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Knowage 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

Knowage
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (34th), Reporting (21st)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (6th), Embedded BI (2nd), AI Data Analysis (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Knowage is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 4.9% mindshare, down 8.4% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise13.9%
Microsoft Power BI12.9%
Other71.2%
Reporting
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense4.9%
Tableau Enterprise9.5%
Domo3.8%
Other81.8%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Margin Assurance Analyst at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
A stable open source suite for modern business analytics with a useful replication feature
It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products.
Saranya Deepthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Wipro
Improved AI-driven dashboards have accelerated decisions but still need better visuals and faster refresh
Absolutely, nothing is entirely positive, and everything has both advantages and disadvantages. When I worked with Qlik Sense, circular charts were not available, which meant I had to look for alternative solutions that would be reliable or make the functionality work. There are some features that need to be added. Additionally, there is a limit to the number of fields that can be added in Qlik Sense, and I believe it would be beneficial if they increased the count for fields and columns. There might be requirements where an Excel file contains many columns that need to be displayed as visual representations to clients, and in those situations, it becomes very difficult and I have to use alternative approaches. When this problem arose, I used HTML code to write a solution and make it work. Qlik Sense should avoid these types of limitations in future updates. Another issue is page resolution. If a client wants to view the dashboard on a single page without scrolling, bar charts appear small and the values in KPIs, bar charts, scatter plots, and line graphs cannot be seen very clearly. Adding more extensions to make the job easier would also be beneficial. Improvements to reporting would be helpful as well, because working with large datasets makes reporting very difficult. Additionally, when data is refreshed, it cannot be completed in a short timeframe. Refreshing very large datasets can take one, two, or even three hours, so reducing the refresh time would be very useful for customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of ROI, much better than any other solution when it offer full fledged features in open source, planned to have direct contact with SpagoBI for better support."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"It's a great product. It has a lot more features than many other BI tools. You can get the most out of machine learning, the best connectivity to Python, and it cuts across enterprise sections."
"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."
"From siloed reports, we went to a centralized knowledge hub, combining cross-functional data, and helping decision-makers see the data as a whole, therefore making more informed decisions."
"This is amazing product takes the super features of QlikView ETL capabilities to a whole new level with its new drag and drop feature, and extension capabilities derived from the robust Qlik API."
"Qlik Sense is a mission-critical environment - the directors can't make their work happen without it."
"The product responds fast for data analysis."
"Our employees no longer have to search for information in many systems and/or use a web search; they can just go to the BI platform and do a lot of analysis by just clicking."
"This solution is easy to use, intuitive and has great power for the exploitation of data."
"On the fly questions can be answered with the "Qlik" of a button and drive forward discussions about policy, mission, and goals."
"The flexibility of Qlik Sense and the addition of 3rd party extensions allow us to extend the use of Qlik Sense beyond analytics and bring the platform to the core of our digital workplace, augmenting analytics with workflow, and team collaboration."
 

Cons

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"As all software and especially the open-source ones have always something that can work better, in this case, SpagoBI is slightly difficult to implement."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"More freedom for custom visuals and dashboard creation would be an improvement."
"Real online analytics (OLAP) better implementation of map charts incremental data load solution for better time saving."
"Qlik's data handling could still use some strengthening, flexibility, and overall improvement."
"We need more types of visualizations."
"We have some problems with sessions closing down before the timeout limit."
"Reload failure alerts on the application within the Qlik Management Console without any use of extensions. QlikView is able to handle these alerts directly through the QlikView Management Console. We would appreciate a similar solution that is easy to set up and use. Simple formatting options in the pivot and straight tables such as adjusting line thickness and font selection and size."
"I would like for it to be more of a plug and play with all of the tools and sources. It would make it much easier to use."
"Even though a huge set of learning material is available, anyone starting his/her journey on learning the software doesn't even know where to start it. The so-called Continous Classroom service is not cheap, but there are many free tutorials, they are not sorted or enlisted adequately though."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"I'm not able to reveal the licensing cost for Qlik Sense, but because it was a huge deal, the cost was less than the usual cost. The license wasn't that costly. It was the infrastructure that was very costly."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"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."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"I believe pricing is similar to other products in the same category, if you have it on-premise."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise89
 

Questions from the Community

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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

SpagoBI
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
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 Microsoft, Salesforce, Plotly and others in Reporting. Updated: July 2026.
907,816 professionals have used our research since 2012.