Compare
The honest version of the comparison.
The vendors on this page are good. Several of them defined the categories they compete in, and one of them — Vizlib — is the benchmark we built the suite against, product by product. This page sets out what is structurally different about ExtraSense, and then where those vendors are still ahead of us .
Every figure here is a count from our own survey of 947 Qlik Sense extensions, taken 27 July 2026, or an architectural fact you can confirm in the vendor's public documentation. There are no prices, customer counts, ratings or benchmarks on this page, because we cannot source them.
The field, and where we sit in it
Counts are that vendor's entries in our catalogue. "Legacy" is Qlik's previous Extension API; "Nebula" is the current supernova API that Qlik itself builds on now — and it is the column worth reading first.
| Vendor | Products | Legacy | Nebula | Maintenance | What they are strong at |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ExtraSense This suite | 18 | 0 | 18 | all current | One runtime across every object, 40 chart types in a single extension, and writeback that needs no server of ours. |
| Vizlib insightsoftware | 52 | 46 | 0 | 51 commercially active | The broadest commercial suite, and the benchmark we built against. Every charting product runs on the legacy Extension API; writeback to a database goes through their separately-licensed server component. |
| Climber acquired by Vizlib, 2019 | 13 | 13 | 0 | none currently active | Climber Custom Report defined self-service reporting in Qlik. The catalogued products are now sunset, archived, abandoned or stale — the lineage continues inside Vizlib Custom Report. |
| Inphinity Inphinity | 5 | 1 | 0 | 4 commercially active | Respected for writeback and process visualisation (Forms, Flow). Database destinations are served by their own backend component. |
| TRUECHART / HICO HighCoordination | 5 | 1 | 0 | 2 commercially active | IBCS-certified reporting, the standard in DACH finance teams. Strongest where a house style must be enforced across every chart. |
| AnyChart AnyChart | 5 | 4 | 0 | 4 commercially active | A charting-engine house; their Gantt underpins Qlik’s own official Gantt object. |
| K4 Analytics K4 Analytics | 1 | 0 | 0 | commercially active | The deepest planning and write-back stack in the ecosystem — spreading, break-back, cell locking. A specialist, not a suite. |
| graphomate graphomate GmbH | 1 | 1 | 0 | sunset | IBCS variance charts. The catalogued Qlik product is sunset; the brand remains active on other BI platforms. |
| Qlik and community qlik-oss and the community | 168 | 71 | 28 | 94 abandoned, stale or archived | Includes Qlik’s own bundles and the demo-team objects most teams reach for first. Free, and the largest single source of the maintenance problem below. |
What is structurally different
Feature lists change every release. These do not — they follow from how the suite is built.
One current-generation runtime, not seventeen legacy ones
The API generation decides how gracefully your sheets survive Qlik’s roadmap, and whether a fix to selection behaviour lands in one object or has to be repeated in seventeen.
How the market does it
Of 947 catalogued extensions, 581 are built on Qlik’s legacy Extension API and 39 on nebula/supernova. Across Vizlib’s 52 products, 46 are legacy and none are nebula.
ExtraSense
Every ExtraSense object is a nebula supernova on a shared core. Forty chart types are not forty codebases — they are forty renderers on one runtime that owns hypercube mapping, selection state, theme palettes and number formatting exactly once.
A suite you can still get fixes for
You are choosing a maintenance relationship, not a download.
How the market does it
576 of the 947 catalogued extensions are abandoned, stale or archived. That is the true cost of assembling a dashboard from the community: the object works until the day it does not, and there is no one to call.
ExtraSense
One vendor, one release train, one shared foundation. Sixteen packages ship together, versioned together, with 236 test files across the suite.
Writeback with no appliance to license
No extra box in the architecture diagram, no second procurement, and identical behaviour on client-managed and Cloud.
How the market does it
The market-leading writeback products reach a database through the vendor’s own backend — a Windows service or a Docker container that must be licensed, installed, patched and secured. On Qlik Cloud those same products fall back to REST.
ExtraSense
ExtraSense writeback targets REST endpoints and Qlik Automations directly from the object. There is no ExtraSense server, because there is nothing for it to do.
Fewer objects, because one object does the job of several
Fewer objects in the asset panel, one property vocabulary to learn, and a sheet that looks like one product.
How the market does it
Suites grow by adding products: a listbox, a dropdown, a button-filter and a filter-popup are four purchases and four property panels to learn.
