Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Looker Studio vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (11th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), Embedded BI (2nd), AI Data Analysis (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 5.6% mindshare, down 7.7% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio2.7%
Microsoft Power BI18.8%
Tableau Enterprise16.8%
Other61.7%
Reporting
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qlik Sense5.6%
Tableau Enterprise11.3%
Apache Superset5.5%
Other77.6%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
SW
Solution Architect at Predoole Analytics
Unlocks actionable insights through user-friendly analysis features
The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant. They offer natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in layman language, and Qlik Sense will create charts and narratives automatically. Users can access any dashboard developed in Qlik Sense from familiar portals such as Okta or other company portals through embedding features. The integration with chatbots, particularly Microsoft Teams, allows users to access dashboards and ask questions directly within Teams. The collaboration feature enables users to share analysis by taking snapshots and tagging team members within the Qlik Sense interface, eliminating the need for lengthy emails or screenshots. The storytelling feature allows users to create presentations directly in Qlik Sense using dashboard analysis, making it easier to answer questions during meetings. The subscription feature enables users to receive charts and sheets via email instead of navigating to the dashboard, facilitating monitoring purposes. Qlik Sense offers alerting capabilities where users can set thresholds for KPIs and receive notifications when these thresholds are reached. The platform also includes AI/ML features for predictive modeling through a no-code component, allowing business users to create and deploy AutoML models without depending on data scientists. The Qlik Answers component, featuring generative AI capability, enables users to get answers from unstructured data including Excel, HTML documents, or Microsoft Word documents by creating a knowledge base. The user-friendly interface operates on a drag-and-drop approach, with Qlik Sense suggesting appropriate charts based on selected dimensions and measures. The associative engine capabilities allow data association between tables, implementing selections across related tables. The platform uses a color-coding system (white, gray, and dark gray) to show related, excluded, and unrelated data selections, providing insights beyond traditional BI tools.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"My organization now has data from disparate systems at their fingertips in a way that lets them get the answers they need when they want it."
"The product responds fast for data analysis."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The product is very stable."
"Obviously and considering that Qlik Sense is a data visualization application, the most attractive feature is the fast handling of large amounts of data and the attractive visualization of the same."
"Qlik Sense helps us increase our organization's customer relationships and brings in more projects."
"The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant."
"The integration with R & Python for predictive modeling, and possibly machine learning in the future, is very valuable."
 

Cons

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"The security rules should be made easier to use."
"They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc."
"My advice to others is to make sure they have a good technical team. We have found that a lot of the consultants go in and out of the business and sometimes you are left alone without assistance."
"Areas for improvement include user-friendliness, self-service, and some of the visualization options for generating reports."
"Appearance could be enhanced, especially when compared to Tableau or Power BI."
"Possibly offering some more basic, simpler templates."
"I would like to see improvements in the Qlik Sense SaaS version, particularly in the front-end capabilities."
"They need to make security rules to access applications and data security easier and customizable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The product is available for free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"It is the most expensive tool."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"For personal use, the desktop version of Qlik Sense is absolutely free, and you can share visualizations with others and to a personal cloud space, though limited with storage space."
"We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ for a token / 1 user. 2018: they change to 2 kinds of licenses: professional 1500$ / user, analyzer 800$ / user. 2019: they support subscription with 70$ Monthly for professional, 40$ monthly for analyzers, but for those you’re using perpetual licenses, they don't support acquiring more subscription licenses. The maintenance fee yearly are also high, 20% of the perpetual license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
881,346 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
881,346 professionals have used our research since 2012.