Data Studio connectors compared: what you need, and what you don't

If your reports only use GA4, Search Console, Google Ads, Sheets, YouTube or BigQuery, you don’t need to buy a Data Studio connector: Google builds those and gives them away. For Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Shopify, HubSpot or Google Business Profile you need a partner connector, and the cheapest one depends on what it counts, not on its headline price.

This guide compares Google’s free connectors with six partner connectors (formerly called Looker Studio connectors): Windsor.ai, Coupler.io, Catchr, Supermetrics, Porter Metrics and Funnel.io. It covers metering, four priced setups, sources, setup, refresh, destinations, seats, trials, reviews and forums, how to choose, and switching. All six get the same checks, and where Porter Metrics or Funnel.io comes out ahead, I say so.

Price your own setup. The reporting cost calculator runs these numbers for your clients, platforms and billing, with every route side by side.

Which connector, for whom

The six partner connectors at a glance

From each vendor’s pricing page and docs, checked 13 October 2026. Each row has its own section below.

What Google’s own connectors cover, for free

A connector is the piece that pulls data from a platform into Data Studio. Google’s connector gallery lists 21 that Google builds itself, among “over 1450 connectors” in total. Everything else is built by partners, which Google states it doesn’t vouch for.

Data Studio itself is free for creators and viewers. The paid Pro tier is $9 per user per project per month and adds team-owned content, more delivery schedules and Gemini features. Five editors on Pro would be $45 a month, with viewers still free.

Here is what the free path produces, an SEO report built on nothing but GA4 and Search Console:

Connecting Search Console and connecting GA4 each take a few minutes.

Five documented reasons people end up paying

1. No Google-built connectors for non-Google platforms. Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, Pinterest, HubSpot, Shopify and Google Business Profile are all partner-only. This is the main reason.
2. Blends cap at five tables and can’t be reused across reports. Some connectors join data before it reaches Data Studio. The data source guide explains the difference.
3. GA4 API quotas surface as errors on heavy reports, and GA4 segments and comparisons aren’t available through the connector.
4. The speed workaround has a ceiling: an extracted data source is “a static snapshot of up to 100 MB”.
5. Search Console is split and partly withheld: Site Impression or URL Impression per data source, and anonymised queries are withheld.

How this comparison was researched

I haven’t tested all six side by side on trial accounts for this version, so nothing here describes how they behaved for me. It rests on what the vendors publish and what their users write, all read on 13 October 2026:

What each connector counts

Each partner bills on a different unit. Before comparing prices, count your accounts (each ad account, GA4 property, store or location you connect) and your sources (the platforms themselves).

Two details decide most bills. Windsor’s 75 accounts are one pool across all sources, while Supermetrics caps accounts per source. And Funnel prices capacity in Flexpoints: 50 for each connector, 5 for each account and 150 for the Data Studio destination, against an allowance its page doesn’t publish.

What four common setups cost on each

Four setups, priced at list, with GA4, Search Console and Google Ads left on Google’s free connectors in every one:

How each figure is reached:

1. Coupler.io sells extra accounts at $4.49 each on annual billing or $5.99 monthly. Starter allows one user, so the two-user brand needs Active.
2. Catchr‘s Starter and Momentum stop at 5 platforms and 50 accounts, so six platforms or 60 accounts need Growth. Extras ($19.99 per platform or per 10 accounts) don’t say how they’re billed, so they’re only in the monthly table. Its yearly cards show a tenth of the annual total as “/mo” (“$23.90/mo” beside “$239/year”), so I’ve divided the yearly totals by 12.
3. Supermetrics doesn’t state whether an extra ad account lifts the allowance on every source or on one, so the 10-client figure has two readings (worked in the Supermetrics section), and 30 clients need Enterprise either way.
4. Porter prices are the ones its own slider shows (the ladder).
5. Funnel.io publishes a starting price and a Flexpoint rate card but not the Flexpoints each plan includes. The four setups need 215, 480, 350 and 550 Flexpoints, so whether Starter covers them can only be answered by Funnel’s sales team.

Supermetrics and Funnel.io price in euros on the pages I read; I haven’t converted them. The Porter vs Windsor vs Supermetrics comparison works through five setups for those three in more depth.

Which marketing sources each option connects

Several ranking articles still quote older counts (Windsor “325+”, Coupler “410+”, partner connectors “900+”). The gallery itself now says “over 1450 connectors”.

How each one connects to Data Studio

Every partner connector ends as a data source from Data Studio’s gallery, authorised with your Google account, plus a sign-in to each ad platform. What differs is the layer in between, and each vendor’s docs name the step that trips people up.

Windsor, Coupler, Catchr, Supermetrics and Porter don’t publish the exact Google permissions their Data Studio connectors request, so read the consent screen before you click Allow.

