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Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs Qlik Compose comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qlik Compose
Ranking in Data Integration
50th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Compose is 0.9%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.7%
Qlik Compose0.9%
Other97.4%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
Sahil Taneja - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant/Manager at Tenzing
Easy matching and reconciliation of data
The initial setup was easy for the data warehousing concept. But for a person who is new to ETL and warehousing concepts, it may take some time. If someone is familiar with these concepts, they could understand and learn the tool quickly. However, compared to other tools, the UI is complex. It would be helpful to have a better UI and documentation for new users. As of now, there is a challenge in learning the Compose tool for new users altogether. Qlik Compose was deployed on-premises. But the servers, like the SQL servers were maintained on the cloud—the managed instances.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If we didn't have this solution, we wouldn't be able to manage our workload or generate the volume of reporting that we currently do."
"Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization by saving costs, managing large data sets, and integrating multiple sources."
"Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics positively impacted my organization by organizing data that was scattered across many different databases and APIs, reducing a lot of manual work and centralizing it into one data warehouse."
"I find the drag and drop feature in Pentaho Data Integration very useful for integration."
"With this solution, instead of it taking a week, it was reduced to an afternoon, or about three hours."
"Anyone thinking about an ETL product, if they want high productivity on data cleaning and data movement, Pentaho Data Integration, in my opinion, is the best tool."
"The solution has a free to use community version."
"It's very simple compared to other products out there."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It can scale."
"Qlik Compose is good enough. It is user-friendly and intuitive."
"The most valuable is its excellence as a graphical data representation tool and the versatility it offers, especially with drill-down capabilities."
"I like modeling and code generation. It has become a pretty handy tool because of its short ideation to delivery time. From the time you decide you are modeling a data warehouse, and once you finish the modeling, it generates all the code, generates all the tables. All you have to do is tick a few things, and you can produce a fully functional warehouse. I also like that they have added all the features I have asked for over four years."
"One of the most valuable features was the ability to integrate multiple source systems that mainly used structured IDBMS versions."
"Qlik Compose is good enough; it is user-friendly and intuitive."
"One of the most valuable features of this tool is its automation capabilities, allowing us to design the warehouse in an automated manner. Additionally, we can generate Data Lifecycle Policies (DLP) reports and efficiently implement updates and best practices based on proven design patterns."
 

Cons

"The initial version we were on was v3.2 and we had multiple issues, but currently don't find any issues as a blocker."
"Its basic functionality doesn't need a whole lot of change. There could be some improvement in the consistency of the behavior of different transformation steps. The software did start as open-source and a lot of the fundamental, everyday transformation steps that you use when building ETL jobs were developed by different people. It is not a seamless paradigm. A table input step has a different way of thinking than a data merge step."
"I would like to have more languages/scripts supported in user-defined classes."
"I'm still in the very recent stage concerning Pentaho Data Integration, but it can't really handle what I describe as "extreme data processing" i.e. when there is a huge amount of data to process. That is one area where Pentaho is still lacking."
"It's not very stable, at least not in the case of the community edition. I'm working with the community edition right now and I think perhaps it is because of that it is not very stable, it causes the system to sometimes hang. I'm not sure if this is the case for pair tiers."
"Since Hitachi took over, I don't feel that the documentation is as good within the solution. It used to have very good help built right in."
"Since Hitachi took over, I don't feel that the documentation is as good within the solution."
"As far as I remember, not all connectors worked very well."
"The solution has room for improvement in the ETL. They have an ETL, but when it comes to the monitoring portion, Qlik Compose doesn't provide a feature for monitoring."
"I believe that visual data flow management and the transformation function should be improved."
"Qlik's ETL and data transformation could be better."
"It would be better if the first level of technical support were a bit more technically knowledgeable to solve the problem. I think they could also improve the injection of custom scripts. It is pretty difficult to add additional scripts. If the modeling doesn't give you what you want, and you want to change the script generated by the modeling, it is a bit more challenging than in most other products. It is very good with standard form type systems, but if you get a more complicated data paradigm, it tends to struggle with transforming that into a model."
"I don't think Qlik can be used in a high-volume scenario. It didn't work for us."
"There could be more customization options."
"The solution has room for improvement in the ETL. They have an ETL, but when it comes to the monitoring portion, Qlik Compose doesn't provide a feature for monitoring."
"There should be proper documentation available for the implementation process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we first started with it, it was much cheaper. It has gone up drastically, especially since Hitachi bought out Pentaho."
"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."
"I think Lumada's price is fair compared to some of the others, like BusinessObjects, which is was the other thing that I used at my previous job. BusinessObject's price was more reasonable before SAP acquired it. They jacked the price up significantly. Oracle's OBIEE tool was also prohibitively expensive."
"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."
"The price of the regular version is not reasonable and it should be lower."
"It does seem a bit expensive compared to the serverless product offering. Tools, such as Server Integration Services, are "almost" free with a database engine. It is comparable to products like Alteryx, which is also very expensive."
"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."
"You don't need the Enterprise Edition, you can go with the Community Edition. That way you can use it for free and, for free, it's a pretty good tool to use."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the solution a six."
"While they outperform Tableau, there's room for improvement in Qlik's pricing structures, especially for corporate clients like us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
There are two products I know about * TimeXtender : Microsoft based, Transformation logic is quiet good and can easily be extended with T-SQL , Has a semantic layer that generates metat data for cu...
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
Compose, Attunity Compose
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Poly-Wood
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. Qlik Compose and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.