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Adaptive Insights vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Adaptive Insights
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (10th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (4th), Data Visualization (21st), ESG Reporting Software (13th)
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in Reporting
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Cloud Operations Analytics (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 2.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Business Analytics2.3%
Adaptive Insights1.7%
Other96.0%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight
Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models
For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.
JB
Founder at SJT Consult
Solution enables effective ETL processes and exhibits high satisfaction
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this is based on what I have heard about novelties in the market. I do not see the need to extend the coverage of Pentaho Business Analytics's domain. For things that it does not do, there are better solutions on the market, and it would be costly to implement them. Pentaho Business Analytics is a very great tool for very specific standardized scenarios. If you need more complex elastic solutions because the process is different, there are better tools available.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The system has allowed us to take more than 90 spreadsheets and combine them into one system which automatically calculates based on assumptions, dimensions, etc."
"Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements."
"Our organization is able to use Adaptive to complete a major majority of our monthly management and quarterly Board reports, and by refreshing reports and pages automatically, it creates the monthly report package with little to no manual staff work."
"Reduced planning and budgeting time - it takes hardly a couple of days to complete my entire budgeting exercise, uploading actual data and generating monthly reports with comparison of actual versus budgets in no time."
"Automated reporting."
"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."
"Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed."
"The reporting tools are what I gain the most benefit from."
"It's easily understandable."
"Pentaho data integration, where most of the ETL work can be done with minimal coding, along with its reporting capabilities, helped us manage data from different sources into one unique target."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"I'm working on poverty alleviation in Indonesia; this tool has improved the ability to make good decisions for policy makers."
"We can demonstrate a better report UI and vivid experience for our customers."
"We wanted a tool where by using it we could integrate multiple data sets, and could get responsive reports and Pentaho helped us do this in a good way."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."
 

Cons

"Adaptive Insights could improve the data designer interface to make integrations easier to set up."
"Being able to drill down when using OfficeConnect needs work."
"The product's configuration process could be faster."
"It's complex; thinking about the business models and capabilities in Adaptive."
"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."
"Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident."
"Better user interface (UI)."
"The upload feature exists, but isn't terribly useful."
"The ad-hoc reporting needs to be improved."
"Technical Support: Less than average."
"For me, Pentaho is not growing in terms of functionality as fast as other companies in the same segment."
"Customer Service: A 3/5. The support is prompt and timely, but there have been some technical limitations sometimes."
"It's still not user friendly or robust enough for our needs."
"In the reporting tool, I would like to see what code it generates. As of now, there is no provision to see the underlying code of the PRD file."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"Pentaho Business Analytics is not a good tool for visualization. Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."
"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."
"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."
"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."
"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."
"It's affordable."
"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."
"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
 

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Adaptive Insights vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.