As with visualizations, Qlik’s “associative” data engine which lets you explore ALL of your data from any angle, directly within dashboards. Qlik’s cognitive engine uses machine learning to get smarter over time – giving you ideas of what to explore next.

Because Tableau uses a SQL database, users are restricted to specific, predetermined paths within a narrow portion of data. That means the platform only analyzes part of your data, leaving out key patterns and connections.

Power BI also operates on a SQL database, restricting users to query paths that are linear and predetermined.

Because responsive design and touch are native to Qlik, users can complete the same functions on the full-native mobile app that they can on their desktop or laptop—even offline.

Tableau’s mobile app limits you to basic functions, such as downloading one sheet from a larger workbook. You can’t filter, either. Instead, you’ll have to highlight one value at a time and then scroll around to find where that value displays in related charts.

Desktops are the main tools for Power BI users, and you’ll have to use different pieces of software for different tasks. Power BI offers cloud capabilities for uploading reports—with limited editing capabilities.

Qlik offers a variety of APIs to help you integrate with your web and application technologies, including products, portals, workflows and edge devices. For example, embed a dashboard into your mobile app, complete with individual numbers, values and metrics.

Tableau offers a very limited amount of APIs. For example, you can only embed a complete dashboard, not individual values.

Power BI does allow for dashboard and object embedding, but Power BI is not API-first and many capabilities are not available in their software development kits.

With Qlik, all content creation on Qlik happens in the cloud, where it’s governed and controlled. These governed libraries provide reuse and standardization for analytics. Qlik also centralizes and unifies your data, creating governed data models with robust data security.

With Tableau, users keep work on their hard drives. Because it’s desktop software, users may or may not share on a server. That means potential issues with version control, and the chance your data could become polluted or outdated.

Managing and validating data with Power BI is challenging. Because the platform decentralizes data, it’s scattered across user desktops and the cloud.

Qlik Sense has best-in-class Data Integration capabilities for combining and transforming data and data cataloging. Qlik also offers an enterprise class Data Integration platform providing a seamless analytics data pipeline.

Tableau has data prep capabilities in Tableau Desktop and in Tableau Prep. But they solve different problems (and neither can solve all). So which should you use? And what do you do about the data problems Tableau can’t solve?

Power BI’s disparate offerings makes it hard to integrate your data. To make it work, you’ll need to buy and add stack products.

Users of any skill level can freely explore their data using Qlik’s self-service tools. For instance, users can create reports with a simple drag-and-drop. You can also take advantage of Qlik’s data literacy as a service—an offering that blends training, processes and technology.

Tableau requires you to be an author to make discoveries. So their data literacy initiative is only focused on authors. That’s data literacy for data dictators and leaves the rest of us behind.

The only Power BI users who can access self-service are authors. After content has been published, there aren’t a lot of options for other users to further interact with data. For deeper exploration, users need to go back to the author.