QlikView and Microsoft Power BI are both popular Business Intelligence (BI) tools, providing a range of features for data analysis, interactive dashboards, and sharing insights across organizations.
However, there are key differences between the two platforms that can significantly influence your data analytics experience and the results you achieve. These distinctions impact various aspects of functionality, user experience, and integration, making each tool more suitable for different business needs. In this blog, we will provide an in-depth comparison of Power BI vs QlikView, analyzing their features, capabilities, and key differences.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a versatile business intelligence tool that efficiently connects, models, and visualizes data. It enables the creation of reports and insights based on key performance indicators (KPIs) within business processes, empowering users to make informed decisions with confidence. Power BI also facilitates sharing analytics and insights among team members. The platform ensures accurate data processing and analysis while maintaining security and consistency. It serves as a comprehensive solution for generating pixel-perfect reports, semantic models, and fixed-layout designs, all from a single platform.
What is QlikView?
Similar to Power BI, QlikView is a business intelligence platform that offers a wide range of data visualization tools, including graphs, charts, tables, maps, dashboards, and gauges. It utilizes an in-memory feature, enabling users to quickly load and manipulate data from multiple sources with ease. One of QlikView’s standout features is its associative analysis, which highlights the relationships and patterns within data across various dimensions and filters, providing deeper insights.
Power BI vs QlikView – Key Differences
Here are some key differences between Power BI and QlikView that highlight how these two powerful business intelligence tools vary in their features and capabilities.
Data AnalysisIt is recognized as a flexible and user-friendly tool. However, it faces challenges when handling large datasets, making it less suitable for managing complex datasetsIt is known for its ability to efficiently handle large datasets and execute calculations with greater speed. Furthermore, it excels in visualization performance, which is essential for making well-informed decisions
Customization Provides a variety of customization options for usersCompared to Power BI, it offers less customization and flexibilityPerformanceIt generally performs well, but its efficiency can vary depending on the hardware used and the size of the datasetIt is known for strong performance with complex and large datasets, but may still face challenges with extremely large datasets
| Parameters | Power BI | QlikView |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Microsoft | Qlik |
| Ease of Operating | It can be considered as a more advanced iteration of Excel | You must acquire programming skills in order to use it effectively |
| Cost Effectiveness | You can begin with the free version and later upgrade to paid options, such as Pro or Premium | This platform is costly, and the process of acquiring the software is quite complex |
| Integration with Other Tools | Power BI seamlessly integrates with Microsoft tools like SQL Server, Excel, and Dynamic NAV, ensuring smooth connectivity and enhanced functionality | On the other hand, QlikView relies on external APIs for integration, which may come with some limitations in terms of flexibility and performance |
| Data Sources | It offers comprehensive access to all types of data, whether stored on premises or in the cloud | In addition to offering broad access to data, QlikView requires the prior download and installation of connectors before they can be used |
| Complexities | This platform is highly user-friendly and easy to navigate | QlikView is a more complex platform, making it ideal for programmers and data scientists, but others may find it challenging to use |
| Availability | This platform operates on the cloud, offering a cloud-based solution that allows data to be accessed from anywhere, as long as there is an internet connection | It is an on-premises solution, meaning you must be physically present in the office to access the data. However, the platform also provides a cloud-based option for remote workers, enabling them to access the data from anywhere. |
| Data Visualization | It features interactive reports, embedded visuals, and scalable dashboards. The interactive panels include titles that present distinct data, which are connected for easy analysis and comparison within a dataset. These reports are designed from scratch, focusing only on the most relevant information to prevent users from feeling overwhelmed or confused | It utilizes color-coded customization, where irrelevant data is shaded gray rather than being removed, which saves time and allows for easier re-examination to uncover any valuable information. However, its filtering system can be complex, making it challenging for users without technical expertise to create visualizations |
Key Features of Power BI
Power BI is a powerful tool packed with several key features that enable users to analyze and visualize data effectively. Let’s explore the key features of Power BI below:
1. Analytics with AI Power
Power BI enables individuals and teams to create real-time analytics. Its AI capabilities empower even non-technical users to prepare data, build machine learning models, and derive insights. Additionally, it analyzes both structured and unstructured data, including text and image data.
