Qlik Sense

Overview

Qlik Sense is a business intelligence (BI) and data visualization platform developed by Qlik. It is designed to assist organizations in creating interactive dashboards, reports, and analytical applications. The platform emphasizes self-service capabilities, allowing users to explore data and generate insights without extensive IT intervention. Its core technology, the Associative Engine, enables users to navigate data relationships across multiple sources, highlighting connections and disconnections in datasets. This approach differs from traditional query-based BI tools by maintaining associations between all data points, which can help in discovering hidden patterns and outliers.

Qlik Sense is suitable for various use cases, including executive dashboards, operational reporting, and embedded analytics within other applications. For developers and technical buyers, Qlik Sense offers APIs and SDKs for extending its functionality and integrating it into existing enterprise systems. This allows for custom visualizations, data connectors, and the embedding of Qlik Sense objects directly into web applications, supporting a more unified user experience. The platform is available as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS, and as a client-managed solution, Qlik Sense Enterprise Client-Managed, providing deployment flexibility for different organizational requirements. Additionally, Qlik Cloud Data Integration provides capabilities for data movement and transformation to support analytical workflows.

The platform's focus on an associative data model aims to provide a comprehensive view of data, allowing users to select data points and instantly see how those selections impact the entire dataset. This can facilitate a deeper understanding of business performance and operational efficiency. Qlik Sense also includes features for data preparation, enabling users to cleanse, transform, and load data from various sources before analysis. This combination of self-service data preparation and associative exploration is intended to empower a broad range of users, from business analysts to data scientists, in their decision-making processes.

Key features

• Associative Engine: Processes data in memory to connect all data points, allowing for comprehensive data exploration and the identification of relationships between disparate data sources.
• Self-Service Analytics: Provides tools for users to create, customize, and share dashboards and reports independently, reducing reliance on IT departments.
• Interactive Dashboards and Visualizations: Offers a range of chart types, maps, and visual components to create interactive data representations that respond dynamically to user selections.
• Embedded Analytics: Supports the integration of Qlik Sense analytics directly into other business applications and portals using APIs and SDKs, enhancing existing workflows.
• Data Integration and Preparation: Includes capabilities to connect to various data sources, perform data cleansing, transformation, and aggregation for analysis.
• Mobile BI: Provides access to dashboards and analytics on mobile devices, enabling data exploration on the go.
• Augmented Analytics: Incorporates AI and machine learning features, such as natural language querying and intelligent insights, to assist users in discovering patterns and trends.
• Scalability and Governance: Designed to support large datasets and a high number of users, with features for data security, access control, and content management.

Pricing

Qlik Sense offers tiered pricing based on deployment and features. A 30-day free trial is available for Qlik Sense Business. Prices are accurate as of 2026-05-28.

For detailed pricing information, refer to the Qlik pricing page.

Common integrations

• Data Sources: Connects to various databases (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle), cloud data warehouses (e.g., Snowflake, Google BigQuery), enterprise applications (e.g., Salesforce), and flat files (e.g., Excel, CSV).
• Embedded Analytics: Utilizes Qlik Sense APIs and SDKs for embedding interactive dashboards and visualizations into custom web applications and portals. The Qlik Sense Hub documentation provides details on these capabilities.
• Third-Party Extensions: Supports custom extensions and connectors developed by the community or partners to expand visualization and data integration options.
• Cloud Platforms: Integrates with major cloud providers for deployment and data services, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure.

Alternatives

• Tableau: A data visualization tool known for its drag-and-drop interface and strong visual analytics capabilities.
• Microsoft Power BI: A business intelligence service from Microsoft offering interactive visualizations and BI capabilities with strong integration into the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Looker (Google Cloud): A cloud-native BI platform focused on data exploration and a robust data modeling layer.

Getting started

To begin with Qlik Sense, you can start a free trial of Qlik Sense Business. The following steps outline how to create a basic application and load data.

// Example Qlik Sense script to load data from a CSV file
// This script is typically entered in the Data Load Editor within Qlik Sense

// Step 1: Connect to a data source. Here, we assume a CSV file named 'SalesData.csv'
// is available in a data connection named 'MyFiles'.

// Define the data source path
SET vDataSource = 'lib://MyFiles/SalesData.csv';

// Step 2: Load data from the CSV file
SalesData:
LOAD
    "OrderID",
    "ProductCategory",
    "SalesAmount",
    "OrderDate"
FROM '$(vDataSource)'
(txt, utf8, embedded labels, delimiter is ',');

// Step 3: (Optional) Create a calendar dimension from the OrderDate
// This helps in time-based analysis

Calendar:
LOAD
    "OrderDate" as Date,
    Year("OrderDate") as Year,
    Month("OrderDate") as Month,
    Day("OrderDate") as Day,
    Week("OrderDate") as Week,
    'Q' & Ceil(Month("OrderDate")/3) as Quarter
Resident SalesData;

// After loading data, you can proceed to create visualizations and dashboards
// in the Qlik Sense app editor.

This script connects to a CSV file, loads specified columns, and then creates a derived calendar table for time-based analysis. After executing this script in the Qlik Sense Data Load Editor, the data will be available for creating visualizations in your Qlik Sense application. Further details on data loading and app development can be found in the Qlik Sense documentation.