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Pentaho Business Analytics vs SAP Crystal Reports comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Pentaho Business Analytics mixed ROI perceptions highlight efficiency gains but unclear returns compared to competitors like QlikView and Tableau.
Sentiment score
6.3
SAP Crystal Reports delivers excellent ROI by enhancing ERP reporting and efficiency, with returns exceeding 1000% despite training costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics receives mixed reviews for customer support, with users relying heavily on forums and community assistance.
Sentiment score
5.9
SAP Crystal Reports support is mixed, with larger clients prioritized, leaving smaller users often relying on online communities.
I have not encountered any problems requiring assistance.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Pentaho Business Analytics is scalable with good performance but occasionally needs professional help for complex data handling.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Crystal Reports is scalable for medium to large businesses, but smaller companies may find it costly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics is stable but may face Java caching issues, impacting performance and requiring careful cache management.
Sentiment score
7.0
SAP Crystal Reports has become more stable since 2013, with most users experiencing improved reliability and performance.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.
SAP Crystal Reports needs enhanced visualization, integration, and debugging to address interface complexity, performance issues, and compatibility limitations.
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.
Enabling better practices and testing to enhance data accuracy and efficiency for company sectors.
If it is closed due to any problem, it should be able to recover where I left off, similar to Excel, which should be a feature for SAP Crystal Reports.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.
SAP Crystal Reports pricing varies, around $500 per license; discounts and free viewing options exist, training adds costs.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.
SAP Crystal Reports offers robust data visualization, extensive data connections, dynamic features, rapid development, and seamless Business Objects integration.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
SAP Crystal Reports has had a very positive impact and benefits. It's a powerful tool to design any kind of report if you have knowledge of the database, and it can attach to both HANA and SQL databases.
The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in Reporting
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)
SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.7%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MUHAMMAD_IMRAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Crystal Reports enables comprehensive data visualization but requires consistent integration practices for optimal accuracy
SAP Crystal Reports provides a clear picture for customer and vendor orders, showing whether orders are pending and delivering receivable and payable statuses, which allows understanding different scenarios categorically for client needs, ultimately satisfying both customers and clients. The efficiency gained by our organization from SAP Crystal Reports is measurable through multiple export formats such as PDF and Excel, which makes accessing and understanding data from the database easier. The ability to generate different formats facilitates better data analysis, although occasionally advanced features such as workbench center directly enhance the experience. The impact of SAP Crystal Reports' dynamic parameters significantly affects the customization and flexibility of reports, allowing adjustments to parameters based on client needs, such as date, users, and ledger views, ensuring data is correctly collected and formatted according to the client's requirements.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

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 offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
Maybe some Power BI-related features could be added, like dashboards or direct editing in reports. We use query language to build reports; this area could be improved more.
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for reporting. We use it for financial reports like statements of accounts, trial balances, and other management reports, salary slips, and many other purposes.
What do you like most about SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting.
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. SAP Crystal Reports and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.