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Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.1
Amazon QuickSight provides competitive pricing, significant time savings, and value, though ROI varies based on usage effectiveness.
Sentiment score
6.7
IBM Cognos offers mixed returns; some save significantly, others find it costly, but generally enhances insights and processes.
Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
Tableau is saving me time, money, and resources, which I would rate as ten.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
Amazon QuickSight's support experiences vary, with helpful Enterprise Support, useful documentation, but inconsistent general assistance based on issues.
Sentiment score
6.5
IBM Cognos support is responsive and expert but criticized for high costs, slow resolutions, and complexity in customer service.
Sentiment score
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
I would say out of all the support experience I've had, only 5% took quite a long time to respond to the support message.
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
There should be consistent standards for all users.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Amazon QuickSight offers scalability for various organizations but faces mixed reviews regarding performance with large datasets.
Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Cognos offers scalable solutions, supporting large deployments with proper server architecture, powerful hardware, and seamless software integration.
Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Amazon QuickSight is stable and reliable, with occasional issues quickly resolved, but lacks maturity compared to Tableau and Power BI.
Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Cognos is praised for stability and performance, surpassing competitors, with minor issues often due to server configuration.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
The application hangs after continuous use due to the buildup of cache.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
 

Room For Improvement

QuickSight users seek improved features like data integration, visualizations, machine learning, user design, cost efficiency, and documentation.
IBM Cognos needs UI upgrades, better data visualization, improved performance, and advanced self-service features to compete with rivals.
Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
Understanding how AWS charges for Amazon QuickSight usage is critical for all users wanting to visualize their data effectively.
For example, making automation for filling missing data or reformatting incorrect data formats, and making date corrections.
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon QuickSight offers cost-effective, flexible pricing, ideal for AWS users, with potential savings through pay-as-you-go options.
IBM Cognos is costlier but offers extensive features, complex licensing, and competitive SaaS options for SMEs, emphasizing negotiation.
Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
It is not expensive, but it is also not cheap.
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
A license for 150 users costs around $17,000 USD per year.
Looker is known to be quite expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon QuickSight offers seamless AWS integration, ease of use, cost efficiency, fast visualizations, and advanced analytics features for diverse needs.
IBM Cognos offers powerful analytics, flexible reporting, strong visualization, and robust security with scalability and ease of use.
Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
The natural language query is very important, and natural language processing is crucial for disseminating dashboards across multiple formats and mechanisms.
You can measure the progress of sales, and you can measure the weakness or lowest activity of sales in some areas and determine how to improve it.
IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 4.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cognos is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 10.3%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise10.3%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
IBM Cognos2.2%
Other82.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mohd Farhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Has seamless data filtering and visualization for client satisfaction
One area for improvement is the cost, as it's a bit expensive. The caching mechanism also charges too much if I need to cache any data. Sometimes it takes time to display data, suggesting a need for enhancement in data visualization speed. Additionally, the role-level security is challenging to implement, and it could be improved to allow access control per department more easily.
Robert Thorpe - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust platform delivers excellent reports and insights while needing improvement in self-service capabilities
Our clients utilize IBM Cognos mainly for static reporting, board packs, business reporting, and insights IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting. One of our customers can get a full company update on a Monday…
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?
The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?
Amazon QuickSight charges $250 per user, which becomes expensive when managing multiple departments. However, this co...
What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?
Because I didn't use Amazon QuickSight extensively, I don't think I would be in the best position to recommend improv...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

QuickSight
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com
More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: September 2025.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.