leverage data to create explosive user growth. Anyone in the company can use Amplitude to pinpoint the most valuable behavioral patterns within hours.

What is Looker?

We've built a unique data modeling language, connections to today's fastest analytical databases, and a service that you can deploy on any infrastructure, and explore on any device. Plus, we'll help you every step of the way.

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Jul 2 2019 at 9:34PM

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