Qrly vs Qlik Sense
Qrly is the self-hostable BI + AI platform Qlik Sense never quite is — Qlik's AI runs in Qlik Cloud with no local-model option, and its analytics sit on a proprietary in-memory engine you have to load before you can ask it anything. Qrly ships natural-language Ask (NL→SQL), AI anomaly detection and BYO LLM (local Ollama / LM Studio or cloud Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure) plus embedded analytics with signed-JWT, productive in minutes at a fraction of the cost.
Who wins where
No marketing fluff. Qlik Sense is a serious product with genuine analytical depth and an engine nobody else has copied — here is where each tool is actually stronger.
BI + AI in one self-hosted platform — flat pricing
- AI Ask (NL→SQL) with AI anomaly detection & performance analyzer
- BYO LLM — local Ollama / LM Studio or cloud Claude, Gemini, OpenAI, Azure
- Embedded analytics with signed-JWT (no separate SKU)
- QQL across 12+ database dialects, OLAP star/snowflake models
- Self-hostable on Linux or Kubernetes — one deployment model, one binary
- Productive in under 5 minutes — no load script before the first chart
- Flat pricing for unlimited users
Analytics fundamentals
- Both have strong alerts and subscriptions engines
- Both embed charts inside another application
- Both schedule refreshes and deliver reports on a cadence
- Both deliver dashboards and reports out of the box
- Both integrate broadly via REST and webhooks
The associative engine & enterprise ecosystem
- The associative engine — selection state across every object
- Set analysis — terse expressions nothing else states as briefly
- Data integration and replication products on the same platform
- Fortune 500 reference customers and regulators
- Pre-built industry solutions (telco, banking, public sector)
- Massive partner and contractor ecosystem
Feature-by-feature comparison
The features most teams actually evaluate when scoping out of Qlik Sense.
| Feature | RecommendedQrlySelf-hosted · Belgium | Qlik SenseQlik Sense, Inc. |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hostable on your own infra | Included | Client-Managed edition, on Windows Server |
| Queries the database live, no reload step | Included | In-memory reload is the default |
| Signed-JWT embedding with locked parameters | Included | Mashups and extensions to build |
| Alerts, anomaly detection and root-cause agent | Included | Data alerts in Qlik Cloud |
| Scheduled subscriptions (PDF, CSV, inline) | Included | Subscriptions and reports |
| Visual query builder and raw SQL, round-trip convertible | SQL ⇄ visual | Load script is one-way |
| Azure AD + Google + LDAP + Basic simultaneously | Included | Multi-provider SSO |
| OIDC SSO user provisioning | Included | Included |
| AI with on-prem option (Ollama, LM Studio) | Included | Insight Advisor — cloud, no local model |
| Multi-tenant architecture out of the box | Included | One tenant per subscription |
| Connects to your existing warehouse on day 1 | 40 connection types | Connectors, then a reload |
| Flat pricing (unlimited users) | Included | Per named user, plus capacity tiers |
| Productive in under 5 minutes | Included | Load script before the first chart |
| EU data residency (native, not a tier) | Included | EU regions in Qlik Cloud |
| No marketplace plugin required for basics | Included | Extensions for anything beyond the built-ins |
| Dashboards, charts and scheduled reports | Included | Included |
| REST API + webhooks | Included | Included |
| Pivot tables and multi-level rollups | Included | Pivot tables, no SQL rollup or cube |
| Markdown analysis documents included | Analysis reports | Text objects on the sheet |
Four reasons teams leave Qlik Sense
From real procurement reviews and post-renewal conversations with data and IT leaders.
Everything has to be loaded before it can be asked
Qlik's associative engine is genuinely clever and genuinely demanding: the model lives in memory, it gets there through a scheduled reload written in the load script, and how much you can analyse is bounded by the RAM of the box holding it. Freshness is whatever the reload cadence happens to be, and the answer to a slow app is usually a bigger server or a smaller model.
Qrly compiles the query and sends it to the database — Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift and the rest of 40 connection types — so there is no copy to reload and nothing to keep in sync. Freshness is the database's freshness. Where precomputation genuinely helps, it is opt-in per question: result materialisation on a refresh interval, four caching tiers, and a query governor with per-user daily budgets.
The load script and set analysis are their own careers
Qlik's power sits in two proprietary languages. The load script gets data in and defines the model; set analysis expresses anything past a plain aggregation. Both are capable, both are terse, and neither transfers anywhere else — which is why hiring for them is a specialist search, and why the person who wrote the app is often the only person who can safely change it.
Qrly is SQL and a visual builder over the top of it. A question is a JSON document compiled to 12 SQL dialects, and the compiled SQL is always readable from the editor. Any flat SELECT converts back into a visual definition, with CTEs, UNIONs and subqueries reported as explicit lossy-feature warnings rather than silently dropped. The analyst who built it and the engineer reviewing it are looking at the same language.
