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8 Best Looker ETL Tools for 2026

Compare 8 Looker ETL tools for moving dashboards, users, schedules and query history into your warehouse before Looker's 90-day limit removes it.

Team Airbyte

March 31, 2026

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TL;DR

Short answer: what you extract from Looker is usage and content metadata, not business data, which already lives in your warehouse. Looker's own System Activity already reports usage, but it truncates query history to 90 days. Looker ETL tools exist to keep that history for longer and join it to the rest of your data, so you can see which dashboards are used, which have gone stale, and what each costs to run. Eight options:

Airbyte: pre-built Looker source covering dashboards, looks, users, scheduled plans and more, into any of 700+ connectors' destinations.
Fivetran: managed Looker source with no upkeep, billed on monthly active rows. Check whether query history is covered.
Looker's own scheduler and API: schedule System Activity looks to S3 or SFTP, or script the API with the Looker SDK. No extra tool, more upkeep.
Matillion: a custom API connector configured in the UI, with transformation pushed into your warehouse.
Boomi Data Integration: formerly Rivery, with REST actions and orchestration included.
Talend: REST components with data quality attached. Now Qlik Talend Cloud, no free tier.
Pentaho Data Integration: visual ETL reaching Looker through REST client steps.
Apache Airflow: an orchestrator. It schedules the Looker SDK calls you write yourself.
One Looker constraint: System Activity's History table only holds the last 90 days, and the Event table is pruned to a million rows. Anything you do not extract before it ages out is gone, unless you pay for Elite System Activity, so start syncing before you need the trend.

Looker ETL tools move Looker's metadata, meaning dashboards, looks, users, schedules and query history, into a warehouse where it can be kept and analysed. Teams do it to find unused content worth retiring, to see who actually relies on which dashboards, and to tie Looker query load back to warehouse cost.

What is Looker, and why extract data from it?

Looker is Google Cloud's BI platform. It models warehouse data through LookML and queries the warehouse directly, so the business data you see in Looker already sits in your warehouse. What Looker itself holds is metadata: the content people build, who uses it, and every query it runs.

Looker's System Activity Explores already report on that, but only over a short window and only inside Looker. Moving the metadata to your warehouse keeps it beyond 90 days and lets you join it to warehouse query logs, cost data and your HR or CRM records, so you can answer questions such as which teams drive the most warehouse spend through Looker, or which dashboards nobody has opened this quarter.

How do the Looker ETL tools compare?

Tool	How it reaches Looker	Effort to set up	Hosting	Pricing basis
Airbyte	Pre-built Looker source over the API	Low	Cloud or self-hosted	Free self-hosted; Cloud capacity-based
Fivetran	Pre-built Looker source, managed	Low	Cloud	Monthly active rows
Looker scheduler and API	Scheduled System Activity looks, or SDK scripts	Medium	Inside Looker, plus your scripts	Included with Looker
Matillion	Custom API connector you configure	Medium	Your cloud account	Credits
Boomi Data Integration	REST actions you configure	Medium	Cloud	Credits
Talend	REST components	High	Cloud or on-premises	Quoted subscription
Pentaho Data Integration	REST client steps	High	Self-hosted	Community and enterprise editions
Apache Airflow	Your own Looker SDK code	High	Self-hosted or managed	Free, you run it

Which Looker ETL tools should you consider?

Only two of these have a pre-built Looker source. The rest reach Looker through its REST API, which means configuring authentication, pagination and endpoints yourself.

1. Airbyte

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform with 700+ connectors and a community of 25,000+ data engineers. Its Looker source authenticates with API3 client credentials and syncs Looker's content and admin objects, including dashboards, looks, folders, users, roles and scheduled plans, into any Airbyte destination. Because the warehouse is usually where Looker's business data already lives, the metadata lands right next to it.

What's unique about Airbyte?

Connectors are open source and editable, so if you need an endpoint the Looker source does not cover, you can extend it or build one with the no-code Connector Builder or the Connector Development Kit. It runs as self-hosted open source, Airbyte Cloud, Self-Managed Enterprise or Enterprise Flex.

2. Fivetran

Fivetran is a closed-source, managed ELT service with 700+ connectors, including a Looker source with no infrastructure to run. Check its current schema before choosing it for usage analytics: Fivetran users have asked for query history to be added, and that table is usually the most valuable one. It bills on monthly active rows.

Here is a closer look at Airbyte vs Fivetran.

3. Looker's own scheduler and API

Looker can export its own metadata without any extra tool. Build looks on the System Activity Explores, such as History, Content Usage and Dashboard, and schedule them to deliver to Amazon S3 or SFTP, then load the files into your warehouse. For anything more, the Looker API and its official SDKs let you script exactly the objects you want. It costs nothing beyond Looker, but you own the scheduling, incremental logic and failure handling.

