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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 (33rd), 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 (17th)
 

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 0.8% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 4.9% mindshare, down 8.0% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.6%
Microsoft Power BI13.5%
Other69.9%
Reporting
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense4.9%
Tableau Enterprise10.1%
Domo4.1%
Other80.9%
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

"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"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."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"I would rate it more than nine out of ten."
"Self-service use of the desktop version with the ability to port applications into the server environment."
"The most valuable features are that Qlik has a very strong ATL available and the capacity to handle large volumes of data."
"Automated a lot of manual reports to save business users' time and provides valuable info with business intelligence analytics."
"The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports."
"What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool."
"You can appreciate major ROI within three months."
"The drag and drop functionality provides an easy and fast development approach."
 

Cons

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"We had stability issues."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"When it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports."
"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."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"The only thing I would like to see is the ability to create a master app that opens when a user creates a new app that has all the master items, colors, logos, etc., that my organization uses. This would help with keeping master items the same across the apps and would make development a little quicker."
"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."
"There needs to be better pricing options for on-premises clients Right now, they are focusing more on SaaS."
"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."
"Qlik Sense did not improve our organization. Its use was forced by our parent company."
"Ultra-customization: It needs no limits on which charts can have x amount of dimensions, y amount of measures, z amount of color expressions, etc."
"The only issue with scalability that I can see is that you can't export more than 1,000,000 cells at a time."
"The communication with the solution's sales managers in Europe is very bad, making it an area that requires improvement. My company usually gets no response from the tool's sales managers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
"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."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"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."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Licensing could be cheaper."
"Qlik Sense pricing and licensing is like that of QlikView. It's on the high side for a small company, but it’s competitive among its peers. Use of licenses (referred to as tokens) is a bit confusing. There is a login access pass for infrequent or anonymous access."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.