Two products wearing the same name
Qlik Cloud and Qlik Sense Client-Managed are not the same thing. They are licensed differently, administered differently and upgraded differently, and moving from one to the other is a project rather than a setting. Choosing the client-managed side means running it on Windows Server and owning that estate; choosing the cloud side means the data leaves your perimeter. Neither is wrong, and you do have to pick.
Qrly has one deployment model. The same binary runs on a laptop, a single Linux box, a private cloud or a Kubernetes cluster, air-gapped if your regulator says so, with the same feature set in every case. There is no edition that gets capabilities first and no future migration between the two, because there is only one.
Your logic lives inside a proprietary file
A Qlik app is a single binary artefact holding the data model, the load script and the sheets together, and the intermediate layer is a Qlik file format too. Nothing outside Qlik reads either of them. The expressions are set analysis, the transformations are load script, and none of it means anything to the next tool. Renewal is negotiated from the position of a rebuild being the alternative.
A Qrly question is a JSON document that compiles to SQL you can read, copy and keep. Results export to CSV, JSON, XML and XLSX; dashboards and reports are rows in a database you are running. If Qrly stops being the right answer in five years, what you take with you is SQL and a schema — which every other tool in this category already speaks.
Pricing, honestly
Our own list price in full, and an honest account of how Qlik charges. The Qrly column is the published schedule evaluated at €15M of revenue — the number of people using it does not move it.
Methodology, 28 August 2026. Qrly publishes a complete rate card, so the figures in our column are quoted exactly. The other column describes a pricing model rather than quoting a number: vendor list prices change without notice and several of these vendors do not publish one at all. For current figures, go to the vendor’s own pricing page.
Qrly
Annual licence · priced on your revenue · unlimited users, one organisation, one installation
- Annual licence at €15M revenue €6,300
- Per analyst / per viewer €0
- Per query, per credit, per capacity unit €0
- Embedded dashboard consumers €0
- Embedding, alerts, OIDC/SSO, row-level rules Included at every tier
- Self-hosting and bring-your-own LLM Included at every tier
Three years of licence: €18,900
That is our published schedule evaluated at €15M of revenue — 0.18% of the first €500k, then 0.12%, 0.0525% and 0.027% on each tranche above it. It does not move when you add users. The whole rate card, from the €900 floor upward, is on the pricing page.
Qlik
Per full user plus a capacity allowance · Qlik Cloud Analytics
- How it charges Per full user, plus a data-capacity allowance per tier
- Tiers Qlik Cloud Analytics Standard, Premium and Enterprise
- The second meter Data for analysis — volume, allocated per tier
- Extra capacity Bought in blocks on top of the tier
- Client-managed Qlik Sense (on-prem) Separate agreement, quoted
- List prices Entry tiers published, enterprise quoted — check qlik.com/pricing
Two meters again — named users, and the volume of data you are permitted to analyse. The second is the one that catches people out, because it moves when the warehouse grows rather than when the team does. Qlik publishes entry pricing and quotes the rest, so check their page for today’s numbers rather than ours.
Moving from Qlik Sense to Qrly
A Qlik estate is rebuilt rather than imported — and the load script makes that far less painful than it sounds.
The standard migration path
Qrly connects to the sources your apps already reload from — no third-party ETL, no paid connector, no partner engagement required unless you want one. The same pattern works whether you are on Qlik Cloud or a client-managed installation several versions behind.
- Read the load scripts. They are the specification nobody wrote down: every source, table, key and join the app depends on is named in them, along with the transformations applied on the way in. Export the script from each
.qvfbefore you touch anything else. - Connect the sources directly. Whatever the script reloads from — Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift — becomes a Qrly connection with read-only credentials, one of 40 connection types, schema introspected on first sync. Transformations that lived in the script become calculated fields or a saved question other questions reference as a view.
- Rebuild the model as an OLAP model. The star at the centre of the Qlik app maps almost directly: fact table, dimension joins, a measure catalogue, named hierarchies and always-applied model filters as a security boundary. The modeller proposes candidates from the schema and a human approves or rejects them; the
Try itpane shows the compiled SQL as you go. - Rebuild the sheets that are actually opened. Every Qlik estate carries sheets nobody has looked at in a year. Rebuild the survivors as questions and dashboards with cascade filters; set-analysis expressions usually resolve to a calculated field, an OLAP measure or a period-over-period comparison.
- Run in parallel, then unwind. Both tools read the same sources, so leave Qlik reloading until the contract runs out and reconcile the numbers side by side. Scheduled deliveries become Qrly subscriptions; embedded mashups become signed-JWT embeds with locked parameters.
Common questions
Can Qrly really replace Qlik Sense?
What replaces set analysis?
How do we migrate off Qlik Sense?
What does Qrly cost vs Qlik Sense?
Do we lose the associative selection model?
Which Qrly edition is the self-hosted one?
The full alternatives matrix
Evaluating Qrly against another tool? Jump to the detailed side-by-side.