How fresh the data is, and where it’s cached

So a paid connector isn’t automatically slower than Google’s own 12-hour ad data. A then/now on Supermetrics: when I read its pricing page on 9 September 2026, the table said its weekly, daily and hourly refresh tiers were “(Google Sheets only)” because “Looker Studio dashboards are always updated on-demand”. That row came off the page in mid-September, and the page no longer states refresh frequency by plan, so treat the note as history, not as current plan terms. (How Data Studio’s own cache adds to any connector’s timing: data freshness in Data Studio.)

Where else the data can go

Users, client access and white-label

Data Studio charges nothing for report viewers, so these limits are about who builds the connections, and what clients see.

Supermetrics is the one to price with care: its plans include one destination, so Data Studio plus an AI assistant means a second (+€149 a month billed yearly on Growth), and a third person needs a user extra. Windsor counts neither destinations nor users.

Trials, refunds and support

Reviewers split on support too. Porter’s is praised in 25 of 40 sampled reviews (mostly 2021 to 2024). Windsor’s is praised in 10 of 40 and called slow in 5; all 10 of its billing complaints are refused refunds, the documented policy. Supermetrics’ sample has 13 support complaints against 2 compliments, and 8 about auto-renewal or charges after cancelling. Four of Funnel’s 7 recent reviews are about contracts.

What reviewers say about each

The most common theme in each coded sample:

• Windsor.ai (40 Trustpilot reviews): fast human support (10) against refunds refused (10).
• Coupler.io (36, mostly Capterra): easy no-code setup (18) and time saved (13); complaints about a missing connector or feature (8) and cost rising with accounts (5).
• Catchr: three readable reviews, two of them about the Sheets add-on failing to start (2024).
• Supermetrics (45): easy to use (10) against unreliable queries (13), slow support (13) and price (11); its Trustpilot and Capterra samples point in opposite directions.
• Porter Metrics (40, mostly 2021–2024): support praised in 25, connections needing a reset in 9.
• Funnel.io (30): breadth (12) and support (10) in older reviews; the recent ones are mostly about contracts.

For Data Studio itself, Gartner Peer Insights shows 4.5 from 423 ratings; in its recent reviews the top complaint is the blending and data-model limits (5 of 11), which is exactly what several of these connectors work around.

Read the samples with their skew in mind: 16 of the 22 labelled Supermetrics reviews on Capterra were incentivised, Trustpilot reviews arrive unprompted, and only 8 of 40 Porter and 7 of 30 Funnel reviews are from the last two years.

What forum threads add

From Google’s snippets of each thread (Reddit couldn’t be opened directly), dated to the month Google gives, vendors’ own posts left out.

The six partner connectors, one by one

Windsor.ai: the shared account pool

Basic ($19 billed annually, $23 monthly) shares 75 accounts across 3 sources, with no premium connectors; Standard ($99 / $118) raises sources to 7. Know before buying: Windsor’s documentation says “All sales are final”, monthly payments included.

Coupler.io: the widest source list, metered by account

Starter ($24 billed annually, $32 monthly) is 3 accounts, 1 user and 5,000 rows per run. Active ($99 / $132) gives 15 accounts, unlimited users and unlimited data volume; Pro ($199 / $259) 50 accounts and hourly refresh. It lists 440 sources and transforms data (append, join, aggregate) before Data Studio sees it, which is one way round the five-table blend limit.

Catchr: platforms plus accounts, with a new middle tier

Starter ($239 a year, $24 monthly) is 3 platforms and 10 accounts. A Momentum tier now sits between Starter and Growth: $790 a year or $79 monthly for 5 platforms and 30 accounts. Growth is $2,390 a year or $239 monthly. The plan cards put BigQuery at Growth and other warehouses at Scale, while the comparison table ticks them on every tier, so confirm with Catchr before relying on a warehouse below Growth. Refresh frequency and history aren’t published.

Supermetrics: the incumbent, on new plans

Starter is €39 a month billed yearly or €49 monthly for 2 sources, 2 accounts per source, 1 user and 1 destination; Growth is €159 or €199 for 7 × 7 and 2 users. The Pro tier was removed between 9 September and 13 October 2026. It’s licence-based: the page says it doesn’t bill “for the volume of data you move”. What Supermetrics actually costs works through every extra.

Extras, billed yearly / monthly, each with a ceiling. Starter: data source +€29 / +€37 (to 3), ad account +€10 / +€13 (to 3), destination +€49 / +€62 (to 2), no extra users. Growth: data source +€29 / +€37 (to 15), ad account +€10 / +€13 (to 20), user +€99 / +€124 (to 5), destination +€149 / +€187 (to 4). The page doesn’t say whether an extra ad account raises every source’s allowance or one, so the 10-client agency costs one of two amounts:

Supermetrics’ help docs lean towards the first (“All data sources under the same subscription share the same number of data source accounts”) without settling it. At 30 clients both readings pass Growth’s ceiling: “up to 20 in total” is 20 accounts if it includes the plan’s 7, or 27 if it counts only extras. Either way, that’s an Enterprise quote. These are the euro plans my session was served. Limits vary by region: secondary sources report a US Starter at $44 billed yearly with 3 sources × 3 accounts, which I couldn’t see myself and haven’t used.

