Microsoft Power BI vs QlikView vs XLCubed comparison

Microsoft and Qlik are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0, while Qlik is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.4. Microsoft holds a 17.3% mindshare in RT, compared to Qlik’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Qlik users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 327 Microsoft Power BI reviews

23,151 Views
9,260 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

QlikView

Read 163 QlikView reviews

3,983 Views
2,270 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

439 Views
307 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

QlikView

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in Reporting.

To learn more, read our detailed Reporting Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

January 2026

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Helped 881,757 peers since 2012

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
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	17.3%
QlikView	4.0%
XLCubed	0.9%
Other	77.8%

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Livia Vasilescu

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.

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Morne Ayres

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.

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it_user1391316

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."

"The drill-down capabilities and automatic charts are the best ones. The visualization is also very good. In terms of visualization, no competing product, such as IBM Cognos or any other product, has the same capabilities."

"Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially."

"The user experience is easy. Users get familiar with it quickly."

"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."

"The user interface is easy to work with."

"We have plans to use the AI mechanisms and algorithms that Power BI uses to publish more easy-to-understand reports for our customers."

"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

"The language support is very good."

"It is a stable product."

"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 had the option to prepare data myself instead of always having to depend on the data team."

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

"It's pretty easy to deploy."

"We can scale it if we need to."

"This solution has simplified getting to and understanding our data, no matter where it is housed."

More QlikView pros

"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

"The reporting part of Microsoft BI is rather limited compared to other reporting tools."

"It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this."

"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."

"It should be more scalable for an enterprise-level implementation. When you deploy large data sets, the response has to be faster in Power BI. This is one thing that needs to be improved in it."

"There's always room for improvement for Microsoft Power BI, especially for the UX and the menus to make it more accessible to business users."

"I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple."

"Microsoft should offer additional features for visualization and have additional features for slicing and dicing that data."

"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"There is no automation or drag and drop functionality."

"QlikView lacks self-service capabilities, which means users depend on the IT team to make changes."

"They could provide a user-friendly analysis process rather than specialized IT resource code."

"The user interface is old."

"Error handling."

"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."

"They could improve the update time."

"Although Qliktech's road map clearly states that QlikView has a long way to go, most of the R&D effort seems to be benefiting Qlik Sense."

More QlikView cons

"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

"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."

"We view it as an expensive product."

"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."

"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."

"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."

"The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."

"Both cost-wise and implementation-wise, this product is a good choice."

"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is moderate, in the medium price range."

"Qlik is fairly high in terms of pricing."

"It is not very expensive. I think it it is on par with other similar products on the market."

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

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

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

"The pricing is too high compared to the other solutions on the market."

"I rate QlikView's pricing a five out of ten."

More QlikView pricing and cost advice

"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

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Marketing Services Firm

Performing Arts

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	135
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	73
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	76

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...

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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...

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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?

I would rate the pricing for QlikView as not cheap, but it is reasonable.

See all answers

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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Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 13% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 3% of the time

Workday Prism Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs QlikView

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs QlikView

Compared 7% of the time

MicroStrategy vs QlikView

Compared 6% of the time

Zendesk vs QlikView

Compared 5% of the time

Domo vs QlikView

Compared 5% of the time

More QlikView Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs XLCubed

Compared 45% of the time

More XLCubed Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

January 2026

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

QlikView

January 2026

Download QlikView product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

January 2026

Download XLCubed product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

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 Genve, 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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