4. Matillion

Matillion reaches Looker through a custom API connector you configure in its interface, rather than a pre-built source. Its strength is pushdown transformation inside Snowflake, Databricks or Redshift, with dbt support since v1.70, and it bills in credits tied to job runtime. It makes most sense if Matillion already runs your warehouse transformations.

Here is a closer look at Airbyte vs Matillion.

5. Boomi Data Integration (formerly Rivery)

Boomi acquired Rivery in December 2024 and now sells it as Boomi Data Integration. It reaches Looker through configurable REST actions and bundles transformation and orchestration in one cloud platform. Pricing is in credits that vary by connector, which can make cost hard to model.

6. Talend

Talend reaches Looker through its REST components and pairs integration with data quality and governance. Two things to check before shortlisting it: Qlik acquired Talend in 2023 and now sells it as Qlik Talend Cloud, and Talend Open Studio, the free edition, was retired on 31 January 2024, so there is no free tier or self-serve route in. It is heavy for a metadata pipeline unless Talend already runs elsewhere in your stack.

7. Pentaho Data Integration

Pentaho Data Integration, long known as Kettle, is visual ETL that can call the Looker API through its REST client steps. You build the authentication, pagination and incremental logic yourself, so it suits teams already running Pentaho rather than ones choosing a tool for Looker.

8. Apache Airflow

Apache Airflow is an open-source orchestrator, not an ETL tool. Teams that script the Looker SDK in Python often run those scripts as Airflow tasks, but you write the extraction, incremental logic and loading yourself. It also pairs well with a connector-based tool such as Airbyte for everything else.

Here is a closer look at Airbyte vs Airflow.

What can you extract with the Looker API?

The Looker API exposes three useful groups of data, all authenticated with API3 client credentials tied to a Looker user:

Content: dashboards, looks, folders and their owners, plus LookML models and Explores.
Administration: users, groups, roles, permission sets and scheduled plans, which together show who can see what and what is delivered where.
Usage: query history, content usage and events, read by running queries against the System Activity model through the API. This is the data with the 90-day limit.

The API user's role decides what comes back, so give the extraction user admin or see_system_activity rights, or usage tables will return empty.

How do you start syncing Looker data with Airbyte?

Step 1: Set up Looker as a source

In Looker, an admin creates API3 credentials (a client ID and client secret) for a user with the access you need, from the user's settings under Admin, Users. In Airbyte, open Sources, choose New source and select Looker, then enter your Looker domain, client ID and client secret, and run the connection test.

Step 2: Set up a destination

Choose the warehouse Looker already queries, such as BigQuery, Snowflake or Redshift, so metadata sits next to the data it describes.

Step 3: Configure the connection

Select the streams you need and set a daily sync, which comfortably keeps usage history ahead of Looker's 90-day truncation.

The process is the same in Airbyte Open Source, which you can deploy yourself, and in Airbyte Cloud, which you can try free for 14 days.

Which Looker ETL tool should you choose?

If you only need a few usage reports kept longer, schedule System Activity looks to S3 and load them; it costs nothing extra. If you want Looker's content and admin metadata in your warehouse with no code, use a tool with a pre-built Looker source: Airbyte, self-hosted or in Cloud, or Fivetran if you prefer it managed and its schema covers what you need. The REST-based tools make sense only where they already run your other pipelines. Whichever you pick, start before you need the history, because Looker will not keep it for you.

For tools that cover more than Looker, see our guide to the top data integration tools.

Keep your Looker history with Airbyte

Sync Looker dashboards, looks, users and schedules into BigQuery, Snowflake or any Airbyte destination, next to the data they describe, self-hosted or in Airbyte Cloud.

Try Airbyte Cloud free for 14 days or talk to our team.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How long does Looker keep query history?

By default, System Activity's History table holds the last 90 days, and the Event table is pruned to a million rows. Longer retention needs Elite System Activity, which is available on Looker-hosted instances, or extracting the data to your own warehouse.

2. Do you need an ETL tool to get business data out of Looker?

Usually not. Looker queries your warehouse directly, so the business data is already there. ETL tools are for Looker's own metadata: content, users, schedules and usage.

3. What credentials does a Looker ETL tool need?

API3 client credentials, a client ID and client secret, created by an admin for a Looker user. That user's role decides what the API returns, so usage data needs admin or see_system_activity rights.

4. Can you find unused Looker dashboards without an ETL tool?

Yes, for the last 90 days. The Content Usage and History System Activity Explores show when each dashboard and look was last viewed. Extracting the data is what lets you look further back or combine it with other sources.

About the Author

Team Airbyte

Engineering Team of Airbyte.

8 Best Looker ETL Tools for 2026

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