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Looker Studio 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

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (11th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (2nd), Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 7.4% mindshare, down 9.8% since last year.
Reporting
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems
It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.
Vishal_Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-memory data storage boosts performance
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools. The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."
"Qlik has made life easier by visualising data."
"Qlik was the first company to implement an in-memory associative analytics engine. This basically means that all data is loaded into memory, but it also means that instead of joining data together, the data is associated together. From the front end, from the UI point of view, data can be joined or included or excluded on the fly. It can be drilled down and drilled through and users can slice and dice it and that type of thing can be done from anywhere in the data to any other place in the data. It doesn't have to be predefined. It doesn't have to have hierarchies or anything like that."
"We began to see how our processes and other team's processes were negatively affecting the bottom line. We were able to provide tips to other teams to help improve their processes."
"Qlik Sense provides better visualization."
"The flexibility of a non-IT developed solution allows for fast to market solutions."
"Business users have been able to use the BI self-serve model."
"The most valuable feature of QlikSense is that you can capture the data without modifying it and then perform the ETL (extract, transform, and load) process."
"It automates recurring processes to save time and money."
 

Cons

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"They need to make security rules to access applications and data security easier and customizable."
"As we are a very process-oriented company, we would like to see more extensions maintained from Qlik, because it's a huge budget problem to choose the right one."
"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."
"The navigation is quite clunky and outdated."
"What needs improvement in Qlik Sense is the support. It could be faster. My organization had already talked to Qlik management and has escalated multiple times, so management is looking into the support."
"The augmented intelligence features don't work well for the analytical user."
"If a team wants to keep track of source code changes, there is not an out-of-the-box solution for it."
"Branding is not the product's strongest point. More control over the presentation colors would be great. A basic printing function would also be good. Easy connection to external tools like R Server would be nice."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"Qlik Sense and its pricing model can follow any scalability."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets take about three to five minutes to reflect in Looker Studio. Overall, the interfac...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and I use it for project plan maintenance and data tracking.
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 do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Data Studio
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
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 Looker Studio vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.