Hello, I’m experiencing significant delays with Looker Studio. It’s taking a long time to load the data, and the charts often take several seconds or even minutes to appear. This is happening across multiple reports.
Is anyone experiencing the same? What might be causing this?
I am using a native connector - Google Analytics 4. My report only has 3 pages.
Slow loading of Looker Studio is common when using the built-in GA4 connector. A few reasons:
API delay and limits – GA4 API has weak query speed. Even small reports can hit row limits or cause delays.
Hard queries – Time charts or mixed data sources increase the query load.
No caching – Looker Studio runs GA4 again on every refresh instead of using saved data.
Ways to improve speed:
Cut down chart detail (dimensions and filters and comparisons).
Under File - Report Settings, turn on report-level caching.
For long-term fixes, move GA4 into BigQuery and connect Looker Studio there. Queries in BigQuery run much faster and you can pre-aggregate tables for dashboards.
Many teams are using an ETL tool (e.g. Fivetran, Airbyte, Windsor.ai) to sync GA4 - BigQuery on a daily or hourly basis. That way, Looker Studio reads from clean, saved tables instead of live from GA4’s API – reports load in seconds not minutes.
If you just want a quick test and if it doesn’t matter, try doing the same thing again with BigQuery as the source – you’ll see the difference right away.