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Adaptive Insights vs Qlik Sense 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

Adaptive Insights
Ranking in Data Visualization
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (7th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (3rd), Reporting (10th), ESG Reporting Software (2nd)
Qlik Sense
Ranking in Data Visualization
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
119
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Sense is 7.0%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models
For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.
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

"Automated reporting."
"It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday."
"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its dashboard."
"Reports are allowed to be edited for aesthetic purposes, which is lacking in a lot of other dashboard tools."
"We utilize planning on a daily basis, therefore we find it to be the most valuable product for our organization."
"It's very stable."
"Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements."
"The reports are better looking than in QlikView."
"The ETL component allows us to pull from many different sources, making pulling data in easy."
"Qlik Sense provides features to manage and govern data, ensuring data security, accuracy, and regulation compliance."
"The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues."
"This solution has improved our organization by making our analysis results available to customers."
"The most valuable feature is the mobile platform."
"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."
"The ability to access data from multiple sources in one application. This has been invaluable."
 

Cons

"Adaptive Insights has a limit of 1,00,000 rows for HTML reports. It should be improved because we will have multiple dimensions that need to be populated to enhance the image."
"The upload feature exists, but isn't terribly useful."
"Being able to drill down when using OfficeConnect needs work."
"The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up."
"It's a Workday product; they could do a little bit better to integrate a pure-play integration with Workday, which really doesn't do that."
"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."
"Better user interface (UI)."
"Discovery (the data visualization module): Needs to catch up with BI leaders, such as MS and Tableau. E.g., sorting by amounts in column charts and page slicers to control all visuals."
"More focus needs to be on data streaming/real-time data reporting."
"One area of improvement is that it doesn't offer an API for accessing processed data stored in the QED files."
"Branding is not the product's strongest point. More control over the presentation colors would be great. A basic printing function would also be good. Easy connection to external tools like R Server would be nice."
"The solution needs to make improvements to the licensing model. They need to make it more affordable at scale, and to make it more affordable for those companies at the low end of the market as well."
"Qlik Sense could include additional features for data preparation and integration, making it easier for users to clean, transform, and integrate data from various sources."
"Possibly offering some more basic, simpler templates."
"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."
"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

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."
"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."
"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."
"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."
"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."
"It's affordable."
"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."
"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"QlikSense offers a Hybrid environment architecture, which is very cost effective based on where the enterprise data resides."
"Qlik Sense pricing and licensing is like that of QlikView. It's on the high side for a small company, but it’s competitive among its peers. Use of licenses (referred to as tokens) is a bit confusing. There is a login access pass for infrequent or anonymous access."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"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."
"The solution is worth it."
"Licensing: Review the named model and move towards a usage model (e.g., cores, memory, computers, API calls, etc.)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Non Profit
6%
Educational Organization
31%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adaptive Insights?
It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Adaptive Insights?
12 years ago, it was very affordable. Workday has definitely increased its price since it acquired Adaptive a few years ago. So, it's affordable. But there are other more affordable solutions that ...
What needs improvement with Adaptive Insights?
The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up. So, there could be room for just improving the integrations, making it easier to integrate outside sys...
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

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday
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 Adaptive Insights vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.