How to Send Looker Studio Reports to Slack (Pro vs. Free)
Looker Studio only delivers reports to Slack on the $9/user Pro tier. Here are the free workarounds people use — and a simpler path for ad spend data.
Updated July 2026.
Looker Studio can send scheduled reports to Slack natively — but only on Looker Studio Pro, the paid tier Google lists at $9 per user, per Google Cloud project, per month. Free Looker Studio is limited to email delivery, which is why most teams either pay for Pro, wire up an email-to-Slack workaround, or skip the PDF pipeline entirely for data that needs to arrive as an alert rather than a report.
Can Looker Studio send reports to Slack?
Yes, with two conditions. Per Google's documentation, scheduled Slack delivery requires (1) a Looker Studio Pro subscription and (2) a Google Workspace admin who hasn't disabled the Slack delivery channel (it's allowed by default). The feature launched in preview on October 16, 2025 and works like the email scheduler: a PDF snapshot of the report plus a link, sent on your chosen cadence through the scheduling user's Slack account.
Documented limits: up to 5 channels or 10 individual users per scheduled delivery, and up to 200 scheduled deliveries per report on Pro. Free-tier users don't see Slack as a destination at all — email scheduling remains the free option.
How to schedule a Looker Studio report to Slack (Pro)
- Confirm you're on Looker Studio Pro and your Workspace admin has left the Slack delivery channel enabled.
- Open the report — you need to be its owner or an editor.
- From the Share menu, choose Schedule delivery.
- Set the destination to Slack and connect your Slack account when prompted.
- Pick recipients: up to 5 channels or 10 users.
- Set the start time and frequency, then save. Recipients get a PDF snapshot plus a link to the live report on each run.
Three caveats before you build a workflow on this. First, deliveries are sent through the scheduling user's Slack account — if that person leaves the company or disconnects Slack, the delivery quietly breaks, which is a fun thing to discover three weeks later. Second, the feature launched as a preview, so behavior and limits can change. Third, Pro billing is per user per Google Cloud project — agencies that keep a separate project per client pay the $9 once per user in each project, which adds up faster than the headline price suggests.
Sending Looker Studio to Slack without Pro: the workarounds
- Email-to-channel. Schedule the free email delivery to a Slack channel's email address (paid Slack plans can generate one per channel). Zero new tools, but the report arrives as an email-style attachment — functional, not pretty.
- Automation middleware. Point the scheduled email at a dedicated inbox and have Zapier or Make watch it and repost the PDF to Slack. More control over formatting; one more automation to babysit.
- Screenshot/reporting tools. Third-party services render the dashboard on a schedule and post an image to Slack. Nicer-looking, another subscription.
All three share the same ceiling: you're moving a static snapshot on a clock. Nothing in the pipeline knows whether the numbers inside are fine or on fire.
The real question: do you want a report or an alert?
Be honest about why you want the dashboard in Slack. If it's stakeholder visibility — a Monday summary for the channel — Pro or the email workaround does the job. But most teams wiring Looker Studio into Slack are really trying to catch problems, and a scheduled PDF is a bad smoke detector. The Monday 9 a.m. delivery cannot tell you about the overspend that started Friday at 11 p.m.; it can only document the damage. Worse, someone still has to open the PDF, spot the anomaly in a wall of charts, and then go figure out what caused it — three manual steps between "report delivered" and "problem fixed."
For ad data specifically, there's a simpler path that skips the connector-and-dashboard pipeline entirely. The Ad Spend connects to Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit via OAuth (no connectors, no API keys), checks every account every ~6 hours with 1,900+ detection algorithms, and posts to Slack only when something deviates from your account's learned baseline — plus scheduled cross-platform summary reports if you want the Monday ritual too. Alerts, reports, approvals, and Q&A all live in the Slack integration; here's how teams monitor ad spend in Slack end to end.
Looker Studio Pro vs. workarounds vs. purpose-built alerts
| Looker Studio Pro | Email-to-Slack workaround | The Ad Spend | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $9/user/project/month | Free (needs paid Slack) | Free tier for pacing + performance alerts |
| What arrives | PDF snapshot + link | Emailed PDF in a channel | Alerts with cause, plus summary reports |
| Freshness | On schedule | On schedule | Checked every ~6 hours |
| Knows something's wrong | No — you read the PDF | No | Yes — learned-baseline detection |
| Explains why | No | No | Yes — change record + causal inference |
| Setup | Pro + connectors + dashboard | Schedule + channel email | OAuth, minutes |
Skip the PDF pipeline for the part that actually pages you. The Ad Spend's free tier includes budget pacing and ad performance alerts, delivered straight to Slack. See plans.
FAQ
Is Looker Studio's Slack integration free?
No. Scheduled Slack delivery is a Looker Studio Pro feature. Free Looker Studio supports scheduled email delivery only.
How much does Looker Studio Pro cost?
Google lists Looker Studio Pro at $9 per user, per Google Cloud project, per month. Note the per-project billing: agencies running separate projects per client pay per project.
Can I send a Looker Studio report to Slack without paying for Pro?
Yes, indirectly: schedule the free email delivery to a Slack channel's email address, or relay it through Zapier/Make. You'll get a static PDF on a schedule, same as Pro — just with more duct tape.
Does Slack delivery send a live, interactive dashboard?
No. Each delivery is a PDF snapshot plus a link back to the live report in Looker Studio, sent via the scheduler's Slack account.
What's the fastest way to get ad spend alerts in Slack?
Skip the dashboard layer. A monitoring tool that connects directly to your ad accounts — like The Ad Spend, via its Google Ads Slack integration — posts pacing and anomaly alerts without connectors, dashboards, or Pro licenses.