ELK Kibana vs Qlik Sense comparison

Elastic and Qlik are both solutions in the Data Visualization category. Additionally, 60% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Qlik users who would recommend it.

ELK Kibana

Read 4 ELK Kibana reviews

60% willing to recommend

Qlik Sense

Read 125 Qlik Sense reviews

10,291 Views
5,557 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

ELK Kibana

Qlik Sense

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between ELK Kibana and Qlik Sense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Splunk, Apache and others in Data Visualization.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Visualization Report (Updated: May 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Data Visualization

May 2026

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Helped 900,644 peers since 2012

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

ELK Kibana

Average Rating

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Qlik Sense

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (5th), Embedded BI (3rd), AI Data Analysis (17th)

Featured Reviews

KentJones

Engineer at Raytheon Technologies

Visualization tools are optimized providing us with increased flexibility

One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well. I think the types of visualizations are nice, but I think there's room to add more without having to go to third party plugins to do that. Just comparing the total number of visualizations that it provides compared to Grafana, you can see that it's lacking. The UI experience isn't as rich as it is with Grafana or certain other tools. I would like to see better authentication options, typical authentication options, like active directory and LDAP as well, just a richer UI with more graph type options.

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PawanSingh3

Director at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Data visualization has become faster and flexible and now enables quick multi-source reporting

Qlik Sense is very easy to use, but sometimes integration is a bit challenging. In our case, we wanted to integrate the cloud version of Qlik Sense, and Qlik Sense is not supporting the on-premises version, so we moved to the cloud version. We had a lot of challenges when integrating Qlik Sense SSO with the reports that we wanted to show on our web app or mobile app. There were a lot of challenges along with that, but eventually, we overcame those challenges, and things are working fine now. The integration part is one point for improvement; it could be more simple because I found some complexities with it. The single sign-on part is a little tricky and is not straightforward. We have done multiple rounds with their technical team, and although it got resolved later on, I think that it could have been better.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The optimization and flexibility of visualization tools."

"The automatic update of the graphs from a dashboard is very convenient."

"Some visualization tools are optimized for time series like Kibana, which allows you to do both, and we like the flexibility of being able to analyze different types of data."

"The user interface is very good, and the data visualization is simple and user-friendly."

"Having a tool where you can find logs that were generated months ago, and being able to search over a long period of time, is great."

"The stability of this solution is fantastic, as it has not failed us for months and we use it extensively."

"Dashboards we built on Qlik Sense have helped with new client wins, client retention, negotiating with insurers, providing time efficiencies, and providing consistency in presentations."

"This solution has improved our organization by making our analysis results available to customers."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"You can appreciate major ROI within three months."

"The solution is scalable."

"Qlik Sense has provided insight into specific areas that enabled us to shorten the supply cycle, give a better overview of the company's production, increase profitability, and improve the effectiveness of respective vaccines."

"Qlik Sense has assisted my company in providing management information to users across all levels of the organization."

"The extensibility of the Platform with either internally created extensions or the use of third-party provided items really opens the platform up."

More Qlik Sense pros

Cons

"This solution should allow the user to combine two indices into one graph and it should provide a unique count."

"Having a kind of wizard that would help you when you are typing your search would make it easier and quicker to refine your search, and ultimately find what you are looking for."

"Security could be improved thereby avoiding the necessity of a third party plugin."

"One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well."

"Populating data sometimes is also difficult for the user."

"It is easy to scale and buy a license, however, the solution is very memory intensive. More users and more data can lead to degraded performance and longer processing times to run reports."

"The QMC needs more work. Some of the features should be available directly from the hub. Too many duplicates/publish. Intelli-sense when loading a stored qvd would help so much with remembering column names. The pop-up windows are too small when working in the QMC."

"The current visualization features feel incomplete compared to what's available with scripting tools."

"More focus needs to be on data streaming/real-time data reporting. This is currently too slow to use outside of very small data sets."

"It needs to allow for customization of the dashboard objects and tabs."

"The only issue with scalability that I can see is that you can't export more than 1,000,000 cells at a time."

"It would be nice to have a better system for help tickets than a community forum."

"Making it as user friendly as possible"

More Qlik Sense cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."

"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."

"Know your needs when going into the purchasing decision."

"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 is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."

"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."

"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."

More Qlik Sense pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	34
Midsize Enterprise	40
Large Enterprise	88

Questions from the Community

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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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Splunk Enterprise Security vs ELK Kibana

Compared 33% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs ELK Kibana

Compared 26% of the time

GoodData vs ELK Kibana

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Analytics Cloud vs ELK Kibana

Compared 11% of the time

More ELK Kibana Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs Qlik Sense

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Superset vs Qlik Sense

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Qlik Sense

Compared 5% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs Qlik Sense

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Qlik Sense

Compared 3% of the time

More Qlik Sense Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Data Visualization

May 2026

Download ELK Kibana product report

Buyer's Guide

Qlik Sense

June 2026

Download Qlik Sense product report

Also Known As

No data available

QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform

Overview

Kibana lets you visualize your Elasticsearch data and navigate the Elastic Stack, so you can do anything from learning why you're getting paged at 2:00 a.m. to understanding the impact rain might have on your quarterly numbers.

Elastic

Qlik Sense offers drag-and-drop dashboard creation, multi-data source integration, and self-service analytics. Users benefit from associative data modeling and real-time insights. The platform enhances quick deployment across any device with its flexibility and ease of use.

Qlik Sense provides rapid dashboard creation and seamless multi-data source integration, supporting real-time analytics and high-speed ETL capabilities. Users enjoy advanced visualizations and natural language processing within an intuitive interface. The solution's in-memory engine ensures fast data processing while offering flexibility and quick deployment on all devices. Its open API facilitates extensive customization and integration with chatbots and third-party extensions.

What are the key features of Qlik Sense?

Rapid Dashboard Creation: Enables quick creation of insightful dashboards using a drag-and-drop interface.
Multi-Data Source Integration: Supports seamless integration across various data sources for comprehensive analysis.
Self-Service Analytics: Empowers users with intuitive tools for independent data exploration and insights generation.
Associative Data Modeling: Enhances understanding of complex datasets and relationships.
Advanced Visualizations: Offers sophisticated visual options to present data clearly and engagingly.
Real-Time Insights: Provides up-to-the-minute data analysis capabilities.
Open API Integration: Allows extensive customization and integration with third-party tools.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Fast Deployment: Enjoys rapid setup and integration across devices, facilitating immediate data access.
Enhanced Flexibility: Customization options allow tailored solutions that meet specific user needs.
Comprehensive Integration: Capable of integrating multiple data sources, improving analytical scope.
Improved Data Accessibility: Offers easy access and understanding of complex data.
Automation Efficiency: Streamlines reporting and analytics tasks, boosting productivity.

In industries such as finance and sales, Qlik Sense enables interactive data analyses and dashboard creation across departments. It supports business intelligence for financial reporting, sales analysis, and decision-making. By automating reporting and combining data from multiple sources, it facilitates users in generating insights and enhancing data accessibility for informed business decisions.

Qlik

Sample Customers

Sprint, Grab, Volkswagen, Autopilot, Voyages-SNCF.com, Just Eat, Accenture, Dell, Verizon Wireless, Kaidee, Green Man Gaming, Compare Group, Tango, Quizlet

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 Salesforce, Splunk, Apache and others in Data Visualization. Updated: May 2026.

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