Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Looker Studio vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (9th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.5% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 7.4% mindshare, down 9.1% since last year.
Reporting
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.
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

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"The tool's data analysis is useful to help out the teams across the globe and to track their work."
"The product is very stable."
"The reports are better looking than in QlikView."
"The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues."
"The most valuable feature is the user experience."
"Qlik Sense is much more user-friendly and easier to read then QlikView."
"It is very easy to use, and the Qlik data engine has been able to handle everything we have thrown at it."
"Qlik Sense provides better visualization."
 

Cons

"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The only thing I would like to see is the ability to create a master app that opens when a user creates a new app that has all the master items, colors, logos, etc., that my organization uses. This would help with keeping master items the same across the apps and would make development a little quicker."
"As we are a very process-oriented company, we would like to see more extensions maintained from Qlik, because it's a huge budget problem to choose the right one."
"Report generation without the need for NPrinting, which has limited capabilities anyway, would be an improvement."
"Error handling is an area that needs to be improved."
"Technical support requires improvement. I would rate it around three out of ten. Basically, I think they lack in the support system."
"We want the next version of this solution to be cloud-based so that each user can access it from anywhere in the world with their phone, tablet, or computer without a VPN connection."
"Qlik Sense is working very well on going to low code and development. They are trying to make their environment more user-friendly. However, the training is not free. When you want to learn more about the tool, sometimes you need to pay for the training. This does not make sense to me because training should be free because the more you learn about the tool the more you use it and the more you are loyal to the company and want to continue usage."
"The product could be less expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The product is available for free."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
"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."
"Understand the break over price point for switching to the Enterprise license."
"The cost is not bad considering the flexibility and support you receive from Qlik. I believe it is worth the cost."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...
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

Data Studio
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
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 Studio vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.