ExtraSense
One Filter object carries seven display modes. One Variable Input covers slider, switch and range. One Smart Text covers rich text, card grids and dividers. One Chart+ covers 40 chart types.
A property panel a business author can actually read
The person who builds the sheet is usually not the person who reads the manual.
How the market does it
Depth in this market is usually expressed as more toggles. It is normal to meet panels with well over a hundred settings, and layer canvases whose own documentation recommends a maximum layer count.
ExtraSense
Progressive disclosure is a rule in our design system, not an aspiration: first useful result in two fields, everything else in collapsed Advanced groups with defaults that are already right.
Correct by default — contrast, colour and number format
The default output is the presentable output — which is the only setting most sheets ever use.
How the market does it
Most extensions accept whatever colours the author picks, render numbers with their own formatter, and leave accessibility to the buyer.
ExtraSense
Data ink is checked against its background by a contrast guard before it is drawn. Categorical colours come from a colourblind-safe palette. Every number is formatted by the Qlik engine through the field’s own qNumFormat, so a figure on an ExtraSense chart matches the same figure in a native table.
Product-by-product against the broadest suite in the market
Vizlib publishes 52 products for Qlik Sense. This is every one of them, with the ExtraSense object that answers it and an honest status. We do not clone one-for-one: where it makes sense, several of their products collapse into one of ours, which is why the suite has fewer objects than the ground it covers.
| Their product | Our answer | Status | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Charts | |||
| Bar Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | bar, stacked, 100% stacked, horizontal, butterfly, Pareto and trellis modes in one type |
| Line Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | multi-series, plan and forecast bands; ARIMA forecasting is not in scope |
| Pie Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | pie, donut and trellised donut |
| Combo Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | bar and line on dual axes, actual-versus-plan mode |
| Scatter Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | bubble, marginals, regression, hexbin, contour and a canvas path for large point counts |
| Waterfall | Chart+ | Shipping | P&L, cash and two-measure variance bridge |
| Gantt | Gantt | Partial | schedule and resource views ship; drag-to-reschedule does not |
| Heatmap | Chart+ | Shipping | matrix and calendar layouts |
| Grid Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | point-mark mode of the heatmap family |
| Sankey Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | including cyclic flows with return loops |
| Flow Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | a mode of the sankey type rather than a second object |
| Control Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | mean, UCL and LCL with run-rule detection |
| Ridgeline Plot | Chart+ | Shipping | density and curve variants |
| Mekko Chart | Chart+ | Shipping | percent and absolute labelling |
| Venn Diagram | Chart+ | Shipping | two- and three-set |
| Story Timeline | — | Not building | built on embedded third-party media, which conflicts with a strict content-security policy. Smart Text card grids cover the analytic core |
| Library (bundle) | The suite | Shipping | answered as a bundle; see the individual rows |
| Filters and selections | |||
| Filter | Filter | Shipping | seven display modes, five search modes, paste-to-select, per-value enrichment |
| Calendar | Date Picker | Shipping | ranges, relative presets, fiscal presets, dual-field ranges |
| Selection Bar | Selection Bar | Partial | selection display and presets ship; action buttons are in progress |
| Slider | Variable Input | Partial | absorbed as a mode; the dual-handle range skin is outstanding |
| Switch | Variable Input | Shipping | absorbed as a mode, animated knob included |
| Toolbar | Menu Bar + Selection Bar | Partial | absorbed across the pair; inline embedded widget slots are outstanding |
| Integration | |||
| Server (Enterprise) | — | Not building | a licensed Windows backend for writeback storage. Serverless by design is our product; REST and Qlik Automations replace the appliance |
| Server for Qlik Cloud | — | Not building | the Docker equivalent. On Cloud these products are REST-only in any case |
| Mashup Explorer | Report Builder | Not building | nebula objects are mashup-native, so the companion webpage has nothing to add |
| KPI and gauges | |||
| KPI Designer | KPI Card + Settings Studio | Partial | the KPI job ships; the free-form layer canvas is answered by governed composition rather than pixel placement |
| Simple KPI | KPI Card | Shipping | target banding, inline trend, count-up animation, action chains |
| Activity Gauge | Activity Gauge | Shipping | multi-arc radial in measure and dimension modes |
| Tiles | KPI Card + Smart Text | Shipping | trellis mode and the card grid between them |
| Navigation and UX | |||
