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Knowage vs SAP Business Data Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Knowage
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (23rd)
SAP Business Data Cloud
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
146th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (124th), Cloud Analytics (15th), Data Governance (81st), Cloud Data Warehouse (19th)
 

Featured Reviews

BS
Software Engineer at syntegra
Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better
I know the initial setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take a long time to deploy. Even on your own personal computer, when you want to try it out, it doesn't take too long to get it running. For the initial setup, I'd say it's maybe a four out of five in terms of how easy it is. You need to add these Java dependencies and so forth, which can be a bit boring, however, it's almost perfect. To deploy Knowage usually takes about a day. In terms of the implementation strategy, it's just following the instructions that they give us on the installation and then just knowing how to handle the process. Usually, there is a group of engineers who do that for us and manage the server itself. If a team is knowledgeable, then it doesn't take a long time. When you need a new instance, it's very quick. The implementation strategy is based on just following instructions on the installation process from Knowage. For deployment and maintenance, we need just maybe two people simply to monitor the traffic coming in. However, it's maintained by people who were doing other jobs like maintaining our other server. They just monitor the Knowage server and make sure that it's up and running and that there are no bugs. There are not too many bugs coming out from the debugger.
Pavlina Pankova - PeerSpot reviewer
Competence Leader - BI at Sabris CZ s.r.o.
Brings reporting, planning, and prediction together in one seamless workflow
I think the areas of SAP Analytics Cloud that could be improved or enhanced are mentioned by users or companies, and they would definitely mention the price in terms of planning licensing. From a consulting point of view, I don't see any major weaknesses. It is reasonably well-developed, and the perfect strength is that innovations are coming on a quarterly basis. It is slightly behind other tools in terms of the number of graphical outputs. Some tools have it faster, but every increment of innovations contains new features. On the other hand, it is perfectly fitting to the SAP environment, with seamless integration to all SAP modules, not only ERP but also SuccessFactors and other tools from the SAP family, for example, integrated business planning for the production planning. This is really a highlight compared to other tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a great product. It has a lot more features than many other BI tools. You can get the most out of machine learning, the best connectivity to Python, and it cuts across enterprise sections."
"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."
"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"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."
"It improves sales and products, which motivates employees."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"The product is flexible and has features like AI, link analysis, and insights. It has many features. I can search, and it creates automatic charts without selecting anything. For example, I can ask, "What is the gross margin?" the tool builds a chart based on my question."
"Provides rich features for developing automated reports and dashboards."
"Technical support is helpful."
"The product's most valuable features are reporting and planning, driverless planning, business vertical-wise planning, dashboarding, forecasting tools, and business forecasting."
"Planning is the most valuable feature of the product because it's integrated and that means we don't need to rely on an independent planning environment."
"The Smart Predict, Smart Insights, and Smart Discovery predictive analysis features are quite good."
"Its user-friendliness is valuable. It is a product for end-users and not for IT, which is an advantage."
"The capabilities of SAP Analytics Cloud that I consider the most valuable are that all three functionalities are in one tool, and because they are, you don't have to buy another tool to make planning, you don't have to buy another tool to implement prediction."
 

Cons

"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."
"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"This is not a very stable product."
"There should be more features for the time series charts."
"One potential improvement is how we can transpose data. With SAP, if you have data from one system with a declared data type and a different system with another data type, the transfer is tricky."
"Pricing is an area for improvement in SAP Analytics Cloud, apart from exporting."
"It seems like there's a problem with the tool's licenses. If there are a lot of users, like 200, who only use the solution once a year, paying for a full-year license for each user is expensive. There's no option for users who only use the solution occasionally."
"I expect more integration from SAP Analytics Cloud."
"If the application has many pages or a page with more charts, it tends to load slowly."
"Technical support is only an online chat option. They need a phone number to talk to someone and they need to increase the support available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is expensive."
"Its licensing is on a monthly basis."
"The pricing of this product is reasonable."
"Its price is slightly on the higher side."
"This solution offers value for money and you get what you pay for."
"I don't have the exact price for SAP Analytics Cloud, but it could be improved and made cheaper, especially when compared to Power BI."
"SAP Analytics Cloud can be quite expensive."
"SAP pricing tends to be premium, so it is slightly higher."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
11%
University
11%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
What do you like most about SAP Analytics Cloud?
In the data warehouse, you're free to make changes. You can make everything text, meaning it's always a string. Even numbers appear as text, giving you the flexibility to work with all columns.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Analytics Cloud?
I normally do not deal with the commercials, so I am not aware of the pricing part of it.
 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
SAP Analytics Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Live Oak Bank
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