Looker Studio vs Power BI for a small business: what it costs to share a dashboard

For most small businesses the decision comes down to two things: where your numbers already live, and how many people need to see the dashboard. If your business runs on Google (Workspace, Google Analytics, Sheets) and a few people need to look at the same report, Google’s tool costs nothing to build or share, and it’s the place to start. Power BI earns its cost when your data lives in Excel and Microsoft 365, someone on a Windows PC will build the model, and you’re prepared to pay for a license for each person who shares or opens the report.

Everything below comes from Google’s and Microsoft’s own documentation and pricing pages, which we read on October 5, 2026.

Looker Studio is called Data Studio again

If you go to lookerstudio.google.com now, you’ll land on a product called Data Studio. Google’s documentation explains:

In April 2026, the Looker Studio product name returned to its original name: Data Studio.

The release notes date the change to April 16, 2026: “We’ve rebranded Looker Studio as Data Studio.” The product address is now datastudio.google.com, and the same page says “You don’t need to update your reports for this change. lookerstudio.google.com will automatically redirect to the new domain.” The paid tier, formerly Looker Studio Pro, is now Data Studio Pro. We use the new name for the rest of this post.

What the comparison pages get wrong

On October 5, 2026, we read the comparison pages a web search returned for “looker studio vs power bi” and “looker studio vs power bi for small business.” Nine of them loaded. None of the nine mentioned the April rename, and five still introduced the product as Looker Studio with its older name, Google Data Studio, in brackets after it. Three gave Power BI Pro’s price as $10 a month, while Microsoft’s pricing page lists $14.00. Three gave the current price and three gave none.

Most of the pages came from companies that sell connectors, consulting, or analytics software. We build custom dashboards ourselves, so we have an interest here too, and that’s why the rest of this post sticks to what Google and Microsoft publish.

What it costs to share one dashboard

This is where the two tools differ most for a small team.

Data Studio. Google’s pricing page says: “Data Studio is available at no charge for creators and report viewers.” The paid tier, Data Studio Pro, is listed at “$9 per user per project per month,” and the same page notes that the per-user price “varies depending on the length of the customer’s subscription.” Google’s Pro overview describes what you’d be paying for: “all the features of the no-cost version of Data Studio, plus the enhanced enterprise capabilities of Data Studio Pro.” A small business building a few reports for its own team doesn’t need Pro to share them.

Power BI. Microsoft offers a free account, and its pricing page puts the catch next to it: “Upgrade to Pro or Premium to share reports.” Power BI Pro is listed at “$14.00 user/month, paid yearly,” and Premium Per User at $24.00. Microsoft’s licensing page spells out what a free license can’t do:

Users with free licenses can use the Power BI service to connect to data and create reports and dashboards for their own use. They can’t use the Power BI sharing or collaborating features with others, or publish content to other people’s workspaces.

The same page covers the people on the receiving end: “Only Power BI Pro users can publish, share, or consume other Pro users’ content unless it resides in a Power BI Premium capacity.” Unless your business has bought a Premium capacity, that means the person who publishes the report and every person who opens it each need a Pro license. Premium Per User doesn’t get around this, because “With a PPU license, you can share content only with users who also have a PPU license.”

Here’s what that means in a year, at Microsoft’s listed Pro price:

People who need to see the dashboard (including you)	Power BI Pro, per year	Data Studio, per year
2	$336	$0
5	$840	$0
10	$1,680	$0

Check one thing before you buy seats. Microsoft’s pricing page says Power BI Pro is “Included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5,” so a business already on one of those plans may have the licenses.

Power BI does have a free way to share, and it comes with a warning. Microsoft’s Publish to web feature puts a report on the open internet:

When you use Publish to web, anyone on the Internet can view your published report or visual. Viewing requires no authentication.

Use it only for numbers you’d be comfortable posting on your website.

How fresh the numbers are

Power BI. Microsoft’s refresh documentation says: “Power BI limits semantic models on shared capacity to eight scheduled daily semantic model refreshes.” On a Premium, PPU, or Fabric capacity the limit rises to 48 a day. On shared capacity, “Data refreshes must complete in less than two hours.” If your data sits in an Excel workbook or CSV file on OneDrive or SharePoint, Microsoft says Power BI uses a separate type of refresh for those files, which it calls OneDrive refresh.

Data Studio. Google’s data freshness page lists the defaults by data source. Google Sheets defaults to every 15 minutes. Google Analytics defaults to every 12 hours. Google’s release notes added a viewer option in June 2026: “Report editors can now allow report viewers to manually refresh report data.” Manual refreshes have a limit: “The cooldown period between data refreshes is one minute.”

For a weekly sales meeting, either tool is fresh enough. If you want something closer to live for a shared spreadsheet, Data Studio’s 15-minute default on Sheets is the easier route.

Who can build it, and on what computer

Power BI’s full authoring tool is Power BI Desktop. Microsoft’s download page says it’s free (“Download Power BI Desktop for free to build advanced queries, models, and reports that visualize data”) and lists the minimum requirement as “Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 or later.” If the person who’ll build your dashboard works on a Mac, they’re limited to the browser version of the Power BI service, or they’ll need a Windows machine.

Data Studio runs in a web browser at datastudio.google.com.

Whose access the viewers are using

This one catches people out in Data Studio. Every data source in a report uses one of two credential types, which Google’s credentials page describes this way:

Owner’s Credentials let other users access the data by using the credential owner’s authorization.

Viewer’s Credentials rely on each individual report viewer’s credentials to access the data.

With owner’s credentials, anyone you share the report with sees the data through your access, whether or not they have their own login to Google Analytics or the spreadsheet underneath. That’s handy for a client report. For anything sensitive, check the setting on each data source before you share the report outside the business.

Which one to pick

What your business already uses	Start with	Why
Google Workspace, Google Analytics, Sheets	Data Studio	Free to build and free to share, and it connects to Google Analytics and Sheets
Microsoft 365, with data in Excel on OneDrive or SharePoint, and someone on Windows to build it	Power BI	It works directly with those files. Budget for a Pro license for each person who shares or views
Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5	Power BI	Pro is included in those plans, according to Microsoft
A mix, or mostly exports from accounting or point-of-sale software	Data Studio, fed from a spreadsheet	No license cost while you work out which numbers you actually check

If you’re not sure which numbers belong on the dashboard yet, answer that first. Start with the handful someone will actually look at each week, and add more once those are in use.

When neither one is the right tool

This part is our view as people who build dashboards, not something either company documents. Off-the-shelf tools stop being the best fit in a few situations: when customers need to see their own data inside a portal you control, when the numbers come from systems neither tool connects to cleanly, or when the license count for Power BI has grown past what a one-time build would cost. Below that point, start with Data Studio or Power BI and see how far it gets you.

If you’d like help working out what belongs on your dashboard or building it, that’s part of our automation, CRM, and dashboards work.