| Button | Core actions engine | Partial | action chains ship inside four objects; REST, toast and formatted-export actions are outstanding |
| Container Box | Flex Container | Shipping | tabs with expression-driven show and hide |
| Container Grid | Flex Container | Partial | grid view is outstanding |
| Line Object | Smart Text | Shipping | a divider is a template, not a product |
| Sheet Menu | Menu Bar | Shipping | one Cloud-safe object in place of a split product line |
| Sheet Menu Plus | Menu Bar | Partial | inline embedded widgets are outstanding; popovers ship |
| Reporting and self-service | |||
| Custom Report | Report Builder | Partial | ad-hoc column picking, named presets and true OOXML export ship; the sixteen-way visualisation switcher is answered by Chart+ types instead |
| Self-Service (bundle) | The suite | Shipping | answered as a bundle; see the individual rows |
| Tables and pivots | |||
| Table | Table+ | Partial | minicharts, box plots, conditional formatting and serverless XLSX ship; rich cell tooltips and the series builder are outstanding |
| Pivot Table | — | Planned | the one structural gap in our table story |
| Cards | Smart Text | Shipping | image and colour expressions, click-to-select, paged |
| Finance Report | — | Planned | statement engine with cell commentary |
| Climber Custom Report | Report Builder | Shipping | the abandoned free ancestor of Custom Report |
| Themes | |||
| Templates | Theme pack + Settings Studio | Partial | light and dark themes ship; organisation-wide object templating is in progress |
| Utilities | |||
| Actions framework | Core actions engine | Partial | seventeen action types wired into four objects; the remaining objects and action types are outstanding |
| Advanced Text Object | Smart Text | Shipping | sanitised by default, offline icon set, Markdown, live inline expressions, animated counters and card grids |
| Chart Summarizer (AI) | AI Copilot | Partial | the Copilot designs and builds visualisations from a prompt; a selection-reactive narrative object is separate and planned |
| Hi (AI chat) | AI Copilot | Not building | their model needs the server component and per-seat quotas. Our Copilot runs against your own API key with no backend of ours |
| Writeback and collaboration | |||
| Writeback Table | Writeback Table | Partial | REST and variable destinations with validation ship; conditional field visibility is outstanding. The database-via-appliance path is declined by design |
| Input Form | Input Form | Partial | the form builder ships; slider, rating and chip field types and multi-page forms are outstanding |
| Teamwork | — | Planned | serverless anchored comments |
| Collaboration (bundle) | Writeback pair | Partial | two of three components ship |
Where they are still ahead
A comparison page with no losing rows is an advertisement, and you can tell the difference. If one of these is your requirement, buy theirs — and tell us, because it is how the roadmap gets set.
Vizlib Pivot Table
They winA rich pivot with indicator styling and fast Excel export.
ExtraSense has no pivot object yet. It is the one structural gap in our table story and it is specified, not shipped.
Server-backed writeback (Vizlib Server, Inphinity, K4)
They winDirect, governed writes into a database with the vendor’s own storage, RBAC and audit trail.
We reach databases through REST and Qlik Automations instead. If your requirement is a native database connection with no middle layer, their appliance does something we deliberately do not.
TRUECHART / graphomate
They winIBCS certification, and years of it.
ExtraSense has IBCS-style variance charts on the roadmap, not a certification. If IBCS compliance is a procurement requirement, buy the certified product.
K4 Analytics
They winPlanning-grade spreading, break-back and cell locking.
Our writeback is form- and grid-shaped, not a planning engine. For budgeting workflows they are deeper.
Track record
They winThese vendors have been in production at large customers for years.
ExtraSense is new. Our suite is verified against an automated harness and a 130-shot rendered gallery, and it has not yet accumulated the years of field exposure they have.
How this comparison was made
Surveyed, then read
947 extensions catalogued with category, capability and maintenance state; 713 of the open-source ones cloned and read in full.
Clean room for commercial products
Commercial products were studied through their public documentation and marketing material only. No licensed source code was obtained, decompiled or copied.
Counts, not opinions
Where this page states a number about another vendor, it is a count of their entries in that survey. Where it states an architectural fact, it is one their own documentation states.
Product names, logos and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here for identification only. ExtraSense is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the vendors named on this page. Figures describe our survey on the date given and will drift as those products change; if you believe something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.
Put it next to what you already run.
The comparison that matters is the one on your own sheets. Tell us which extensions your apps depend on today and we will show you what replaces them and what does not.