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Birst vs Knowage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

Birst
Ranking in Reporting
32nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (15th)
Knowage
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knowage is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

it_user547323 - PeerSpot reviewer
We deploy dashboards using the integrated data warehousing and visualization abilities. Setup is complex.
From a visualization perspective, this tool claims to make several advances that are indeed interesting to a large proportion of the user base. However, it needs to prioritize several extremely fundamental features associated with charting, formatting and layout control. Some basic features that Birst needs to improve are: * Line graph between two measures (comparing one measure to another without summing them) – Basic scatter plot sums the measure up automatically. * Spark lines need to be made available. * Editing trend lines and gridlines in graphs – An option for customizing label location, label background under formatting chart elements such as gridlines and labels, custom label backgrounds and transparency, etc. * An option to customize the alignment of headings in any table as left, right, center, top, middle and bottom. Also there is need to add label customization in a table that is not associated to any measure but just plain text, instead of having to change it on the dashboard as a text input, which also does not re-size in the same ratio as the other components do when the screen size is modified. * Conditional filter – An additional option to use a filter “where variable-xyz in (a,b,c,d,)” type of statement for filtering attributes. This is helpful when the list of attributes is long and can be used instead of manually select each box. * Conditional display of KPI – For example, if the date range is x, then display KPI A; if the date range is y, then display KPI B. * Conditional indicators – A solution to give conditions to KPI indicators rather than to have a measure to check against a predefined number. * Unnecessary padding spaces around graphs, KPIs, tables – An option to be able to define the space and padding. * An option to customize a measure within a given timeline, embedded in the measure itself. There should be way to define that timeline dependent on a user-selected time in dashboard filters. Currently, there is no ability to display several measures on different time scales in the same table. For example, measure 1, 2 and 3 current, over last quarter and over last year.
AM
Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable
The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills. When we come to the integration with the single sign-on facilities, that part is very challenging. In Power BI and other tools, it's very easy to integrate with active directory and single sign-on, and identity management is very easy in other business intelligence tools. However, when it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports. The solution could be cheaper.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"The embedding feature is great."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
 

Cons

"Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
14%
Hospitality Company
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
SpagoBI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Knowage and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.