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14,819 views|10,540 comparisons
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46,757 views|35,368 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Sep 5, 2022

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos and Tableau based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of both products say the initial setup and deployment is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    IBM Cognos users like the solution’s reporting tools and its excellent analysis features. Reviewers mention that its performance is a bit slow.

    Tableau users like the solution’s ease of use and its visual capability. Users say its data management and ETL features need to be improved.
  • Pricing: IBM Cognos received mixed reviews in the pricing category. Tableau users say the solution is expensive.
  • Service and Support: IBM Cognos users are satisfied with the level of support they receive. Tableau’s support has two tiers. According to users, the premium support is excellent, but their standard support is very poor.
  • ROI: IBM Cognos users report seeing an ROI. Tableau users do not mention ROI.

Comparison Results: In this comparison, IBM Cognos comes out on top. Users are happier with the support than Tableau users are, and IBM Cognos users also report an ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cognos vs. Tableau Report (Updated: May 2023).
706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way.""The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us.""Security administration tools are powerful and flexible.""I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot.""We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time.""Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category.""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.""The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

More IBM Cognos Pros →

"The best use case for us is the solution's integration with Salesforce because we are also partners of Salesforce.""When compared with Power BI, Tableau is much easier.""You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau.""The solution offers very good reporting.""Provides a very good sound analysis quotient.""Partner support is very good.""Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates.""Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."

More Tableau Pros →

Cons
"The solution's support could be better.""Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos.""Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes.""There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data.""IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement.""Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic.""The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help.""I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

More IBM Cognos Cons →

"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult.""Users would like to be able to export an Excel file when they see a table or something like that. That's not an out-of-the-box feature for Tableau.""We need big servers to perform the operations that we are doing. They should probably relook at its architecture.""Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community.""In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow.""Tableau has so many functions, so sometimes it's hard to find the right solution quickly. I have to search multiple menu bars to find the right command.""They need a write-back; that is what is missing. If they get the write back to the database, they will be fully automated, but for the time being, they are not.""I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."

More Tableau Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
  • "It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
  • "It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "It is pretty expensive."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • More IBM Cognos Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
  • "In general, if someone is new and wants to learn Tableau, it's around $70 per month."
  • "It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid."
  • "I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."
  • "We are on an annual license which costs us $1,400 which is very expensive. Microsft BI is less expensive."
  • "For the use and the capability of the software, it's $70 per month, and that is quite inexpensive."
  • "I downloaded the solution online for free."
  • "Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
  • More Tableau Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Guillermo (Bill) Cabiro
    I do use both Tableau and QlikView. Although very different, I really like both solutions. They belong to the new BI generation known as Interactive Visual Analytics. In my opinion, QlikView has a more intuitive interface for regular users or executives that are not technical experts but the development side is a little more complex. Up to version 12 QlikView did not provide drag & drop features. If a user wanted to see something not included in the application the new object had to be created by a power user or developer because Qlikview's scripting has somewhat of a learning curve. On the positive side, QlikView's scripting is a great asset as it functions as an ETL allowing the integration of hundreds of different data sources into the same visual app. Another feature that’s extremely useful is Qlik’s proprietary Associative Model that allows the users to visualize data relationships that exist as well as those that do not. Tableau on the other hand is a lot easier to use for developers, analysts or power users who need to connect, manipulate and visualize data rather quickly. While this makes Tableau a better fit for the more analytical crowd, it may not be as appealing or intuitive to the regular or casual business users as QlikView is. Tableau has full pivot, drag & drop and drill down capabilities that are great for developers or power users. They can rotate measures and dimensions and graph them instantly using visualization best practices as suggested by… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's support needs improvement. Also, they should add better administrative tools.
    Top Answer:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies… more »
    Top Answer:Technical support has been responsive.
    Ranking
    4th
    out of 50 in Reporting Tools
    Views
    14,819
    Comparisons
    10,540
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    532
    Rating
    8.2
    2nd
    out of 50 in Reporting Tools
    Views
    46,757
    Comparisons
    35,368
    Reviews
    71
    Average Words per Review
    555
    Rating
    8.2
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
    Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

    IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

    IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

    • IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.

    • IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.

    • IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.

    • IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.

    • IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.

    • IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

    Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

    Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights. 

    Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

    Tableau Features

    Tableau has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Tableau dashboard: Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more. 
    • Sharing and collaboration: Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards. 
    • In-memory and live data: Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions. 
    • Multiple data sources: Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data. 
    • Advanced charts and visualizations: One of the key features of Tableau is its wide range of visualizations.
    • Maps: Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries. 
    • Robust security: Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

    Tableau Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Tableau. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Data visualization
    • Create interactive visualizations quickly
    • Easy to implement
    • Ability to handle large amounts of data
    • Use varying scripting languages 
    • Responsive dashboard and mobile support 

    Reviews from Real Users

    Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

    Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.

    Offer
    Learn more about IBM Cognos
    Learn more about Tableau
    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.
    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.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization32%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Healthcare Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise37%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise51%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise63%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Cognos vs. Tableau
    May 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
    706,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Cognos is ranked 4th in Reporting Tools with 18 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting Tools with 67 reviews. IBM Cognos is rated 8.2, while Tableau is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM Cognos writes "Helpful online community, highly reliable, and secure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". IBM Cognos is most compared with Microsoft BI, Oracle Hyperion, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy and SQL Server, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAP Analytics Cloud and Looker. See our IBM Cognos vs. Tableau report.

    See our list of best Reporting Tools vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

    We monitor all Reporting Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.