Power BI or Qlik: which should a Lithuanian company choose?

When choosing a business analytics system, two names come up most often in the Lithuanian market: Power BI and Qlik. Both are serious, mature tools, and both do the same job well: combining, modelling and visualising data.

So the right question is not “which is better?” but “which suits our company better?” Below are the differences that carry the most weight in practice.

Licence costs

For small and medium-sized businesses, this is usually the deciding factor.

A Power BI licence is charged per user per month and costs about the same as a typical office software subscription. For a company where 5–10 people view the reports, it remains a small share of the overall cost.

Qlik has historically been aimed at larger organisations, and its pricing reflects that: the entry threshold is higher. For a large company that can pay off; for a 20-person business it usually doesn’t. We have explained separately how the total cost of Power BI is worked out, including report preparation: how much Power BI costs a company.

Learning curve

The Power BI interface is close to Excel, so a finance professional or analyst who knows Excel well can usually read their first reports without any training. This matters, because the reports are meant to be used not by the IT department but by managers and heads of department.

Qlik has its own distinctive data model logic (the associative engine), which is powerful but takes more effort to get to grips with. Where there is a dedicated data analyst, that is not an obstacle. Where there isn’t, it can decide whether the system gets used at all.

Integration with what you already have

If your company works with Microsoft 365 (Excel, Teams, SharePoint), Power BI fits naturally into that environment: a report can be added to a Teams channel, and data can be exported to Excel with a single click.

Both tools connect to accounting system databases, so Rivilė or Finvalda data can be analysed with either. The difference is not whether it can be done, but how much work it takes to get it running.

Where Qlik is strong

It is only fair to give the other side too. Qlik’s associative engine lets you explore data freely, without predefined hierarchies, which is a real advantage when investigating complex, interrelated datasets.

In large organisations with their own data team and a complex data architecture, Qlik remains an entirely reasonable choice.

When each option fits

Power BI is usually the right fit when:

• the company is small or medium-sized and has no dedicated data analyst;
• Microsoft 365 is already in use;
• standard financial and sales reports need to be up and running quickly;
• the reports will be viewed by managers rather than specialists.

Qlik is worth considering when:

• there is an in-house analytics team;
• there are many data sources with complex relationships between them;
• free exploration is needed rather than ready-made reports.

What this means in practice

For most Lithuanian SMEs, the decision comes down not to a list of features but to whether the system will still be in use six months later. A ready-built report package that works from the first week almost always delivers more value than a more powerful platform that nobody opens.

That is why we work with Power BI and offer ready-built packages for Rivilė and Finvalda users, with prices from €59 a month on our pricing page. You can see what the reports look like on our examples page.