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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
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (11th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), Embedded BI (2nd), AI Data Analysis (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 2.7%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 5.6% mindshare, down 7.7% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio2.7%
Microsoft Power BI18.8%
Tableau Enterprise16.8%
Other61.7%
Reporting
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qlik Sense5.6%
Tableau Enterprise11.3%
Apache Superset5.5%
Other77.6%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Heron Ziegel - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Engineer at Quartz Consulting Group
Has supported quick dashboard creation and data sharing but lacks tools for managing multiple reports efficiently
We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better. It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file. Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization. Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection. I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have. I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it. We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.
reviewer2592669 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
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

"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."
"What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"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, allowing us to compare revenues."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"Self-service use of the desktop version with the ability to port applications into the server environment."
"The product responds fast for data analysis."
"The ETL component allows us to pull from many different sources, making pulling data in easy."
"We have had an easy time supplying content to our customers."
"The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports."
"The Nprinting is useful."
"The integration with R & Python for predictive modeling, and possibly machine learning in the future, is very valuable."
"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."
 

Cons

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability."
"Mostly when it comes to the loading of the data and reload times of the reports, it could be better."
"The next version should include more standard integrations."
"The scripts available in the solution are not great."
"Data modelling automation needs improvement."
"Qlik application automation needs additional work and features."
"I'd like to see more end-user-friendly UI designs."
"There is an inability to effectively manage (pre)caching (scheduling, assigning for respective user groups, etc), especially without community extensions or uour own development."
"The user experience needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The tool is free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The product is available for free."
"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."
"Qlik Sense and its pricing model can follow any scalability."
"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 could be cheaper."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Costs are a little high on the license/token side. However, if you look at the TCO, it is not too bad, particularly against Power BI."
"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."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise87
 

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?
I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization too...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat f...
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, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

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.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.