Looker vs Microsoft Power BI vs QlikView comparison

The compared Google and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. Google is ranked #8 in EBT , with an average rating of 7.5, and holds a 7.7% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 12.7% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Looker

Read 19 Looker reviews

2,459 Views
811 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,072 Views
13,685 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

QlikView

Read 162 QlikView reviews

3,296 Views
1,121 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Looker

Microsoft Power BI

QlikView

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker, Microsoft Power BI, and QlikView based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI.

To learn more, read our detailed Embedded BI Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Embedded BI

October 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Looker	7.7%
Tableau Enterprise	23.9%
Qlik Sense	11.2%
Other	57.2%

Embedded BI

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	12.7%
Tableau Enterprise	9.2%
Amazon QuickSight	4.5%
Other	73.6%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
QlikView	4.3%
Microsoft Power BI	23.3%
Tableau Enterprise	20.1%
Other	52.3%

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Anton Nenov

Credit Risk Manager at ITF Group JSC

A BI tool to analyze data from multiple sources with an easy initial setup phase

I can say many things about the parts that need to be improved in Looker. The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud. Blending data from different sources is not something that can be done easily.

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Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal

Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

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Arjun Meda

Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

Useful for data visualization and business intelligence

Many of the features in Qlik Sense need to be available and reintroduced in QlikView. I believe many of the features have been added to QlikView after the layout containers were introduced. QlikView used to be a way more customizable tool than Qlik Sense is in the present time. Improvements are required in the hide and unhide functionality that falls under the layout container feature that has been used in my company in recent times. Hiding off the apps in the app overview tab based on the access was a really good feature that needs to be introduced back in the product since I see that, at the moment, there are multiple groups on the tool, owing to which multiple changes on the QMC part is required to handle the solution. Only the person with access to the dashboard in QlikView could have a link to the dashboard through QlikView's hub or access points. With Qlik Sense, one can see whatever is available in the stream. If a user wants to control everything in the product, then there is no need to make multiple changes in the QMC at the individual app level. The aforementioned area can be considered to improve Qlik Sense.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."

"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."

"The product is easy to use."

"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."

"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."

More Looker pros

"The scalability overall has been quite good."

"It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured."

"The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated."

"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"Power BI stands out because it provides considerable flexibility in creating reports, dashboards, and various types of analytics to meet those dynamic requirements. It is lightweight and easy to use with good support."

"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."

"Power BI allows you to create user defined charts which is really useful."

"What's most valuable in this tool is that it gives its users detailed error messages. It's a very stable data analytics tool, and it offers good scalability."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"E-T-L, The Extract, Transform, and Loading capabilities of QlikView make it a highly sophisticated self-service business intelligence tool for developers and analysts."

"It excels in supporting database connections and various database types."

"One of the good thing is that you can integrate different data source technologies. So you can model your environment without having any of our views running."

"It's incredibly fast and can handle large volumes of data without slowing down our operations."

"Our Qlikview applications help us to get a good idea of our Client Base Performance and assist us in the decision making for Seasonal Specials. On the other hand QlikView helps us to get a grasp on our Suppliers and helps us to negotiate pricing with them."

"You can do a lot of things on the back end which are not possible in the other solutions on the market."

"The in-memory feature gives us better insight. It's also easy to drill down into the information and select information."

"The language support is very good."

More QlikView pros

Cons

"The integration with different databases must be improved."

"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."

"The product does not have documented material."

"Stability needs improvement."

"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."

"It needs to be more user-friendly."

"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."

"There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex."

"One thing I would like to have is the scripting language, as they already have within Excel. It's already within a Microsoft business product, because Excel is the number one business product out there. So it would be nice to have the scripting capability in order to automate certain processes."

"It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use. For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that."

"The challenge of this product is in truncating the table data."

"They can provide a user-friendly and easy way to use this tool for people who don't know about programming or technical things. It will be quite good if they can improve the look and feel and make it simpler to operate. They can make it easier to create some of the reports. They can also include predefined templates that you can directly use."

"It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that."

"Microsoft has got a very large repository of all change suggestions which have been raised by the BI community. They keep on adding features that are very widely sought after by the community. We don't focus on product features. We focus on business requirements. To use the solution, we find that existing features are good enough and offer us a very effective solution."

"A lot of people work on Excel, so being able to export an Excel file as part of a subscription would be an improvement."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"The user interface is old."

"It needs work with visualization."

"Improvements are required in the hide and unhide functionality that falls under the layout container feature that has been used in my company in recent times."

"The pricing is high."

"I really wish the application was easier to use in the development phase."

"Sometimes, dealing with complex reports requires more effort, which could be really improved."

"There is a challenge on the frontend when it comes to browsing data through QlikView, as it isn't entirely compatible with other platforms we use."

"If a user wanted to see something not included in the application the new object had to be created by a power user or developer because Qlik view's scripting has somewhat of a learning curve."

More QlikView cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."

"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."

"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."

"It is cheap."

"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."

"The licensing can be complicated."

"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."

"In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year."

"Costs less than most competing solutions."

"The solution is priced well for what they offer. However, the premium version is very expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."

"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"It is quite expensive, rating at around nine out of ten on a cost scale."

"QlikView is more expensive than one of its competitors."

"Pricing is a bit too high and I think licenses should be unlimited."

"QlikView pricing and licensing is on the high side for a small sized company, but it's competitive among its peers."

"QlikView is a reasonably priced solution."

"My firm got the product at a cheap price, but in general, I believe that the product is a bit costly."

"Its licensing costs are moderate, but it can get expensive due to the numerous add-ons available like those for printing."

"It is expensive for small companies."

More QlikView pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	134
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	75

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?

With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Looker?

I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If adva...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Looker?

The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about QlikView?

If you correctly use the product for your use cases, it provides value for money.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for QlikView?

The license cost per user or per year for QlikView is about 500 Euros annually, and since we are South African-based,...

See all answers

What needs improvement with QlikView?

In QlikView, I believe the improvement that should be made is to bring the costs down, as you'll have to be competiti...

See all answers

Comparisons

Databricks vs Looker

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Looker

Compared 12% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker

Compared 9% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Looker

Compared 9% of the time

Domo vs Looker

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 12% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

Jedox vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs QlikView

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs QlikView

Compared 9% of the time

MicroStrategy vs QlikView

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs QlikView

Compared 5% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs QlikView

Compared 3% of the time

More QlikView Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker

October 2025

Download Looker product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

October 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

QlikView

October 2025

Download QlikView product report

Also Known As

No data available

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

No data available

Overview

Looker is a powerful data analytics platform that empowers businesses to explore and analyze their data in real time.

With its intuitive interface and robust features, Looker enables users to easily create and share interactive dashboards, reports, and visualizations.

The product's advanced data modeling capabilities and seamless integration with popular data sources make it a top choice for organizations looking to gain valuable insights from their data.

Google

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

QlikView is a Business Intelligence tool that allows you to keep tabs on all of your business-related information in a clean, clear, and easy to access database that is intuitive to build and simple to navigate. It is ideal for business owners who wish to improve overall output by creating the most productive system possible.

Qlik

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer

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

Canon, Gatorade, Amcor, Panasonic, Fila, Cambridge University Hospitals, Global Retail Bank, North Yorkshire Police department, Lanoo Group Publishers, and AonGroep Nederland.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI. Updated: October 2025.

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