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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 (32nd), Reporting (23rd)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (5th), Embedded BI (3rd), 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 4.8% mindshare, down 8.4% since last year.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Knowage2.0%
Tableau Enterprise14.1%
Microsoft Power BI13.2%
Other70.7%
Reporting
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense4.8%
Tableau Enterprise9.7%
Domo3.7%
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.
PawanSingh3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Data visualization has become faster and flexible and now enables quick multi-source reporting
Qlik Sense is very easy to use, but sometimes integration is a bit challenging. In our case, we wanted to integrate the cloud version of Qlik Sense, and Qlik Sense is not supporting the on-premises version, so we moved to the cloud version. We had a lot of challenges when integrating Qlik Sense SSO with the reports that we wanted to show on our web app or mobile app. There were a lot of challenges along with that, but eventually, we overcame those challenges, and things are working fine now. The integration part is one point for improvement; it could be more simple because I found some complexities with it. The single sign-on part is a little tricky and is not straightforward. We have done multiple rounds with their technical team, and although it got resolved later on, I think that it could have been better.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"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 Qlik Analytics Platform is its Change Data Capture capability."
"It has allowed us to manage our staff more effectively and frees up time for our analysts to analyze new problems and opportunities."
"Leveraging and reusability of already existing QlikView assets and knowledge."
"We have been using Qlik Sense Enterprise for two and a half years, and it has been one of the best decisions we made."
"The reason being that it is a product that offers real value to businesses and it offers it fast."
"Qlik offers you all the features needed to extract the raw data from the source systems including an ETL layer to transform the data and to connect the multiple data sources into one data model, easy data sharing, security and scaling features, dashboards, and report functionality to share your data with your end-users."
"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."
"We were able to identify easy things, such as when a contract was loaded incorrectly."
 

Cons

"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."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"There were stability issues. The former synchronized persistence failed and caused database corruption."
"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."
"Customer service has to improve and technical support is at a low level."
"Mostly when it comes to the loading of the data and reload times of the reports, it could be better."
"Qlik Sense requires one to have a lot of technical knowledge."
"More visualizations Automated report delivery Cross app data sharing Easy app sharing options with specific users."
"My advice to others is to make sure they have a good technical team. We have found that a lot of the consultants go in and out of the business and sometimes you are left alone without assistance."
"They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc."
 

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."
"The cost is not bad considering the flexibility and support you receive from Qlik. I believe it is worth the cost."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ 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."
"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."
"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."
"Know your needs when going into the purchasing decision."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
23%
University
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction 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 Enterprise88
 

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: May 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.