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Looker Studio vs Qlik Sense vs Tableau Enterprise 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 Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio3.0%
Microsoft Power BI24.3%
Tableau Enterprise20.6%
Other52.099999999999994%
Reporting
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qlik Sense7.4%
Tableau Enterprise20.6%
Apache Superset9.3%
Other62.7%
Data Visualization
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
Other69.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Hasan ÖZ - PeerSpot reviewer
Interactive visualization improves decision-making for managers
Actually, I don't have any specific ideas. The last time I built a report for the IT team to monitor their process was about a year ago. They received requirements and tracked progress, measuring how they processed tasks. Power BI offers better pricing compared to Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense has better performance, particularly in its archival system. However, Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use. Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"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."
"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The most valuable feature is the mobile platform."
"End users can adjust their analysis with a few simple clicks."
"Obviously and considering that Qlik Sense is a data visualization application, the most attractive feature is the fast handling of large amounts of data and the attractive visualization of the same."
"All the necessary information is available to everyone in real time."
"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."
"The flexibility of a non-IT developed solution allows for fast to market solutions."
"The extensibility of the Platform with either internally created extensions or the use of third-party provided items really opens the platform up."
"Faster time to delivery utilizing useful charts and graphs, which allows for on-demand generation of analytical data in tables, graphs, and charts."
"Tableau has improved my organization in a variety of ways, one of its uses being that of data analysis. A feature I have found most valuable is the ease of use and straightforwardness, in addition to the flexibility of Tableau."
"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"The product has the best features for analytical views and filters."
"The stability seems to be very reliable."
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
 

Cons

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"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 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."
"Needs more bookmarking and a data load screen."
"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."
"There are occasional stability problems, but Qlik support is excellent at correcting anything that arises."
"I'd like to see more end-user-friendly UI designs."
"We need more types of visualizations."
"Areas for improvement include user-friendliness, self-service, and some of the visualization options for generating reports."
"The on-demand report generation button in Qlik Sense currently doesn't work if NPrinting requires Okta verification, which our company uses."
"Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense."
"There are restrictions in scheduling reports. For instance, we cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau."
"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"Formatting controls could use some improvement."
"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."
"Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made."
"The interface can be improved, in part because there is no indication that something is running or that it's processing."
"It needs a little bit more advanced modeling. I would like to see functionality like Cognos has in the Framework Manager."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"I'm not able to reveal the licensing cost for Qlik Sense, but because it was a huge deal, the cost was less than the usual cost. The license wasn't that costly. It was the infrastructure that was very costly."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ 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."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"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."
"Tableau has reasonable pricing."
"The professional version of Tableau is quite expensive."
"The price is definitely a point because smaller firms don't use Tableau as it's an expensive tool."
"It is a bit overpriced."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"Its cost is quite high. A corporate license costs about 150-200K per year for all the users, but there was probably some discounted amount. This cost includes everything."
"We pay for the enterprise license for Tableau. The licensing could be cheaper and more flexible."
"We are paying an annual licensing fee."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

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?
We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a tem...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
Regarding the product, I was doing research for a client in the LMS industry. I was seeing what else was out there an...
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 ...
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...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
QlikSense
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

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
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
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