Porter Metrics: per account, everything else included

Porter charges $15 per account billed monthly or $12.50 billed annually, with the rate falling in bands as you add accounts. Users, reports, history and destinations are unlimited, and a refund is available within 14 days. It lists 29 connectors, without Amazon Ads or YouTube analytics.

The ladder, billed monthly: $15 for one account, $39.99 for three, $8 an account from 5 to 12, a flat $100 from 13 to 20, then $5 an account from 21, $4.50 from 40, $4 from 50, $3 from 70, falling to $2 from 200. Annual billing takes two months off; the annual figures here are the ones Porter’s slider shows, within 33 cents of ten-twelfths of the monthly price, because it rounds each account’s rate first.

Funnel.io: a data hub that feeds Data Studio

Funnel stores and harmonises data, then sends it to Data Studio through its own connector on every plan. Starter is from €280 a month billed annually (117 connectors, 13 destinations, 5 users, daily exports); Business from €560 (579 connectors, 628 in the directory; unlimited users; exports every 2 hours). The Flexpoints included with each plan aren’t published. It makes sense for a team that wants storage and modelled data; for a few client dashboards, the connectors above do the Data Studio part for less.

What switching connectors involves

In Data Studio, each data source belongs to one connector, so moving vendor means new data sources and pointing the report’s charts at them (Google documents replacing the data source for a component, a page or a whole report). Even Funnel’s own move to an OAuth connector in August 2026 needed a new data source, with no in-place swap.

The safe order: run the new trial alongside the old connector, rebuild one report, compare totals for the same date range, then cancel, timed to your renewal date.

How to choose in ten minutes

1. List your sources and cross off everything Google builds natively.
2. Count the accounts in what’s left: every ad account, store and location (Windsor and Porter count 10 Google Business Profile locations as one).
3. Many accounts, few platforms: test Windsor.ai’s 30-day trial first.
4. Many platforms, few accounts: price Porter Metrics’ slider against Windsor’s Standard, and check Porter lists all your platforms (no Amazon Ads or YouTube Analytics).
5. Unusual sources or data to join first: Coupler.io’s 7-day trial.
6. Data Studio plus an AI assistant off one connection: Catchr’s 14-day trial.
7. Already on Supermetrics: price your setup on the new plans before renewing; if you fit Growth, staying saves rebuilding reports. Supermetrics’ 14-day trial covers new connectors.
8. Need a warehouse or a stored, modelled layer: Windsor and Coupler send to BigQuery on every plan; for storage and harmonisation first, book a Funnel.io demo and ask how many Flexpoints Starter includes.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a paid connector for Data Studio?

Only if your data isn’t Google’s. Google builds free connectors for GA4, Search Console, Google Ads, Sheets, YouTube and BigQuery. It builds none for Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, HubSpot or Shopify, or for Google Business Profile.

Which Data Studio connector is cheapest?

It depends on what you connect. For a few client accounts on one or two platforms, Windsor.ai’s Basic plan ($19 a month billed annually) and Catchr’s Starter ($239 a year) are the lowest list prices. For one brand on many platforms, Porter Metrics’ per-account pricing is lower: six accounts are $40.02 a month billed annually.

What can Data Studio connect to?

Google’s gallery lists over 1,450 connectors: 21 built by Google and the rest by partners. Marketing platforms outside Google need a partner connector.

Is there a free Data Studio connector for Facebook Ads?

Not from Google. Among the six here, Windsor.ai’s Forever Free plan keeps 1 source and 1 account after its trial, Coupler.io’s free plan allows 1 account with manual refresh and 100 rows per run, and Porter Metrics has a read-only free plan with 30 days of history. Catchr, Supermetrics and Funnel.io have no free plan.

Why don’t my connector’s numbers match the ad platform?

Windsor.ai’s troubleshooting page lists the usual causes: settings, time zones, schema changes, API quotas and caching. Attribution windows matter too; Catchr’s Facebook Ads connector, for example, defaults to “7-day click / 1-day view”. Compare the same date range and settings in both before assuming the connector is wrong.

Is Google Looker free to use?

Looker is Google’s separate enterprise BI product and isn’t free. Data Studio, the reporting tool these connectors feed, is free for creators and viewers, with an optional Pro tier at $9 per user per project per month.

Where to go next on connecting data

• Porter Metrics vs Windsor.ai vs Supermetrics
• Supermetrics alternatives for Data Studio users
• What Supermetrics actually costs
• Looker vs Data Studio: which Google tool is which
• How to connect GA4 to Data Studio
• The best free Data Studio templates

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