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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 March 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

"From a developer's perspective, the way the functionality's being handled is great."
"We can centralize all our data models."
"With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability."
"The product is easy to use."
"Looker allows you to generate the most optimal SQL queries in a DC through UI actions. We had signed a contract with Google Cloud to use BigQuery. That was the primary reason we adopted Looker. It works better with BigQuery than any other BI platform. We also like how this tool was developed. It was designed with an eye toward microservices architecture."
"It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product."
"It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time."
"The stability of Looker has been good since I have been using it. However, it depends on what components are being used."
"The drag and drop UI has been the most useful to me."
"Business users have been able to use the BI self-serve model."
"The most valuable feature of QlikSense is that you can capture the data without modifying it and then perform the ETL (extract, transform, and load) process."
"Allowing the users to be able to take snapshots and create their own story without ever leaving the application is a very good feature."
"The associative searching and filtering capability is a unique feature among other BI tools, and one does not need to deeply understand the underlying data."
"The reports are better looking than in QlikView."
"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."
"Set analysis is a powerful scripting functionality which calculates complex queries into simple terms."
 

Cons

"It needs to be more user-friendly."
"The product does not have documented material."
"Integrations with other BI tools could be better."
"Looker doesn't connect to Excel, which is a huge disappointment because a lot of data is presented in Excel. Also, it can't consume data directly from REST APIs, which is necessary. Looker needs to expand its horizons when it comes to data sources. The inability to connect to different data sources is hampering our use cases. Currently, it only has an ODBC connection that connects to a database. It needs to connect to other data sources, such as Excel, APIs, and different platforms."
"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."
"Stability needs improvement."
"The integration with different databases must be improved."
"The visualization capability of the product is limited."
"The on-demand report generation button in Qlik Sense currently doesn't work if NPrinting requires Okta verification, which our company uses."
"The management console appearance needs improvement to its look."
"Qlik has a fast learning curve due to great online training resources (Qlik continuous classroom), but those are lacking the advance features like building extensions and using the API."
"Qlik Sense has better performance, particularly in its archival system. However, Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use. Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense."
"Areas for improvement include user-friendliness, self-service, and some of the visualization options for generating reports."
"There are some tools like Alteryx, which are used for data preparation. These features can be built into Qlik to make the process smoother."
"The only thing I would say that comes up is that sometimes it can be a bit buggy."
"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 would also like to see the ability to add calculated dimensions to the selections tool in the page."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I do not have to make any payments to use the solution."
"It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies."
"It is cheap."
"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."
"Looker is expensive and could be made better by reducing it."
"For personal use, the desktop version of Qlik Sense is absolutely free, and you can share visualizations with others and to a personal cloud space, though limited with storage space."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Qlik Sense and its pricing model can follow any scalability."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"The solution is worth it."
"Licensing could be cheaper."
"It is the most expensive tool."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 Enterprise87
 

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.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.