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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
6.5
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Qlik Sense is 7.5%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 25.9%, down from 31.6% 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 product has many great features like easy and fast implementation, flexible data loading, and in-memory processing, but the Set Analysis is what I think is the most valuable. It makes the product very powerful."
"The changes in a dashboard are very easy."
"The ability to access data from multiple sources in one application. This has been invaluable."
"The most valuable feature is the drag-and-drop reporting."
"Business users have been able to use the BI self-serve model."
"Qlik Sense is a very powerful and useful tool."
"Self-service use of the desktop version with the ability to port applications into the server environment."
"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."
"It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."
"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."
"Compared to other products, visualization features are really good."
"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."
"When compared with Power BI, Tableau is much easier."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."
 

Cons

"It's going to take 20 to 30 minutes to refresh sometimes."
"There is room for improvement in the learning curve when getting started, but training resources have been growing."
"There is no downside."
"I would like for it to be more of a plug and play with all of the tools and sources. It would make it much easier to use."
"The navigation is quite clunky and outdated."
"Error handling is an area that needs to be improved."
"The on-demand report generation button in Qlik Sense currently doesn't work if NPrinting requires Okta verification, which our company uses."
"One area of improvement is that it doesn't offer an API for accessing processed data stored in the QED files."
"We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable."
"To be the best in the market, Tableau has to improve its user interface and also look into developing implementing the best machine learning algorithms."
"I would like Tableau Prep to be integrated with Tableau Desktop. I would also like more customizations for tables."
"In the next release, there should be more information describing each chart because users have a difficult time telling them apart. They should also include the animations/videos, similar to Power BI."
"Tableau could be improved by introducing a data manipulation layer within the tool itself. Currently, data manipulations require using additional tools like Alteryx. If Tableau included these capabilities, it would reduce the need for external dependencies. The tool gets slower when we feed huge amounts of data."
"Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"It is not so great when it comes to data exchange/integration, data mining, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 could be cheaper."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"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."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
"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."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"Tableau is free."
"For big business, Tableau could be expensive as having a lot of Tableau server users (entering with a browser to reports) could be a bit expensive."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"I like the payment model. For the people who need to create, they buy their licenses. Everyone else can use the free Tableau Viewer. This is much better than some of the competitor products, which require full licences for everything."
"The licensing model of Tableau has changed since we initially purchased it three years ago and it is more complicated, and I have found it to be more expensive. They have lost market shares to Microsoft BI. My company will probably change solutions this year because of the increased pricing model."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"I'm using Tableau Public, which is free."
"One of the biggest drawbacks of Tableau is the price, it is expensive. The price should be reduced."
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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: February 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.