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Knowage vs TIBCO Spotfire 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

Knowage
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
32nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (23rd)
TIBCO Spotfire
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Spotfire is 1.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TIBCO Spotfire1.1%
Knowage0.9%
Other98.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Jacobo Ortiz Avila - PeerSpot reviewer
Production Engineer at Parex Resources Inc
Has improved data handling and customization but requires more intuitive visual design for workflows
It was kind of tough to have the visualizations with HTML, or you have to create your own page. But it was working great with buttons and every page updated pretty fast with the server capability, and it was handling a big amount of data, maybe five years of data. It was performing quite well, taking maybe three minutes to update the whole model. It has been good, but most recently, they changed the commercial methodology to get the license. Our política in the company is to hire or get licenses year by year, but most recently, TIBCO Spotfire asked us to have a three-year license term. That made things a little bit tougher for the commercial relationship. Maybe with all these automation processes that you have, those could be more visually friendly. N8N is a good example where you could connect some platforms, and you don't have to code strictly, but you could visually create an algorithm. That capability of clicking and dragging some boxes of code could actually facilitate how people create their own algorithms. It could be very useful if the coding part of using the platform could be more user-friendly in terms of visual capability.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"Instead of just relying on emails to disperse our reports, having a central server to do this for us has helped our organization and has pushed us into a better place."
"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."
"Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities."
"Data visualization: Spotfire is an incredible, powerful tool capable of creating data analysis "templates" or "dashboards", which can be shared globally and can be used to visualize data to make business decisions."
"Good data transformation tools, excellent connectivity to different data sources, and good forecasting and statistical capabilities."
"R and automation services."
"When you're looking for one single pane for your historical analytics, streaming analytics, predictive analytics, data science, ML modeling, and managing everything from the one single pane, then you should go for Spotfire."
"This solution allows us to integrate data from across all client departments, for effective reporting via a single dashboard."
"The two features that I have found most valuable are its ability to customize the dashboards when it comes to the evaluation. The second feature is its ability to handle a large amount of data, which is also something very unique about it."
"The out-of-the-box features are simple and easy to use across the board."
"I find the power of the information links valuable in Spotfire, as it allows complex queries to be handled efficiently."
 

Cons

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"We had stability issues."
"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."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."
"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"TIBCO Spotfire can be improved in several areas. The UI can be enhanced, and the usage and flexibility need to be better compared to other analytical tools."
"Backend administration of the application can be difficult."
"Exporting to Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint should be easier."
"When it comes to data manipulation, there are features which are good, but one of the features which has really been missing in Spotfire is an offline ability for data manipulation."
"Personalising Spotfire, as a whole, is painful and is something that could be made easier."
"Room for improvement is in comparison with other tools. I need to see more options that do not require scripting in the tool, and I need more enhancements on the statistical server side."
"Better UX/UI design to make the product look “sexier”. It’s somewhat difficult to add formatting to Spotfire dashboards to make them look nice (e.g. coloring backgrounds of charts, adding floating texts, etc.)."
"The way TIBCO Spotfire is designed, in my opinion, is the reason why it lags a bit, especially compared to other BI tools like Qlik."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The cost of TIBCO Spotfire could improve. It should be less expensive. It's the most expensive visualization tool in our company."
"The pricing seems competitive and reasonable. The value delivered by the product far exceeds the cost."
"The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
"The ROI is nearly impossible to calculate."
"This product carries a monthly licensing charge, with the amount depending on the features that are to be included. This costs also covers the use of technical support."
"The solution is affordable one."
"I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product."
"In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
University
9%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise42
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for TIBCO Spotfire appears fair, and I think they are fairly priced as far as the features are concerned.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
The web client of TIBCO Spotfire lacked the full authoring capabilities available in the analyst client. Source control for DXP files was limited compared to a Git-style workflow. For regulatory su...
 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
Spotfire
 

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
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. TIBCO Spotfire and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.