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Looker Studio vs Qlik Sense 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (11th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (2nd), Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.5%, down 2.7% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 7.5% mindshare, down 10.1% since last year.
Reporting
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems
It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The drag and drop UI has been the most useful to me."
"It connects very simply​ to data sources."
"Showing a miniature version of the chart if the case chart is bigger than the screen resolution allows us to have full context at all times."
"It automates recurring processes to save time and money."
"Qlik DataMarket"
"Qlik Sense brings in the concept of shared libraries where one user can create custom dimensions (even with drill-down functionality), measures, and even visualizations and save it to the "Master Items," from which the other users can simply drag and drop to use it for their analysis."
"The UI is very easy to use, with drag and drop self-service analytics."
"From siloed reports, we went to a centralized knowledge hub, combining cross-functional data, and helping decision-makers see the data as a whole, therefore making more informed decisions."
 

Cons

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"A valuable improvement for this solution would be the enabling of us to host dashboards for our customers."
"The security rules should be made easier to use."
"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."
"We need more types of visualizations."
"Better searching capabilities would be a nice addition."
"I am not really a fan of the set analysis. It's its own language that doesn't quite make a whole lot of sense to me at this point. I wish it were more intuitive."
"They should generally focus more on the evolution of current capabilities rather than doing everything but only at 50% effectiveness."
"Needs more bookmarking and a data load screen."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The product is available for free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The tool is free."
"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."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"The cost is not bad considering the flexibility and support you receive from Qlik. I believe it is worth the cost."
"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."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets take about three to five minutes to reflect in Looker Studio. Overall, the interfac...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and I use it for project plan maintenance and data tracking.
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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Data Studio
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.