The essentials
- 2026 ranges: €800 to €3,000 with a freelancer, €3,000 to €12,000 with an agency, €39 to €300 a month for SaaS, 5 to 15 days' work in-house.
- Hidden costs: paid connectors (€100 to €400 a month), maintenance at every API change, update time, training the readers.
- Total cost over 3 years: a bespoke Looker Studio dashboard often ends up more expensive than a subscription, once maintenance is counted.
- The right criterion: the cost per hour of useful reading, not the price of building it.
The question of what a dashboard costs gets answers ranging from "free" to "€20,000", and all of them are true depending on what you count. The build price is only part of it; maintenance, connectors and the time spent using it weigh more over three years. This article details the four routes, their observed 2026 prices, the forgotten costs and a three-year comparison for a multi-channel small business.
What makes the price vary
Four factors explain most of the variation between quotes:
- The number of sources: GA4 and Search Console alone, or GA4 plus Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, the Google listing, a CRM and email. Every non-Google source adds a connector and harmonisation work.
- The degree of customisation: an adapted template (logo, chosen KPIs) or a design from scratch with your own calculations (margin, an objectives cascade, attribution).
- The number of views: one summary page, or a summary plus a page per channel and per location.
- The history: does the data have to be stored to compare over 24 or 36 months? That implies a warehouse or a platform that keeps the history.
The four routes and their 2026 prices
| Mode | Creative | Recurring | Timescale | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A freelancer on Looker Studio or Power BI | €800 to €3,000 | Connectors €0 to €300 a month; maintenance €300 to €800 a year | 1 to 3 weeks | A small business with 2 to 5 sources and stable needs |
| A data or marketing agency | €3,000 to €12,000 | A retainer of €200 to €800 a month | 3 to 8 weeks | Multi-brand, multi-country, complex calculations |
| A SaaS marketing platform | €0 to €500 of setup | €39 to €300 a month depending on sources and users | A few hours to a few days | Small businesses and agencies wanting a fast, maintained result |
| In-house (a marketing or data person) | 5 to 15 days' work (€2,000 to €7,000 of loaded cost) | 1 to 2 days a month of maintenance and updates | 2 to 6 weeks | A company that already has data skills |
The functional comparison of the building tools is in the tools for creating a marketing dashboard, and the in-house or outsourced decision in building your dashboards in-house or outsourcing them.
The costs quotes forget
- The connectors: Looker Studio connects the Google tools free, but Meta Ads, LinkedIn or a CRM go through a third-party connector billed at €100 to €400 a month. Over three years, that often exceeds the build price.
- Maintenance: APIs change (Meta several times a year, GA4 regularly), tokens expire, a renamed field breaks a chart. Allow 2 to 4 interventions a year.
- Time spent using it: a dashboard read for 30 minutes a week by three people represents 75 hours a year. If it is badly designed, that time is wasted.
- Training the readers: half a day so the leadership team and the teams know how to read the metrics; without it, the tool doesn't get opened.
- Changes: a new channel, a new location, a new objective. With a supplier, each change is billed at €300 to €1,000.
A three-year comparison for a multi-channel small business
The assumption: six sources (GA4, Search Console, Google Ads, Meta Ads, the Google listing, email), one summary and five channel views, three readers, two changes a year.
| Item | A Looker Studio freelancer | Agency | A SaaS platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative | 2 500 € | 7 000 € | 300 € |
| Connectors (36 months) | €5,400 (€150 a month) | Included in the plan | Included |
| Subscription or retainer (36 months) | 0 € | €14,400 (€400 a month) | €4,300 (€120 a month) |
| Maintenance and changes | 3 600 € | Included | €0 to €500 |
| 3-year total | 11 500 € | 21 400 € | €4,600 to €5,100 |
The cheapest solution to build (the freelancer) isn't the cheapest over time, and the agency is only justified if the monthly support includes analysis and recommendations, not just maintenance. The detail of the SaaS offers and their prices is on the pricing page for GreenRed and in the consolidation tools comparison.
When bespoke is worth its price
A dashboard built from scratch is justified in three situations: calculations specific to the company that no standard tool does (margin per order, bespoke attribution, production data), a large data volume requiring a warehouse, or security requirements that rule out third-party SaaS. Outside those cases, a well-configured standard platform covers 90% of a small business's needs at three to four times less. What the dashboard should contain, whatever the route, is described in the definition of a digital marketing dashboard.
How GreenRed helps
Rather than juggling several tools, GreenRed's Overview module brings these metrics together in a single dashboard, compares them over time and tells you which actions come first. You can try it free, with no card, from the Pricing.
Frequently asked questions
Is a free Looker Studio dashboard really free?
The tool is free and so are the connectors to GA4, Search Console and Google Ads. The cost appears with non-Google sources (third-party connectors at €100 to €400 a month), the build time and the maintenance. For a 100% Google scope and a competent person, it remains the cheapest solution.
How much does a dashboard's annual maintenance cost?
Allow 10 to 30% of the build price a year with a supplier, or €300 to €1,500 for a small business, mostly for broken connectors and changes of scope. A SaaS platform includes that maintenance in the subscription.
Do you pay for every extra user?
It depends on the route. Looker Studio and Power BI (the free version) don't charge for readers; Power BI Pro costs around €10 per user per month. SaaS platforms offer tiers by number of users or sites, to be checked before choosing.
Can a dashboard be funded by a support scheme?
Building it alone generally isn't eligible, but training people to read and use the data is, through the company's training fund for employees. Some regions also subsidise digitalisation projects for very small businesses, with varying conditions.