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Qlik Sense vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Qlik Sense
Ranking in Data Visualization
2nd
Ranking in Embedded BI
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in Data Visualization
1st
Ranking in Embedded BI
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Qlik Sense is 7.3%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 27.2%, down from 31.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Q&A Highlights

Dawn Fenstermacher - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 04, 2023
 

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.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the user experience."
"Qlik Sense has given us visibility into our data to make informed decisions."
"What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool."
"Qlik Sense is essentially a web-based tool even though it's on-prem – you're working off an HTML page – so it's pretty quick. Your processing speed does not matter because you're using a lot of stuff through the web. That's great because it brings down the cost in regards to hardware."
"The Qlik Sense cloud insights advisor helps our business users to get the answers to their data questions so that they do not have to rely on IT/BI resources every time they have some data request."
"The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies."
"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 ETL component allows us to pull from many different sources, making pulling data in easy."
"Tableau Prep tool for data preparation is a most valuable tool."
"I consider Tableau to be the best analytical tool available. It's really handy to use and can be used by non-technical people."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"Tableau has many good features. It is user-friendly, has a simple-to-use interface, and has a customizable dashboard."
"The solution is easy to use, flexible, our clients enjoy seeing the data on maps, and you do not need to be an expert in SQL to use it."
"Our customers love the visual capabilities on top of it and the ability to explain and get the required data. There is no other product like Tableau in the business intelligence and analytics space."
"It's very easy to visualize data with this product. The visualization maps of and frames that we have been able to cross-reference has been excellent."
"Tableau is easy to use. That's the first and most important thing. I not only provide consulting but I also train people to use it, so with its ease-of-use it's not as difficult for me to train executives and management staff, because they don't have the IT background, unlike when I'm using Python."
 

Cons

"From the initial setup of the product we had some struggles getting connections to some of our databases to function, this indicated that some of the data extract drivers can be improved and addition of some of the older database engines need to be added in Qlik Sense."
"We need more types of visualizations."
"There is a direction currently with feature releases within QLik Sense which are focused towards the SaaS or Cloud offerings of Qlik Sense. This leaves those who have invested heavily in on-premise enterprise deployments in a difficult position to gain the benefits of some powerful new features they have to look to reinvest further towards these SaaS or Cloud deployments or bring in a hybrid model. Qlik provides no real split between what features are available in each of the deployment options."
"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."
"Report generation without the need for NPrinting, which has limited capabilities anyway, would be an improvement."
"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."
"Qlik application automation needs additional work and features."
"I would like to see Qlik add more DevOps functionality to their product. Currently, we have to turn to 3rd party products to handle things like Source Control, Code Deployment through environments, etc."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
"When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster."
"If I have to develop any, for example, pie charts, I can develop them just fine. However, if I have to develop a donut chart, that I cannot do it in a simple way. There are tricks that I need to use if I have to design a donut chart. It should be more flexible and provide more visualization options."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."
"The tool's OpenAI integration was announced last year. However, it is late. Tableau is a good solution for end customers. However, there are some concerns regarding the stability and performance of its server architecture, including SaaS services. The server side appears unstable, and performance issues are noticeable, often accompanied by unclear error messages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Know your needs when going into the purchasing decision."
"We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
"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."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"I believe pricing is similar to other products in the same category, if you have it on-premise."
"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."
"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."
"Tableau is free."
"I rate the product price in the Indian region a seven to eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"Its price is higher than Power BI and QlikView. Tableau costs around $70 per user per month, whereas Power BI is around $8 to $9. QlikView is around $30. Tableau has various prices for various models such as Creator, Designer."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."
"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…
 

Answers from the Community

Dawn Fenstermacher - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 4, 2023
Sep 4, 2023
I have been impressed by Northcraft Analytics. Their technology is based on MS Power BI. I would check them out.https://www.northcraftanalytic...
2 out of 5 answers
BM
Jul 27, 2023
TIBCO Spotfire is the best solution for you. Go to https://syncsite.net/business-... to learn more and I'll be happy to help you further if interested - Bryan Marks with Syncsite.
HAGAY REINMAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 27, 2023
I  think you should first decide which budget you can allocate for it.You can find "free' tools like Google Looker Studio, which have limited reporting and email capabilities. I assume other cloud vendors have similar "free" tools.Other reporting tools can cost from 10's $ per user per month to 100K$ for a year and more.There is also an open-source tool named Superset
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
44%
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 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.
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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
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. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

QlikSense
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
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 Qlik Sense vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.