Pentaho Business Analytics vs Pyramid Analytics comparison

Pentaho Business Analytics

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Pentaho Business Analytics and Pyramid Analytics compete in the business analytics category, each offering unique features and functionalities. Pyramid Analytics appears to have the upper hand with its self-service and predictive analytics capabilities, appealing for handling complex datasets.

Features: Pentaho Business Analytics offers comprehensive ETL capabilities and supports tools like JasperReport and BIRT, integrating seamlessly into various environments. It provides historical data maintenance and flexible open-source options, making it highly adaptable. Pyramid Analytics is known for its strong drilling and dicing capabilities, supporting complex data analysis, and extensive self-service features that allow users to customize reports and visualizations effectively.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho Business Analytics requires better data presentation and dashboard flexibility and improvements in UI design and documentation. Users suggest enhancing the Community Edition's functionality to match the Enterprise version. Pyramid Analytics needs a more user-friendly interface, more chart options, and comprehensive documentation. Handling large datasets more efficiently and improving dashboard connection modifications are also areas of focus.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho Business Analytics is typically deployed on-premises with a strong community support network, though enterprise support varies. User forums are helpful but response times from official support can be slow. Pyramid Analytics supports hybrid, private, and public cloud deployments with moderate customer service ratings and higher-rated technical support. More effective support, particularly for error resolutions and deployment guidance, is desired.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho Business Analytics offers a cost-effective Community Edition with substantial initial savings, while the Enterprise version can be pricey. Its open-source nature allows for affordable development options, often resulting in excellent ROI. Pyramid Analytics is reasonably priced for mid-sized companies, providing good cost efficiency despite the higher costs associated with enhanced features, with users generally satisfied with the ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Pyramid Analytics Report (Updated: June 2025).

Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Pyramid Analytics

June 2025

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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

Pentaho Business Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Operations Analytics (5th), Reporting (13th)

Pyramid Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pyramid Analytics is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Excels in handling unstructured data, helping organizations navigate through different storage systems

Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.

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Shyam Pendyala

Manager, BI Platforms at Refinitiv, an LSEG Business at LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group)

A comprehensive and user-friendly business intelligence for enhanced data insight

When developing multidimensional IMDS models in Pyramid Analytics, there is a need for better features to maintain and analyze data. The application currently lacks the ability to easily track the original physical table and field names, making it challenging to relate them to business names. It would be desirable to have the possibility to generate a data dictionary, detailing the original physical tables, renamed fields, and derived fields. Such features would simplify documentation, facilitate understanding of how calculations depend on physical fields and aid in explaining the development process to others. Having this lineage and easy-to-generate data dictionary would greatly enhance the usability of Pyramid Analytics for developers.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."

"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."

"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."

"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."

"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."

"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."

"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."

"Easy to use components to create the job."

More Pentaho Business Analytics pros

"The most valuable feature of Pyramid Analytics, outshining even top-tier platforms like Power BI, is its robust support for DAX queries."

"I think the most valuable Pyramid Analytics feature is the solution's ability to drill down and dice in the loop. I think it is better than InExcel or Power BI."

"The features I find most valuable are 'Discover,' 'Formulate,' and 'Model.' I use them regularly to build logic and create reports for my job."

"It seems quite performant in analyzing multi-dimensional information sets and presenting them."

"It offers a wide range of analytics options including statistics and visualizations, as well as prediction capabilities, allowing users to make forecasts based on the latest data."

"Pyramid has a wide level of uses, as it's a complete ETL process and has a good level of connecting to a lot of data sources."

"The on-premise version has quite good scalability."

"It proved to be a very powerful and useful tool due to its breakdown capabilities, easy reporting features, flexibility in building custom calculations, and the ability to integrate them into reports."

Cons

"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."

"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."

"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."

"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."

"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."

"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."

"Version control would be a good addition."

"The repository should be improved."

More Pentaho Business Analytics cons

"Pyramid Analytics could improve by speeding up data refresh, especially for large datasets."

"It would be desirable to have the possibility to generate a data dictionary, detailing the original physical tables, renamed fields, and derived fields."

"The general amount of negative comments that I am hearing from my team makes me very wary."

"There is room for improvement in terms of the user interface, particularly when it comes to modifying connections between filters and visual components in a dashboard."

"I find that this is quite a heavy, time-consuming tool for developers."

"I think the graphic number of charts and components could be higher, at least comparable to Brain Power BI."

"There is room for improvement in terms of documentation and examples, especially for newcomers like me who are learning both business intelligence and Pyramid."

"Even though the solution has a functionality for every step, it's not so well- defined. That needs to be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Free and commercial versions are available."

"Pentaho is expensive ."

"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."

"The licensing cost is not excessively expensive, but it does increase with the addition of new features and modules."

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Comparison Review

it_user6978

Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)

Jun 10, 2013

Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition

Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

Real Estate/Law Firm

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?

Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView ( /products/qlikview-reviews ) and Tableau ( /products/tableau-reviews ). I usually use the community edition.

What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?

Pentaho Business Analytics ( /categories/bi-business-intelligence-tools ) is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical ...

What do you like most about Pyramid Analytics?

The most valuable feature of Pyramid Analytics, outshining even top-tier platforms like Power BI, is its robust support for DAX queries.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pyramid Analytics?

I find the price of Pyramid Analytics to be quite reasonable, especially when compared to other tools in the industry. It is a cost-effective choice, particularly for mid-sized or larger companies ...

What needs improvement with Pyramid Analytics?

Pyramid Analytics could improve by speeding up data refresh, especially for large datasets. While it is currently an in-memory tool, efforts are underway to enhance direct connections to source sys...

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Product Reports

Pentaho Business Analytics

May 2025

Download Pentaho Business Analytics product report

Download Pyramid Analytics product report

May 2025

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics

No data available

Overview

Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

Hitachi Vantara

The BI Office from Pyramid Analytics is a web-based governed data discovery and analytics platform. It integrates the four principal functions of any comprehensive BI strategy into a single, seamless application. Users can now analyze, present, report and predict on their data in a single application. Pyramid Analytics has native apps to cover the entire mobile spectrum, iOS, Android and Windows. With BI Office users can integrate SAP data with data from other sources giving them the right tools and better data to make data-driven decisions.

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.

US Department of Veterans Affair, Volkswagen, Siemens, Blackboard, Hallmark, Orange, CDW, LA Fitness, Atelier GS, Memorial Healthcare, Acadia Insurance, BancoBic, Advanced Learning, Microsoft, Drake University