No modelling bottleneck
LookML is a specialist skill, and every new question becomes a ticket for the people who have it. Cerium's model is reviewable by the business, not just by engineers.
Compare
Cerium vs Looker.
Looker has the strongest governed semantic layer of the four. LookML is real engineering — version-controlled, reviewable, one definition of a metric across the business. Cerium agrees with the philosophy and disagrees about where it should stop. A governed metric is not the same thing as a governed explanation.
At a glance.
| Attribute | Looker | Cerium |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Governed BI with a modelled semantic layer | Decision platform, downstream or upstream of BI |
| Where AI sits | Assistant over the LookML model | Reasoning over your governed model |
| Deployment | Google Cloud hosted | SaaS or full on-premise |
| Data layer | Models what is in your warehouse | Reconciles what arrives before it reaches the warehouse |
| Modelling | LookML, written by engineers | Modelled in the platform, reviewed by the business |
| Pricing model | Platform plus per user | Platform and estate, quoted |
| Write-back to operations | Not a native capability — requires a separate integration | Read-and-write API to ERP, CRM and WMS |
| Best fit | Engineering-led teams who want analytics as code | Firms whose reporting works but whose answers still take days |
Accurate as of August 2026. Reviewed quarterly.
Where Cerium is stronger.
Governance upstream of the warehouse
Looker governs what your warehouse contains. If a price is missing or two sources disagree before that point, LookML models the problem faithfully.
On-premise, and migration
Full on-premise deployment, and your existing configuration migrates rather than being rewritten in a new modelling language.
Write-back to operational systems
Looker reads and models; writing a result back into an operational system is an integration project rather than a feature. Cerium's read-and-write API pushes the finding into the ERP, CRM or WMS, so the decision and the action live in the same place.
Conversational AI on your own model
Ask a plain-English question and get an answer derived from your governed model, your definitions and your data — not a generic language model reasoning over a dashboard.
Visualisations that build themselves
Looker requires LookML before a new view is possible. Vibe Studio generates the visualisation from a plain-English description using the governed model directly — no modelling work before the answer is visible.
Run both on the same question.
Bring a question your current stack takes days to answer. That is the fairest test there is.