2. Integration
Power BI integrates with over 500 extensions, connecting seamlessly to both on-premises and cloud resources. With data connectors and Excel integrations, users can generate insightful visualizations. The platform also enables active process analytics, offering deeper business insights through integrations with Azure. Additionally, Power BI’s compatibility with Power Apps and Power Automate helps users create business applications and automate workflows.
3. Security
Power BI ensures data security through a range of mechanisms, including sensitive labeling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring. It also enables remote work with persistent data protection methods. The Microsoft Cloud App Security portal allows you to identify risky behavior in business processes, analyze them, and take corrective actions. Furthermore, tools like Azure private links, Azure virtual networks, and service tags enhance Power BI’s data security significantly.
4. Deployment
Power BI streamlines the transition of data from development to deployment through deployment pipelines. These pipelines are used to build and test Power BI content before it’s made available to users. Deployment is divided into three stages: development, testing, and production. During development, content is created and designed, followed by testing with large datasets in the pipeline. Finally, the content is shared with end-users in the production stage.
Key Features of QlikView
QlikView offers a wide range of key features for its users. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this platform stand out.
1. Associative Analytics Engine
This engine is built for interactive data exploration and analysis, ensuring that no data is overlooked during the analysis process. Its standout feature is its ability to uncover all hidden insights within the data. Additionally, it enables developers to create and deploy interactive dashboards and analytic applications, enhancing user engagement with the data.
2. Augmented Analytics
QlikView’s augmented analytics empowers users of all skill levels to conduct analysis. It efficiently prepares data, generates actionable insights, and creates quick visualizations. The dashboards feature charts, tables, graphs, and other visuals to aid user comprehension. This functionality uncovers hidden insights that may otherwise be missed. Furthermore, augmented analytics can automate tasks and facilitate conversational analytics, allowing users to interact with QlikView seamlessly.
3. Insight Advisor
Insight Advisor automates the generation of advanced analyses and insights. It supports natural language interactions through search and conversational analytics, refining data visualizations based on user interactions and adding them to dashboards. It also offers advanced visual analytics, including correlation, clustering, and forecasting, providing deep insights for decision-making.
4. In-memory Storage
QlikView utilizes an in-memory architecture that stores data in RAM, enabling fast access and retrieval from various data sources. This means that when users need data, it can be quickly fetched from memory, ensuring speedy performance.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, the choice between QlikView and Power BI depends on the unique needs and preferences of an organization. For businesses deeply invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Power BI stands out due to its seamless integration with Microsoft tools, extensive visualization options, and intuitive interface. Additionally, Power BI’s user-friendly design makes it a favorable option for those seeking efficiency without extensive technical expertise.
On the other hand, QlikView’s distinct associative data model provides a unique approach to data exploration, enabling organizations to uncover insights in a flexible and interconnected manner. While QlikView offers greater flexibility for deep data analysis, Power BI’s ease of use, robust visualization capabilities, and integration with Microsoft applications make it a strong contender for a wide range of business needs. Intelegain Technologies offers a free Power BI assessment, allowing companies to evaluate the platform’s capabilities tailored to their specific business requirements, making it simpler to assess its potential benefits.
FAQs
1. Which platform is easier to use, Power BI or QlikView?
Power BI is generally seen as easier to use due to its intuitive interface and seamless integration with Microsoft tools like Excel. Its drag-and-drop features and user-friendly design make it especially accessible for beginners and those who are new to business intelligence tools.
2. What is the best Data Visualization tool?
Microsoft Power BI is the best data visualization tool, meeting all the requirements of an ideal data visualization tool in 2025.
3. Why does QlikView not have a specific data type?
QlikView does not assign fixed data types to its data, as it is designed to provide the flexibility to load data from multiple sources, each with varying data types.
4. Which Power BI license do I need?
It all depends on the amount of detail and features you require and the setup that you will be implementing the structure on.
5. Why Power BI is better than QlikView?
In comparison to QlikView, Power BI has more functional tools, easy application, more types of visualization and great integration with MS products. Furthermore, Power BI has better price and update frequency and provides a greater number of possibilities in terms of customization of the visualization.
