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Microsoft Power BI vs Qlik Sense vs Sisense 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Power BI is cost-effective, user-friendly, and efficient, enhancing BI capabilities and saving time and money.
Sentiment score
6.4
Qlik Sense delivers cost-effective, time-saving solutions with significant ROI through enhanced decision-making and improved data-driven strategies.
Sentiment score
6.6
Sisense offers time-saving benefits with cost-effectiveness, but experiences vary based on existing analytics systems and initial investments.
In a world surrounded by data, tools that allow navigation of large data volumes ensure decisions are data-driven.
Power BI is easy to deploy within an hour, providing robust security against data leaks.
In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Power BI customer service is responsive and effective, but users frequently rely on forums for quicker solutions.
Sentiment score
5.4
Qlik Sense customer service is helpful but slow; users benefit from community support and professional consulting assistance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Sisense excels in customer service with expert support, responsive assistance, and a strong commitment to client success.
The significant drawback I notice is that Microsoft's size makes it hard to get specific change requests addressed unless they involve a bug.
We have a partnership with Microsoft, involving multiple weekly calls with dedicated personnel to ensure our satisfaction.
The support is good because there is also a community available.
While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it.
Technical support requires improvement.
In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you.
The support was very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Power BI is scalable, integrates well with Azure, but faces challenges with large datasets and concurrent users.
Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense offers impressive scalability, effective resource management, and consistent performance across enterprises, despite data export and licensing limitations.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sisense is praised for scalability, though some users report performance issues with large data volumes; security concerns exist.
You expect only a small percentage of users concurrently, but beyond a thousand concurrent users, it becomes difficult to manage.
With increasing AI capabilities, architectural developments within Microsoft, and tools like Fabric, I expect Power BI to scale accordingly.
As more data is processed, performance issues may arise.
It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.
Qlik Sense helps analyze data and can handle larger amounts of data compared to other BI tools.
I believe it is easily scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Power BI is stable and reliable, excelling with smaller datasets but may need resources for larger ones.
Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense is praised for stability and reliability, though some issues arise with capacity growth or initial versions.
Sentiment score
7.8
Sisense is stable and reliable, with minor slowdowns during data import, but users report no major stability issues.
In terms of stability, there's no data loss or leakage, and precautions are well-managed by Microsoft.
We typically do not have problems with end-user tools like Excel and Power BI.
It is very stable for small data, but with big data, there are performance challenges.
The stability is very good.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Power BI faces criticism for Windows dependency, interface complexity, limited features, and challenges in integration and pricing.
Qlik Sense users desire enhancements in data handling, analytics, customization, interoperability, and cost-effectiveness, citing several areas for improvement.
Sisense users want enhanced large dataset handling, improved dashboards, better data connectivity, and reduced costs with more customization options.
This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today.
Access was more logical in how it distinguished between data and its formatting.
Microsoft updates Power BI monthly based on user community feedback.
Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use.
Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.
There should be more comprehensive documentation and explanatory videos available to help clients understand and calculate capacity-based pricing, making it easier to predict costs before implementing Qlik Sense Cloud.
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Power BI provides cost-effective pricing options, with plans ranging from free to $4,995 monthly, competing with Tableau and Cognos.
Qlik Sense pricing is complex, with higher costs than competitors, requiring thorough analysis and negotiation for optimization.
Sisense offers a subscription model with competitive pricing, ideal for mid-sized to large enterprises due to its robust features.
I found the setup cost to be expensive
Power BI isn't very cheap, however, it is economical compared to other solutions available.
The pricing for Microsoft Power BI is low, which is a good selling point.
Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly.
Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.
For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies.
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot.
 

Valuable Features

Power BI offers seamless Microsoft integration, data visualization, and self-service tools, enhancing data-driven decisions with flexibility and affordability.
Qlik Sense offers swift data handling, user-friendly design, powerful visualizations, and seamless integrations, enhancing user experience and collaboration.
Sisense offers user-friendly deployment, rapid data integration, intuitive dashboards, and advanced analytics for enhanced data insights and visualization.
In today's data-driven environment, these tools are of substantial value, particularly for large enterprises with numerous processes that require extensive data analysis.
Within the organization, Microsoft Power BI is used to create dashboards and gain insights into data, enhancing data-driven decision-making.
The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them.
From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
It is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.
It has an interactive interface with Qlik graphs, pivot, and interactivity, which makes it easier to use than other tools.
It offers two ways to access data: by cubing the data or hitting it live.
 

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Wiboon Thabsuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps businesses save time and offers good integration features
I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone. I am more familiar with Windows than Linux. With Windows, the system performs very fast. Even if your data size consists of like 10,00,00,000 loads or whatever, it works very fast. When using Sisense, it is better to have some people with a very good understanding of Linux. I need more technical people who understand about Linux OS. Only two people would be enough to operate the tool.
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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
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
Costs depend on the deal. They offer various licensing metrics based on our needs. For small or large organizations n...
What needs improvement with Sisense?
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster. Additionally,...
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
I was looking into some of our business operations with tow truck companies. I focused on evaluating turnaround times...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot. They were practically dead even from ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
QlikSense
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: June 2025.
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