If your shortlist for a business intelligence platform has come down to two names, you are in good company. Companies in the D-A-CH region regularly end up weighing Qlik Sense or Power BI, and Gartner placed both in the leading segment of its 2021 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. That makes the decision harder, not easier. When both tools are strong, the right choice depends on your data, your users, your existing systems and what you can afford to run over the long term.
This white paper from Informatec, a Swiss BI consultancy that works with both products, is written for the people who have to make that call and defend it. That includes IT leaders, BI and analytics managers, and the business stakeholders who approve the budget. It won't hand you a one-size answer. It gives you a structured way to reach your own.
Qlik Sense or Power BI: start with questions about your own company
Before any feature comparison, the paper asks you to look inward. It sets out the questions a company should answer first, grouped around the value you expect from BI, the people who will use it, your IT environment, security and governance, and the functions you consider must-haves versus nice-to-haves.
You'll think through whether the platform will serve one department or a broader strategy, how much IT affinity your users have, whether staff need mobile access to reports, and which systems your data actually comes from. Answering these early keeps a selection project from turning into a contest between two polished demos.
A side-by-side BI tool comparison of functions and properties
The core of the paper is a direct comparison of the two platforms across the properties that, in Informatec's experience, usually decide the choice in practice. Topics include:
- Deployment options and cloud flexibility, from SaaS to on-premises and hybrid setups
- Architecture and how each tool is administered
- Memory and data model size limits
- Data connectivity and storage
- Governance, data filtering and advanced analytics with Python and R
- User friendliness
Alongside the table, you'll find a short profile of where each vendor is heading, including how each is building out augmented analytics. A separate comparison looks at the individual strengths of each tool. That part is especially useful if your company already runs SAP or has committed to Microsoft, because it shows how your starting point changes the picture.
Comparing total cost of ownership, not just licence prices
Pricing is where many BI decisions go wrong. List prices are easy to put side by side; everything around them is not. The paper explains why the price models of Qlik Sense and Power BI can't be lined up directly, and it flags a licensing detail on the Power BI side that can add cost for development teams.
It then sets out the cost areas to include in a fair total cost of ownership comparison, covering subscriptions, add-on functions, ongoing support, user training and infrastructure. The underlying advice is simple: compare an identically defined solution, including your must-have functions, rather than two headline numbers. That framing helps you build a business case that holds up after the contract is signed.
The final section covers when expert BI advice pays off, particularly on more complex projects, and what to check before you bring in a product-independent service provider, from familiarity with the licensing models to demonstrable project experience. Two members of Informatec's executive board also share their view on why technology alone doesn't create a data-driven company, and why building data skills across your workforce matters just as much as the tool you pick.
Get the full Qlik Sense and Power BI white paper
Download the complete white paper to get the decision questions, the full side-by-side table of functions and properties, the comparison of individual strengths and the total cost of ownership questions. It's a compact read you can take straight into your next shortlist meeting, and a clear starting point for a decision your team can explain and defend.