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Microsoft Power BI vs QlikView vs XLCubed 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 February 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 17.3%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QlikView is 4.0%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI17.3%
QlikView4.0%
XLCubed0.9%
Other77.8%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

LV
HR Manager at PPB
Use advanced data preparation features in analytics projects
Microsoft Power BI can be quite slow when working with data sources that aren't from a data warehouse or a more robust source or data artifact. When working with exports, which we do frequently, the load takes considerable time. This occurs with any BI tool, and it's related to our working methods due to limitations within the area. In HR, we typically use exports because we have numerous data sources. Ideally, Microsoft Power BI would have a no-code or low-code solution for the data sources to be built by the actual developers or development team. This would eliminate the need to work directly with exports. We would have a middle ground to create a warehouse without all the infrastructure, as building a warehouse within an organization can require substantial resources, both in time and personnel.
MA
Managing Director at Hurricnae
Rapid development and flexibility transform commercial decision-making processes
In QlikView, I believe the improvement that should be made is to bring the costs down, as you'll have to be competitive with Power BI, aiming for at least a 30% reduction to stop the hemorrhaging to Power BI, considering that you're losing a lot of customers to Power BI. Reducing costs is the main improvement needed, as this is the biggest burden currently faced in the South African market, with Microsoft converting QlikView customers due to the perceived cost reduction. I am aware of several big corporations, such as Sanofi and Aspen Pharmacare, which have left QlikView due to cost issues.
it_user1391316 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Finance Systems at NHS
Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals
In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It seems stable. I haven't heard of any difficulties from my clients that utilize Power BI."
"It provides easy integration with Office tools."
"It's a great tool for visualization data, and it's free for engineers."
"Technical support has been great."
"With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members."
"The user interface and dashboards are very good."
"It is a stable product."
"It excels in supporting database connections and various database types."
"We use QlikView for its cost-effectiveness and ease of integration with databases."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to view the entire data available for analysis."
"The in-memory feature gives us better insight. It's also easy to drill down into the information and select information."
"The most useful feature of QlikView for me is the QVD concept."
"This is a very cool application with endless options of creativity and visuals."
"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."
"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."
 

Cons

"I cannot comment on the stability as we haven't yet used it for a big project."
"We found out that you can't share a report with others unless you have an additional package. That caught us off guard. It came as a program that somebody could go in, build a report, and show it, but you can't share it without having additional licenses."
"Real-time updating needs improvement."
"You do need to do some hard coding for certain things in Microsoft BI."
"An area for improvement is data refresh functionality"
"The solution could improve by providing more free visuals. A lot of them are very nice but you have to purchase them."
"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."
"The solution could improve by having more attractive graphical charts."
"Error handling."
"QlikView certainly lacks in its ability to share visualizations or create visualizations easily."
"They should offer the capability to directly access data from SaaS environments, as it would simplify the migration process, and while it may seem like a minor enhancement, it would be beneficial to our clients."
"It would be beneficial to have AI or ML features in QlikView."
"Needs improvement with UI transparency."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of a feature that would allow us to add a common library of (our) commands used in load scripts and expressions, so with a keyword, we would get a drop down to select the command we are looking for, as opposed to the generic help."
"Installation and deployment could be made easier and quicker."
"Improvement in collaboration, between that and publishing of reports and publishing of models."
"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."
"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No comment."
"All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
"It depends upon the tier of your Office 365 subscription. On E5, which is a Microsoft Azure subscription, you get it for free. If you are on a lower tier, you can subscribe for $10 a month per user, which is really cheap."
"Microsoft Power BI has reasonable pricing."
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."
"The solution is affordable."
"Compared to what's available on the market, I think we pay a fair price."
"It's reasonably priced and falls on the more affordable side."
"I rate QlikView's pricing a five out of ten."
"Qlik is fairly high in terms of pricing."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one being low price and ten being high price, I rate pricing a four."
"The platform's pricing is considered quite expensive, particularly given the dollar-based pricing."
"QlikView is a reasonably priced solution."
"The setup costs for QlikView are fair as are the yearly maintenance fees. The licensing becomes a bit more expensive and requires some planning for onboarding."
"It has an annual license. It is expensive as compared to other competitive tools that do more for less. In South African rands, we pay about 100,000 to 200,000 a year."
"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."
"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Performing Arts
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise76
No data available
 

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 ...
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?
I would rate the pricing for QlikView as not cheap, but it is reasonable.
What needs improvement with QlikView?
We are not using analytics features and possibly predictive analytics and forecasting features in QlikView, although ...
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Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
No data available
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
Canon, Gatorade, Amcor, Panasonic, Fila, Cambridge University Hospitals, Global Retail Bank, North Yorkshire Police department, Lanoo Group Publishers, and AonGroep Nederland.
Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in Reporting. Updated: January 2026.
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