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Looker vs QlikView 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

As of September 2025, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 8.2%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QlikView is 11.2%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 27.4%, down from 34.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise27.4%
QlikView11.2%
Looker8.2%
Other53.2%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.
Arjun Meda - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"The product is easy to use."
"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."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"It's incredibly fast and can handle large volumes of data without slowing down our operations."
"The initial setup is not very complex."
"The most valuable feature of QlikView is the integration with other third-party tools."
"It is a stable product."
"You can switch views easily."
"The scalability is there."
"It enables us to configure various elements, such as dashboard settings, including factors like color schemes and other customization parameters."
"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."
"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."
"The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team."
"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."
"When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources."
"The dashboards are amazing, with different report types and stunning visuals. Most importantly, Tableau's AI with machine learning automatically predicts features and reports based on historical data. These are the three most valuable features for me."
"The solution is being delivered to our customer, who appreciates the insights generated from the reports. It is easy for them to drill into the details and use interactive charts."
 

Cons

"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"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."
"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 product does not have documented material."
"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"Stability needs improvement."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"It would be nice if QlikView could be plugged in into the company's website or an online portal such as QlikSense is capable of. There are ways around but it takes enormous time to develop."
"QlikView's UI could be more user-friendly."
"Better source data connectors."
"Needs improvement with UI transparency."
"The product's visual capabilities could be improved. The graphs and visualizations are not as aesthetic or easy to create."
"Installation and deployment could be made easier and quicker."
"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."
"There is a lack of static PDF report generation and automatic resizing of the dashboard to fit the device."
"Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge."
"The price of Tableau is too high."
"What is happening, with so many tools coming up in the market, is that people have to continuously get educated in order to use some of the more advanced features."
"It's not an aesthetic platform at the moment."
"Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"Tableau's integration with Einstein Analytics could be better."
 

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."
"It is cheap."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"QlikView pricing and licensing is on the high side for a small sized company, but it's competitive among its peers."
"I rate the product's pricing a three out of ten."
"It's reasonably priced and falls on the more affordable side."
"QlikView is a reasonably priced solution."
"QlikView is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"It is expensive for small companies."
"I rate QlikView's pricing a five out of ten."
"The platform's pricing is considered quite expensive, particularly given the dollar-based pricing."
"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."
"It is reasonable based on what it offers."
"Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
"Tableau is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
"The pricing for Tableau is the same as the other products in the market."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
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 Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise75
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Looker?
With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.
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...
What needs improvement with Looker?
The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more...
What do you like most about QlikView?
If you correctly use the product for your use cases, it provides value for money.
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,...
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...
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 ...
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....
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
Canon, Gatorade, Amcor, Panasonic, Fila, Cambridge University Hospitals, Global Retail Bank, North Yorkshire Police department, Lanoo Group Publishers, and AonGroep Nederland.
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, MicroStrategy and others in Embedded BI. Updated: August 2025.
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