Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik Sense: Which BI Tool Is the Winner?

We’ve all bought something we thought was a splurge, only to end up loving it. But unlike that fancy appliance, there’s no easy return process for a BI system, and missing out on the perfect features can give you buyer’s remorse.

Our analysts compared Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik Sense to help you choose a suitable BI tool. Spoiler alert: Power BI is the winner. Let’s dive in!

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

What This Article Covers

• Feature Comparison
  • Dashboards and Data Visualization
  • Reporting
  • Embedded Analytics
  • Mobile BI
  • Data Management
  • Data Querying
  • Advanced Analytics
  • Augmented Analytics
  • Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis
• Which BI Tool Wins?
• FAQs
• Next Steps

Fortune Business Insights expects the BI software market value to double to $63.76 billion by 2032. Still, businesses struggle with manual data entry, siloed data and adoption issues.

My friend, a hotelier, says they work with Excel, though there are better alternatives. It’s how they’ve worked until now, she says.

With several BI tools in the market, why should you settle for less? We hope this Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik Sense will help you decide on a suitable BI platform.

Power BI vs. Tableau vs. Qlik Sense Overview

Our scoring engine computes the analyst score based on an apples-to-apples software comparison. It includes functional, technical and vendor qualification requirements. This analysis includes only the functional requirements.

Here’s a summary of the three contenders.

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

Features Comparison

Our analysts elevate product comparison to a science, making it easy to evaluate products side-by-side with a score-based assessment. The following table gives you a glimpse of what’s coming.

Dashboards and Data Visualization

Data visualizations and reports monetize your data by revealing what’s important.

BI tools have basic graphics and use R and Python scripts for data displays. Here’s how the three products score for dashboarding.

With Power BI, create dashboards with tiles and animations and allow users to interact with them. Build custom apps without writing code. Ensure everyone works with the latest information.

Keep your data up-to-date by refreshing it manually or scheduling updates.

Tableau offers ready graphics and lets you build your own. It supports live source connections and data extracts. Starter dashboards for Salesforce, Oracle Eloqua, Marketo and ServiceNow ITSM are available.

Qlik Sense has a rich graphics library with animations and the option to pick and display static values. It has a central console for managing data and content libraries for storing logos. The Qlik vs. Tableau comparison sees them at par, with both excelling in visualization.

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

Reporting

Reports are no longer static, instead, they update in real time and offer immediate insights. Forget boring tables — think visuals with text descriptions. With self-service BI tools, anyone can build reports.

Power BI reports keep you informed when production or inventory levels drop. Subscribe to receive reports after the latest data refresh or as per schedule.

With conditional formatting, you will never miss key metrics and patterns. A separate solution, Power BI Version Control Download, saves report versions.

Reporting with Tableau requires laying the groundwork. You must first create a sample workbook and report and publish them on the Tableau Server.

Sign up for email updates and share reports as images or PDFs. Report export and versioning are available, and the Ask Data feature answers text queries. But older Tableau versions can’t open new files.

Qlik Sense relies on Qlik NPrinting to report in MS Office, PDF and web formats. For ad hoc reporting, first, you must create master lists of data fields and publish them on the Qlik Management Console.

Alerts are available at the admin and user levels. Context-aware links take users to their dashboards. Insight Advisor provides text searches and creates charts.

Embedded Analytics

All three products support separate workspaces for different teams. It gives clients the freedom to set up displays and interact with their data without privacy issues.

Power BI Embedded is the vendor’s bespoke analytics solution. It’s for developers to create custom apps for embedding. You can set up workflows with Power Automate and write back to the database with Power Apps.

You can embed Tableau dashboards in web pages, portals, Wiki pages and custom apps. Webhooks trigger actions and update databases.

Qlik Sense comes with a design that uses APIs as building blocks to extend its functionality. It can embed content into portals, web apps and websites.

Set off workflows in the host application. Select a region and watch the metrics update in the dashboards. Write back to operational systems like Salesforce, Jira and HubSpot or data platforms like Snowflake or MySQL.

Mobile BI

Reports that fit on any screen keep you connected when out of the office. Offline access and data caching will ensure you stay updated in areas with low internet connectivity.

Power BI supports mobile-optimized reports and has a mobile app. Text querying and push notifications are available. Dashboard viewing is allowed, but sharing requires signing up for the paid versions.

Tableau Mobile displays published content from Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. You need a Tableau Server or Online account. You can’t create dashboards, but interactivity is available.

Metrics for Tableau is a particular content type for tracking data from several dashboards in a single view.

With Qlik Sense mobile, you can create data stories using Qlik Sense apps and mashups. These are web pages or apps with embedded Qlik Sense objects. Offline access is available. In the Qlik vs. Tableau comparison, Qlik scores for being more user-friendly.

Benefits

• Track how marketing campaigns and sales teams perform.
• Target customers with the correct data.
• Decide upon a product price that’ll suit buyers and keep you profitable.
• Decide whether to restock or pause orders by monitoring inventory on mobile.

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

Data Management

Is siloed data getting you down? You won’t know what you missed unless you gather data from all sources. With so much data, it can devolve into madness unless there’s a method to it, and that’s what data management does.

All three products score equally for this feature.

Power BI forms live connections to datasets. However, these connections should be published on the Desktop or the Power BI Service. The platform queries databases without importing data.

Microsoft SSAS manages multidimensional data for Power BI and routes all data through a single source of truth. The Power Query Editor checks data for types, completeness and correctness. You can preview and modify data before publishing.

