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Qlik Sense vs SAP Lumira vs Tableau 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 May 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Qlik Sense is 7.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Lumira is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 25.0%, down from 31.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rafal Zaborowski - PeerSpot reviewer
It's stable, it keeps on improving and the technical support is excellent
I think a lot of users aren't having fun using SAP because it requires putting in a lot of information by keyboard directly because it requires some coding, so this is one area for improvement. From a user point of view, SAP is a complex system where you can learn and teach, so another area for improvement in the solution is that it needs to be more user-friendly. In the next release of SAP, I want it to have a friendlier menu for its users.
Nattawat Choosuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process
An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The extensibility of the Platform with either internally created extensions or the use of third-party provided items really opens the platform up."
"It has improved our organization by providing data to decision-makers in a safe visual environment."
"It is very easy to use, and the Qlik data engine has been able to handle everything we have thrown at it."
"The ability to access data from multiple sources in one application. This has been invaluable."
"Qlik has made life easier by visualising data."
"Unique data visualizations created based on - among others - customer reviews and hands-on experience. Qlik is an experienced company in the Business Intelligence / Data visualization area, that doesn't necessarily mean it is the best solution, however, based on my personal experience it is much more complex than Power BI and Tableau as I've had some things to do with these two concurrent softwares."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"Obviously and considering that Qlik Sense is a data visualization application, the most attractive feature is the fast handling of large amounts of data and the attractive visualization of the same."
"The most valuable features of SAP Lumira are the dashboards, geographical elements, and graph filtering, and the usage is similar to a website which makes it easy to use."
"The most value that Lumira provides is in its ability to consume the Business Objects universe."
"The best feature is the ease of developing dashboards."
"Beautiful visualizations."
"SAP Lumira is the best system in the world, at least in my opinion. I like that it's a stable system and that many people in my company have development experience in SAP Lumira. The solution keeps on improving and has excellent support."
"Geographic hierarchy and the ability to connect with SAP sources, such as CRM, ERP, and BW."
"It is fairly easy and fast when it comes to using it."
"I like the solution's web version, more so than Power BI's web version. It just makes it easier to drag and drop things and to blend data on the backend. It simplifies the process."
"It is a very stable product. It doesn't break."
"I like the visualization component."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"The most valuable feature is that we can integrate with our own database, and it will displays the KPIs. This is highly required from the business side."
"Overall, Tableau is a very good tool."
"The most valuable feature is the aggregation function."
"The number one thing was just the ease of getting something up quickly. The other thing that was good about it was that it was fairly fast for decent-sized data sets in terms of performance and run time."
 

Cons

"The SaaS offering is being enriched quickly in order to attract new customers to that space and encouraging existing customers to make the switch. The Enterprise solution is therefore lagging behind SaaS in features."
"I would like to more easily themed environments."
"Right now, it is complex and you have to understand the data model prior to analyzing it, so basically I would like to see an integration with Excel in the future."
"The communication with the solution's sales managers in Europe is very bad, making it an area that requires improvement. My company usually gets no response from the tool's sales managers."
"One area of improvement is that it doesn't offer an API for accessing processed data stored in the QED files."
"I'd like to see more end-user-friendly UI designs."
"The product could be improved by implementing a user-feedback ranking system."
"The QMC needs more work. Some of the features should be available directly from the hub. Too many duplicates/publish. Intelli-sense when loading a stored qvd would help so much with remembering column names. The pop-up windows are too small when working in the QMC."
"It would be great to have more ETL capabilities so that the user can do more cleansing/mining on his/her side."
"Lumira uses a lot of memory resources, so the execution of dashboards is slow."
"I'm not a fan of using SAP Lumira because it requires putting in a lot of information by keyboard directly because it requires some coding, so this is one area for improvement. From a user point of view, SAP Lumira is a complex system to learn and teach, so another area for improvement in the solution is that it needs to be more user-friendly."
"It needs the ability to drill down more. Analyzing data with Lumira at times becomes a bit difficult."
"Lumira's capabilities feel like that of a store app with the intuitiveness of a desktop app, which is not a good combination."
"SAP Lumira can improve if they game more capability to the end user to prepare dashboards because it's more of an IT task to create them. In Tableau, we can drag, drop, and create. However, in SAP Lumira, we need a designer and a separate KT to be able to do it well."
"It needs an easier printing feature."
"I find data prepping in Tableau challenging to understand, perhaps because I am new to it. It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly."
"Lacks customization in some areas."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"When you're working on a dashboard, you can't select multiple components at a time and align them, so you have to go one by one. This is very cumbersome."
"It should have more integration with different tools and technologies. Its licensing cost should also be improved."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
"There should be stronger data modules for the platform."
"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ for a token / 1 user. 2018: they change to 2 kinds of licenses: professional 1500$ / user, analyzer 800$ / user. 2019: they support subscription with 70$ Monthly for professional, 40$ monthly for analyzers, but for those you’re using perpetual licenses, they don't support acquiring more subscription licenses. The maintenance fee yearly are also high, 20% of the perpetual license."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"The costs can initially become quite high. Make sure you have a clear understanding of who will truly use the product as opposed to someone that will simply receive the end report."
"Licensing: Review the named model and move towards a usage model (e.g., cores, memory, computers, API calls, etc.)."
"PowerBI is way more capable at a much better price point: $10 per user without all the associated setup costs."
"In terms of cost, SAP Lumira is less affordable."
"I recommend that you discuss your needs with the salesperson and try to negotiate the price."
"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."
"Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
"Tableau is a little cheaper as compared to Power BI and other technologies that we have used in the past. However, if the business users in our organization want to make presentations, Tableau has been asking us to purchase a Tableau Creator license, and $35 per month is expensive for business users. Power BI is giving a free desktop version for business users to connect to any data source and build their own dashboards. That's why we have proposed to use Power BI for most of the business users in our organization."
"Cost is where tools like MicroStrategy, Power BI, or Spotfire come into play. Cost-wise, Tableau is a little bit costlier than other tools such as Power BI. I have been using Tableau all these years, but about four years ago, Power BI came out at a very low cost. Their desktop version was free from the beginning. Power BI Desktop has always been free, whereas Tableau Desktop is costly. When it comes to cost, people prefer Power BI because it integrates very well with Office 365. You don't have to worry about integration with Teams or SharePoint."
"It is expensive when you compare it with Power BI. It should be cheaper."
"For the use and the capability of the software, it's $70 per month, and that is quite inexpensive."
"Tableau has core-based and user-based licensing, and it is tied to scalability. The core-based licensing is about you buying a certain number of cores, and there is no restriction on the number of users who can use Tableau. The restriction is only on the number of cores. In user-based subscription licensing, there is a restriction on the number of users. Big companies and government organizations with a lot of users typically go for core-based licensing. User-based subscription licensing is a more common model. It has user roles such as creator, explorer, and viewer. A creator is someone who does the groundwork or development work. An explorer is someone who is into middle management but is not technically savvy, such as a category head. A viewer is like a typical decision-maker in senior management. For each role, Tableau is priced differently. The viewer role has the minimum price, and the creator role has the highest price. This pricing is available on their website. Everybody can see it."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Hospitality Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

QlikSense
SAP BusinessObjects Lumira
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
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, Splunk and others in Data Visualization. Updated: April 2025.
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