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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

"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."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"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."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"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."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"Qlik Sense provides features to manage and govern data, ensuring data security, accuracy, and regulation compliance."
"The extensibility of the Platform with either internally created extensions or the use of third-party provided items really opens the platform up."
"Set analysis is a powerful scripting functionality which calculates complex queries into simple terms."
"Most of their technology is impressive; this solution represents strong, third-generation BI tech, is really powerful, and has Self Service capabilities that are easy to use."
"Qlik Sense has assisted my company in providing management information to users across all levels of the organization."
"The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports."
"The ability to access data from multiple sources in one application. This has been invaluable."
"Qlik Sense has given us visibility into our data to make informed decisions."
 

Cons

"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"We had stability issues."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"
"Report generation without the need for NPrinting, which has limited capabilities anyway, would be an improvement."
"Right now, it is complex and you have to understand the data model prior to analyzing it, so basically I would like to see an integration with Excel in the future."
"Better searching capabilities would be a nice addition."
"I would like to see more native features from QlikView integrated into Qlik Sense."
"Performing data transformations required a lot of programming, which is something that should be made easier."
"The navigation is quite clunky and outdated."
"Qlik Sense is working very well on going to low code and development. They are trying to make their environment more user-friendly. However, the training is not free. When you want to learn more about the tool, sometimes you need to pay for the training. This does not make sense to me because training should be free because the more you learn about the tool the more you use it and the more you are loyal to the company and want to continue usage."
"Mostly when it comes to the loading of the data and reload times of the reports, it could be better."
 

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."
"Costs are a little high on the license/token side. However, if you look at the TCO, it is not too bad, particularly against Power BI."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"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."
"Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price."
"It is a little expensive for the Italian market. Normally, Qlik Sense has two types and costs. The medium cost is around 700 euros per year."
"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."
"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Retailer
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: August 2026.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.