Tableau provides a blueprint for developing analytics at scale.

• It supports virtual connections to shared datasets.
• Your Tableau instance must provide row security at the connection level.
• The blueprint defines Tableau Catalog as the table of contents for data discovery.
• The last element is Tableau Prep, which blends, cleanses and organizes data. It keeps data up-to-date using refresh workflows.

The platform supports linked tables for complex calculations. Tableau supports cube data only on Windows.

Qlik exchanges data with R and Python for complex calculations. The platform can join tables even if they don’t have the same fields. Using AI, users can combine, transform and load data from several sources.

The Qlik Catalog serves as a data map. For OLAP, Qlik enables slicing and dicing data with simple selections. When several fields form a natural hierarchy, it creates a drill-down group.

Data Querying

This functionality involves sending queries to data sources using scripts or screen selections. Live connections are life savers when you must cater to large volumes, though they can slow down performance.

It’s a Qlik vs. Power BI face-off, as both platforms support direct queries.

Power BI offers separate workspaces. Teams can use shared datasets and collaborate on dashboards. The Power Query Editor’s 250 DAX functions and the M language make it a powerful tool.

Tableau establishes a live connection at first. If you don’t need live data, extracts are a better option.

Selections for queries and an in-memory engine make Tableau a powerful tool that uses multiple cores to process data.

Comparing Qlik vs. Tableau for data exploration, Qlik Sense uses an associative engine. Tableau has a drag-and-drop query approach.

The Qlik Sense engine maps how datasets relate and allows open-ended data exploration. Direct query with Snowflake is also available. You can reload data in batches or partially. Qlik Sense uses QVD files that can read Qlik scripts at speed.

Benefits

• Intelligent data management and querying will reveal helpful patterns in data.
• Assured data quality promotes confident decisions.
• It can help you course-correct if your sales strategy is weak or if a campaign falls flat. Besides, it assists in planning.

Advanced Analytics

Data storytelling is increasingly popular, and teams rely on AI/ML and NLP to convey insight. When dealing with big data, you need all the help you can get. Combining it with predictive modeling opens up a host of possibilities.

You can segment buyers based on behavior and create campaigns that consider their preferences. Are these tools up for it?

Power BI uses R and DAX for calculations and statistics, including regression, correlation and variance. The platform relies on Azure for text and sentiment analysis, though the free Desktop version lacks them.

Tableau connects to Python, R and MATLAB for forecasting.

Regression analysis helps you predict events and control how you run your business. Tweak the outcome and backtrack to what the deciding variables should be.
Now you know what inventory levels and production levels you want.

Tableau uses Python to analyze text based on words that indicate a positive, negative or neutral emotion. Time-based comparisons are available.

You can invoke R functions from Qlik scripts, perform calculations and pass back the results to Qlik. The Insight Advisor enables simple and complex analysis.

Qlik Sense works with KNIME to build forecast models. The platform also supports regression, grouping and time-series analysis.

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

Augmented Analytics

This term refers to the tools and technologies that improve data analysis. These techniques include AI/ML and text processing. Though unconventional, they maintain data quality and accuracy.

AI can take data prep off your hands if you set it up. The system will cleanse, combine and catalog data on its own.

Power BI relies on Azure to create new models and import existing ones from other platforms. AutoML trains and runs the models on data. Analyzing the selected data is easy — click on the Quick Insight button.

Tableau’s Explain Data feature explains outliers and anomalies. Behind it are powerful statistics that suggest the most likely explanation after checking hundreds of them.

The results include charts and text descriptions. With Ask Data, you can get answers by typing text queries.

Qlik has AutoML, the Insight Advisor and Smart Search. AutoML helps in predictive modeling, automatic insights, natural language analytics and workflow building. Smart Search allows searching the entire data store.

The Qlik Cognitive Engine helps you analyze data by suggesting how to connect it and visualize it.

Benefits

• Regression analysis can help you determine where to spend your money. You can backtrack to see which channels have the most impact.
• Predicting demand can help you plan production and allocate resources.
• Assess your performance over time with built-in date/time functions.
• Identify segments and test marketing strategies with AutoML.

Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis

Power BI can use maps from Bing, ArcGIS, Google Maps and the web. The platform connects to TopoJSON and Esri files. Power Query and DAX have built-in geospatial functions.

Tableau allows symbol, heat, choropleth, flow and spider maps in its charts. Geocoding is built-in, and map searches use predictive text and geospatial calculations. Vector mapping tiles are new to Tableau and show clear images when zoomed in.

Qlik GeoAnalytics Connector gives access to map data and groups similar locations. It helps you determine how close customers are to a store and define regions based on sales territories. You can analyze routes and enrich your data using lookups.

You can display an airport map with WiFi hotspot locations using URLs for Qlik Sense maps.

Benefits

• Traffic patterns, residential areas and road routes are critical in deciding where to do business.
• Mapping delivery routes saves fuel costs and time.
• Delivery vehicles, field workers and remote equipment send GPS data that’s critical for business.

Compare Power BI, Tableau and Qlik Sense Against Your Needs

Which BI Tool Wins?

Power BI comes out on top, scoring a perfect 100 for data management, embedded analytics and mobile BI.

The platform wins for augmented analytics but trails Qlik Sense in advanced analytics. It also lags behind Tableau in reporting and version control. However, strong analysis dashboards and AI/ML make it the overall winner.

FAQs