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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
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (9th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 7.4% mindshare, down 9.1% since last year.
Reporting
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.
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 integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"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 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."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"End users can adjust their analysis with a few simple clicks."
"Set analysis is great for its power user capabilities such as performing an IF on an aggregated column. The ability to create custom coloring expressions based on values is also a good idea although not as easy as I wished it was."
"We were able to identify easy things, such as when a contract was loaded incorrectly."
"Qlik has a powerful load script that uses an enhanced SQL language which is excellent for loading and transforming the data."
"Unique data visualizations created based on - among others - customer reviews and hands-on experience. Qlik is an experienced company in the Business Intelligence / Data visualization area, that doesn't necessarily mean it is the best solution, however, based on my personal experience it is much more complex than Power BI and Tableau as I've had some things to do with these two concurrent softwares."
"Takes the super features of QlikView ETL capabilities to a whole new level with its new drag and drop feature, and extension capabilities derived from the robust Qlik API."
"The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are the integration and panel for reports. The integration is very fast even though we process a lot of information."
"Qlik Sense provides better visualization."
 

Cons

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"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 tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."
"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."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"Ability for the administrator to approve Community Sheets in the QMC and then move them into base sheets."
"I wish the product had the ability for slightly more customization. The out-of-the box charts and visualizations are fantastic, but I want to be able to tweak it without having to add outside extensions and widgets."
"I am not really a fan of the set analysis. It's its own language that doesn't quite make a whole lot of sense to me at this point. I wish it were more intuitive."
"Ad-hoc reporting capabilities would be ideal."
"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."
"Areas for improvement include user-friendliness, self-service, and some of the visualization options for generating reports."
"Better searching capabilities would be a nice addition."
"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

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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 tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price."
"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."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"The cost is not bad considering the flexibility and support you receive from Qlik. I believe it is worth the cost."
"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."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

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?
From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...
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.
864,155 professionals have used our research since 2012.