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This comparison evaluates Embeddable and Qlik for SaaS teams considering embedded analytics inside their products.
Qlik is a long-standing enterprise analytics platform known for its associative data engine, governed analytics, and broad BI capabilities across dashboards, reporting, and data exploration. It is widely adopted by large organizations for internal analytics and enterprise reporting, and it also offers embedded analytics capabilities through Qlik Sense.
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit purpose-built for customer-facing SaaS products. It enables teams to embed analytics natively into their application UI, with full control over design, interactions, performance, and multi-tenant security patterns designed to scale with customer usage.
This guide compares both tools across architecture, developer experience, customization, performance, security, multi-tenancy, pricing, and long-term maintainability to help product and engineering teams evaluate the right fit — and if you’re building customer-facing analytics inside a SaaS product, Embeddable is generally a better fit than Qlik because it is designed for native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant performance, while Qlik is better suited to enterprise BI and internal analytics extended into applications.
TLDR;
Qlik
- Enterprise BI platform with strong data modeling and governance
- Associative analytics engine for exploration and discovery
- Embedded analytics available through Qlik Sense
- UI and workflows remain BI-centric
- Best suited for internal analytics and enterprise reporting
Embeddable
- Built specifically for customer-facing SaaS analytics
- Native DOM embedding with no iframes
- Full control over UI, UX, and interactions
- High performance through multi-tier caching
- SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users
Quick Overview: Embeddable vs Qlik at a Glance
Embedding method
Embeddable: Native DOM rendering via web components, React, and Vue. No iframes. Two-way interaction with application logic and UI state.
Qlik: Embedded dashboards via iframe or Qlik Sense APIs. Analytics run inside BI containers with limited interaction with host application state.
Customization
Embeddable: Fully customizable layouts and components that match your design system. Supports custom charts and product-specific interactions.
Qlik: Limited UI customization. Dashboards retain Qlik’s layout, interaction patterns, and BI conventions.
Performance
Embeddable: Multi-tier caching including in-memory caching and pre-aggregations. Optimized for high-concurrency customer-facing workloads.
Qlik: Strong performance for internal analytics, but embedded usage inherits BI rendering and network overhead.
Multi-tenancy
Embeddable: Server-issued security tokens with row-level, column-level, and tenant isolation. No dashboard duplication per tenant.
Qlik: Section Access and security rules support data isolation, but multi-tenant SaaS setups become complex at scale.
Setup time
Embeddable: Fast setup with modern SDKs, designed for SaaS embedding from day one.
Qlik: Requires Qlik Sense setup, data modeling, security configuration, and environment management.
Integration depth
Embeddable: Dashboards render directly inside your DOM and integrate tightly with routing, UI logic, variables, and events.
Qlik: Embedded analytics rely on Qlik APIs and iframe containers, limiting deep product-level integration.
Pricing
Embeddable: Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users, viewers, and dashboards.
Qlik: Enterprise pricing based on users, capacity, and deployment model, which scales with usage.
Deployment options
Embeddable: Cloud or self-hosted deployment.
Qlik: Cloud and on-premise enterprise deployments.
End-user experience
Embeddable: Feels fully native to the application. Analytics behave like a core product feature.
Qlik: Feels like an enterprise BI tool embedded inside the product rather than a native experience.
What Is Qlik
Overview and core philosophy
Qlik is an enterprise analytics platform built around its associative data engine, which enables users to explore data flexibly without being constrained by predefined query paths. Its core philosophy focuses on governed analytics, enterprise reporting, and powerful data discovery for internal users.
While Qlik supports embedded analytics through Qlik Sense, embedding is an extension of its BI platform rather than its primary design goal.
Strengths of Qlik
- Powerful associative analytics engine
- Strong governance and security controls
- Broad enterprise BI feature set
- Flexible deployment options
Limitations for embedded SaaS use cases
- Embedding relies on BI-centric components
- Limited UI and UX customization
- Analytics often feel external to the product
- Multi-tenant SaaS scaling requires careful configuration
- Enterprise pricing can become costly at scale
What Is Embeddable
Overview and philosophy
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit built for SaaS teams that treat analytics as part of the product experience rather than as an external BI layer.
Instead of embedding a BI interface, teams embed native analytics components directly into their application UI, retaining full control over UX, performance, and security.
Key strengths of Embeddable
- Native embedding with no iframes
- Full UI and UX control
- High performance via multi-tier caching
- Powerful end-user self-serve dashboard builder
- Secure, SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Developer workflows with versioning and CI/CD
Ideal use cases
- Customer-facing dashboards inside SaaS products
- Multi-tenant platforms with large user bases
- Replacing iframe-based BI embeds
- Replacing costly custom-built analytics infrastructure
Feature Comparison Deep Dive
1. Developer experience
Qlik workflows are optimized for enterprise BI teams, with analytics built and managed inside Qlik Sense. Embedding dashboards is layered on top of BI artifacts, limiting flexibility for product-specific logic.
Embeddable provides a code-first developer experience with native SDKs for JavaScript, React, and Vue, allowing analytics to behave like first-class product features.
2. Performance and scalability
Qlik performs well for internal analytics, but embedded dashboards inherit BI rendering overhead and are less optimized for high-concurrency SaaS usage.
Embeddable is optimized for scale through in-memory caching, pre-aggregations, and tenant-aware cache control.
3. UI customization and design fidelity
Qlik dashboards retain platform-defined layouts and interaction patterns, making deep design integration difficult.
Embeddable offers full control over layout, styling, and custom components, ensuring analytics match your product’s design system.
4. Security and multi-tenancy
Qlik supports enterprise-grade security through Section Access and role-based controls, but SaaS-scale multi-tenant deployments require careful planning.
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with row-level, column-level, and object-level access policies designed specifically for SaaS scale.
5. Pricing and ROI
Qlik’s pricing scales with users, capacity, and deployment model.
Embeddable offers flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users and dashboards, reducing long-term cost uncertainty.
When to Choose Qlik
Best for
- Enterprise internal analytics
- Governed reporting and data discovery
- Organizations standardized on Qlik
Where it falls short
- Deep product-level UX integration
- Highly customized embedded experiences
- SaaS-scale multi-tenant analytics
When to Choose Embeddable
Best for
- SaaS products with customer-facing dashboards
- Teams that want full UX ownership
- High-concurrency multi-tenant environments
- Developer-driven product organizations
Added value
- Native embedding without iframe overhead
- Predictable pricing as usage grows
- High performance for interactive dashboards
- Reduced engineering effort
FAQs
Is Qlik good for customer-facing analytics in SaaS products?
Qlik can support embedded dashboards, but it is primarily designed for enterprise BI and internal analytics. Embedded experiences often feel like BI dashboards rather than native product features.
Is Embeddable better suited for SaaS products than Qlik?
Yes. Embeddable is generally better suited when analytics are a core product feature requiring native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant security.
What is the main difference between Embeddable and Qlik?
Qlik is an enterprise BI platform with embedded capabilities, while Embeddable is purpose-built to embed analytics natively into SaaS products.
How customizable is Qlik compared to Embeddable?
Qlik offers limited UI customization within its BI framework. Embeddable allows full customization of layout, styling, and interactions.
Which platform performs better at scale?
Embeddable is designed for high-concurrency SaaS environments using multi-tier caching. Qlik performs well for internal analytics but is less optimized for large-scale customer usage.
How do Embeddable and Qlik handle multi-tenancy?
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with fine-grained RLS. Qlik supports data isolation, but SaaS multi-tenant scenarios require additional configuration.
