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Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Looker Studio2.6%
Microsoft Power BI17.4%
Tableau Enterprise16.5%
Other63.5%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Amazon QuickSight3.7%
Other80.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense5.1%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Domo5.7%
Other78.2%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.
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

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its ease of use and the plethora of query sources."
"The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit; it is very accessible and not too difficult to use."
"We are able to provide the clients with data-driven decisions by the use of the reports that we are creating using Microsoft BI."
"Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use."
"We're making a dashboard that can show specific details and can be easily customized."
"It is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow."
"The drag and drop facility to easily change the data correctly is the most valuable feature. I am happy to see visualizations. It's easier to talk about and make people understand what is going on."
"Overall, this is a good tool and I recommend it."
"This product has a lot of features and most of them are user-friendly."
"The ROI is high for small teams or basic use cases with limited datasets."
"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."
"It allows you to create a new column using split on a current column, which we find very useful."
"Business users have been able to use the BI self-serve model."
"It is simple to develop, which is good."
"Qlik has a powerful load script that uses an enhanced SQL language which is excellent for loading and transforming the data."
"Qlik Sense is much more user-friendly and easier to read then QlikView."
"Data collection, cleaning, transforming, and visualization become convenient, easy, and quick, consequently business users can make use of data by the fastest way and transform into better data-centric mindsets."
"The product responds fast for data analysis."
 

Cons

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
"At times, I feel that the system needs improvement in single sign-on, especially for the on-premises side of the tool."
"I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that. Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has."
"We would like it if they added more Python libraries in the Power BI service. For Power BI service right now, you can use Python, but it is limited to a few libraries or a few packages from Python."
"Microsoft has made a lot of progress with Power BI in the past couple of years, but there is still some room for improvement."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
"I would like to see the product offer more graphics to impact different audiences."
"The cost of the solution can get high."
"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."
"The security rules should be made easier to use."
"Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense."
"Qlik application automation needs additional work and features."
"It's going to take 20 to 30 minutes to refresh sometimes."
"Some of the charts are still a bit basic and screen rendering on different sized monitors can be an issue."
"Qlik dashboards are not friendly with end-users, but they have been enhancing this shorted in some recent releases and next releases hopefully."
"Visually, Qlik Sense has some bugs that prevents the user from being able to customize fonts and certain layouts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The product is available for free."
"The tool is free."
"I rate the product pricing a ten."
"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."
"Microsoft BI is not expensive."
"It would be better if the price was cheaper."
"If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
"Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions."
"There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Licensing could be cheaper."
"The solution is worth it."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"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."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise166
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise88
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people ...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most ...
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 wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
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 ...
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.
What needs improvement with Qlik Sense?
Everything depends on the use case, but I would prefer Power BI because of how mainstream it is. There is not much in...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
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