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IBM Cognos Dashboard vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

IBM Cognos Dashboard
Ranking in Data Visualization
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qlik Sense
Ranking in Data Visualization
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (2nd), AI Data Analysis (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos Dashboard is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Sense is 5.2%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense5.2%
IBM Cognos Dashboard1.0%
Other93.8%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Unes Ay - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Provides efficient data modules, but it could be more user-friendly
We use IBM Cognos Dashboard for data manufacturing, reporting, costing, quality check, etc The product helps us update the KPI automatically. We can access reports and analyze if a particular solution fits the requirements. The product's most valuable is the concept of data modules. IBM Cognos…
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

"It is a pretty stable solution."
"The product helps us update the KPI automatically."
"The main feature that is useful is the on-demand report generation through the dashboard."
"The main feature that is useful is the on-demand report generation through the dashboard."
"The tool's valuable features are that it is easy to use and stable."
"Qlik Sense has allowed management to stop their daily data collection and focus on managing."
"Qlik Sense has given us visibility into our data to make informed decisions."
"Set analysis is great for its power user capabilities such as performing an IF on an aggregated column. The ability to create custom coloring expressions based on values is also a good idea although not as easy as I wished it was."
"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."
"We have found the use of AI to be the most valuable feature."
"We can generate various graphs, various reports and we can mainly use it for dashboard related things, where we can create a dashboard with live data and make decisions based on this information."
"The most valuable feature of Qlik Analytics Platform is its Change Data Capture capability."
"Our primary use case for this solution is focused on the pharmaceutical business, and we deploy it on-premises, typically for dashboards, sales charts, and cost of production for marketing with solutions like Salesforce."
 

Cons

"Visualization is an area where the product lacks."
"The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The price point is one of the major areas to be improved."
"The price point is one of the major areas to be improved."
"They should include proper documentation to learn more about the product."
"Error handling is an area that needs to be improved."
"Reload time is a limit since everyone wants real-time data."
"Better visualization options on charts such as pivot tables, and better control over total lines in the pivot and straight tables without the need to download extensions to accomplish this task."
"Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense."
"Data modelling automation needs improvement."
"Possibly offering some more basic, simpler templates."
"There is room for improvement in the storytelling mode and the report sharing. Qlik Sense also does not have a subscription base like Power BI. So a lot of the analysis is housed in community pages that are managed by either the author or a database administrator, or whoever the Qlik Sense manager is there."
"Technical support requires improvement. I would rate it around three out of ten. Basically, I think they lack in the support system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors."
"Licensing is based on individual usage, and it is more expensive than other providers."
"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."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"It is the most expensive tool."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"The solution is worth it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise88
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

Cognos Dashboard
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 IBM Cognos Dashboard vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.