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IBM Cognos vs Knowage comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Knowage
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
34th
Ranking in Reporting
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.6%, down from 5.9% 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

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
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

"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"It is a stable product."
"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 embedding feature is great."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
 

Cons

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"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

"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
"Pricing should be improved."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
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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
Educational Organization
35%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
16%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Hospitality Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
SpagoBI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
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 IBM Cognos vs. Knowage and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.