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IBM Cognos vs Sigma 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
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (5th)
Sigma
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sigma is 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos2.2%
Sigma1.7%
Other96.1%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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…
Russell Rothstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Modern dashboards and reports enhance decision-making and presentations
I would love to be able to create my own reports in Sigma, as I can do in Salesforce. Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst. I'm interested in the upcoming AI co-pilot to enable natural language generation of visualizations and reports. Also, the marketing materials did not match what I feel we've received. Regarding pricing, Sigma's pricing doesn't allow more people to have the ability to create their own reports. We have very few admin or report creator licenses, while everyone else is on a view-only mode.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"Sigma is a great software for non-technical business users. If someone's familiar with pivot tables or Excel or Google Sheets, they should be able to pick up Sigma pretty quickly. There is a very low bar for onboarding."
"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."
"Sigma serves as the visualization and reporting front end."
"I find the collaborative features, such as commenting, to be very valuable."
"The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use."
"Sigma has excellent features, such as lookup tables where you can easily bring data that are not interrelated or at different granularity."
"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."
"The most valuable aspect for me is having real-time data."
 

Cons

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness."
"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"I would like to see better visualization options. That would allow me to build out more visually pleasing dashboarding in Sigma."
"Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst."
"The product's roadmap regarding introducing new features in the solution or new versions of the tool can be made better in the future."
"The main improvement needed is in data modeling capabilities. If they add those features in the near future, it would be very helpful for us to implement the same or do the data cleansing part in the Sigma tool itself."
"Sigma lacks a versioning feature to track changes. There is a need for better structuring, like a folder system, to organize diagrams efficiently."
"Sigma could have better reports."
"Sigma could have better reports."
"The only minor area for improvement lies in handling highly complex visualizations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"It is pretty expensive."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"It is averagely priced."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"The retail price is set at one thousand dollars per creator per year."
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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
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
 

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.
What do you like most about Sigma?
The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sigma?
The pricing of Sigma is a concern, as it restricts our ability to provide more users with report-creating capabilities due to the high cost of admin or report creator licenses. Most users have view...
What needs improvement with Sigma?
As we are exploring multiple features in Sigma, I think Sigma can add more functionality. As Power BI gives multiple modeling options in its interface with the query editor, those features can be a...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

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.
Snowflake, Fivetran ,Autodesk, Flowspace, Super League Gaming, Zumper, Clover, Volta, Olivela
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Sigma and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.