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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 (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 5.1% mindshare, down 8.0% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio2.6%
Microsoft Power BI17.4%
Tableau Enterprise16.5%
Other63.5%
Reporting
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qlik Sense5.1%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Domo5.7%
Other78.2%
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

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"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 fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"This tool not only allows for consumption of the data in a visual way, but also allows the user to modify the question to get new answers."
"The most valuable feature is flexibility."
"Qlik was the first company to implement an in-memory associative analytics engine. This basically means that all data is loaded into memory, but it also means that instead of joining data together, the data is associated together. From the front end, from the UI point of view, data can be joined or included or excluded on the fly. It can be drilled down and drilled through and users can slice and dice it and that type of thing can be done from anywhere in the data to any other place in the data. It doesn't have to be predefined. It doesn't have to have hierarchies or anything like that."
"All the necessary information is available to everyone in real time."
"The overall ability to build quick wins with simple data to drive insights."
"Leveraging and reusability of already existing QlikView assets and knowledge."
"The time it takes to deliver a dashboard is real quick."
"The ETL component allows us to pull from many different sources, making pulling data in easy."
 

Cons

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"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."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Mostly when it comes to the loading of the data and reload times of the reports, it could be better."
"There is no downside."
"Currently, we are not very happy with the iPad or iPhone app because it is not working as we want."
"Report generation without the need for NPrinting, which has limited capabilities anyway, would be an improvement."
"They should generally focus more on the evolution of current capabilities rather than doing everything but only at 50% effectiveness."
"Reload time is a limit since everyone wants real-time data."
"Integrated maps should become part of the Qlik Sense, as opposed to buying an additional module just to power the BI, which has it built-in natively within the application."
"Qlik Sense requires one to have a lot of technical knowledge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for 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."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"Licensing could be cheaper."
"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."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
"The costs can initially become quite high. Make sure you have a clear understanding of who will truly use the product as opposed to someone that will simply receive the end report."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
It is not about performance. It is just about how expensive it is to implement.
 

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.
883,448 professionals have used our research since 2012.