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Looker vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

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
Ranking in Embedded BI
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qlik Sense
Ranking in Embedded BI
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), AI Data Analysis (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Embedded BI category, the mindshare of Looker is 6.4%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Sense is 8.6%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Embedded BI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense8.6%
Looker6.4%
Other85.0%
Embedded BI
 

Featured Reviews

Kishore Jhunjhunwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
A cloud solution for operational reporting but is expensive
Some basic feature that is available in other reporting tools is missing. Looker has the ability to show more than 5,000 rows for operational reporting. Some reporting tools allow users to scroll down to see more than 5,000 rows, but in Looker, you have to download the entire dataset. Looker should consider adding a scroll-down option to allow users to view large datasets on screen without downloading them. Looker has some options for granting users access as viewers. However, viewers cannot download the entire dataset. Only superusers can download the whole dataset on the Explore screen. This is a big limitation, as you cannot give any user viewer access. You can give access to superuser access, which is a cost to the company.
SW
Solution Architect at Predoole Analytics
Unlocks actionable insights through user-friendly analysis features
The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant. They offer natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in layman language, and Qlik Sense will create charts and narratives automatically. Users can access any dashboard developed in Qlik Sense from familiar portals such as Okta or other company portals through embedding features. The integration with chatbots, particularly Microsoft Teams, allows users to access dashboards and ask questions directly within Teams. The collaboration feature enables users to share analysis by taking snapshots and tagging team members within the Qlik Sense interface, eliminating the need for lengthy emails or screenshots. The storytelling feature allows users to create presentations directly in Qlik Sense using dashboard analysis, making it easier to answer questions during meetings. The subscription feature enables users to receive charts and sheets via email instead of navigating to the dashboard, facilitating monitoring purposes. Qlik Sense offers alerting capabilities where users can set thresholds for KPIs and receive notifications when these thresholds are reached. The platform also includes AI/ML features for predictive modeling through a no-code component, allowing business users to create and deploy AutoML models without depending on data scientists. The Qlik Answers component, featuring generative AI capability, enables users to get answers from unstructured data including Excel, HTML documents, or Microsoft Word documents by creating a knowledge base. The user-friendly interface operates on a drag-and-drop approach, with Qlik Sense suggesting appropriate charts based on selected dimensions and measures. The associative engine capabilities allow data association between tables, implementing selections across related tables. The platform uses a color-coding system (white, gray, and dark gray) to show related, excluded, and unrelated data selections, providing insights beyond traditional BI tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easier and quicker to find things in the database."
"Technical support is the best ever."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability."
"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"If one has to deal with large volumes of data, which I categorically could tell is big data and has to create visuals, Looker is the tool to go."
"Empowering every employee to make smarter decisions in less time easily pushes us into the black on ROI."
"Looker is an extremely valuable product that can really transform your company's ability to use data to answer challenging questions."
"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."
"Qlik DataMarket"
"We can easily and quickly deploy new dashboards that reach a wide audience and any changes get reflected almost instantaneously for the users."
"This solution has improved our organization by making our analysis results available to customers."
"Qlik Sense provides better visualization."
"There are a lot of features available in this solution, it has been very easy to use. We have found it to be less complex and user-friendly compared to other solutions we have used."
"Most of their technology is impressive; this solution represents strong, third-generation BI tech, is really powerful, and has Self Service capabilities that are easy to use."
"We have had an easy time supplying content to our customers."
 

Cons

"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"Looker depends on the database components. For example, if you have a underperforming database, then you likely will have a poor performance experience."
"Features related to visualization should continue to be improved."
"Stability needs improvement."
"The pricing model makes sense, but can be very expensive, potentially prohibitively so for smaller companies."
"There have a been a few minor bugs, including a security bug that did not affect us."
"The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud."
"If a team wants to keep track of source code changes, there is not an out-of-the-box solution for it."
"It would be great if decentralized teams would have more features to manage the metadata on the dashboards, setup the specific user access rights and rules to govern incoming and outgoing data sets from/to other teams, and more features to separate the different data process layers (e.g. extraction, transformation [data quality, business rules])."
"I would like to more easily themed environments."
"Moving forward I would like to see more features that are currently available in QlikView, such as being able to better customize coloring within charts."
"I think Qlik Sense has a better engine than all the three that I've mentioned, but in regards to sharing the analysis, it's clunky; it's not as good."
"It needs continued improvement on its visualizations and content customization."
"There are occasional stability problems, but Qlik support is excellent at correcting anything that arises."
"A valuable improvement for this solution would be the enabling of us to host dashboards for our customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheap."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies."
"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"Licensing: Review the named model and move towards a usage model (e.g., cores, memory, computers, API calls, etc.)."
"Know your needs when going into the purchasing decision."
"It is a little expensive for the Italian market. Normally, Qlik Sense has two types and costs. The medium cost is around 700 euros per year."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"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."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
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Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise88
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
It is not about performance. It is just about how expensive it is to implement.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Yahoo!, Etsy, Kohler, Hipcamp, Hubspot, Kickstarter, Venmo, Dollar Shave Club, 600+ customer
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 vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.