Pentaho Business Analytics vs ThoughtSpot comparison

Pentaho Business Analytics

Read 16 ThoughtSpot reviews

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Pentaho Business Analytics and ThoughtSpot both compete in the business intelligence and data analytics space. Pentaho seems to have the upper hand due to its strong ETL capabilities and cost-effective options, while ThoughtSpot is favored for its user-friendly data exploration.

Features: Pentaho is known for its powerful ETL capabilities with Pentaho Data Integration, scalable analytics platform, and intuitive data modeling features. It provides extensive support for data transformations and integrations across various data sources. ThoughtSpot stands out for its intuitive search-based analytics, fast dashboard performance, and ease of use for non-technical users, empowering them to perform ad-hoc queries independently.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho users have identified a need for better data visualization interfaces, more advanced task management options, and improved version control. ThoughtSpot could enhance visualization flexibility, provide direct database connectivity, and streamline data loading processes to better meet user needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho offers versatile deployment options, including on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, and benefits from a supportive community, although its technical support is considered fragmented. ThoughtSpot is primarily deployed on private and public clouds, receiving favorable customer service ratings, yet there is feedback regarding the availability of technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho is appreciated for its cost-effectiveness with a free Community Edition, but concerns exist over the higher cost of its Enterprise Edition. ThoughtSpot offers a competitive pricing model based on data volume rather than user count, potentially delivering quicker ROI due to its straightforward usability and flexible pricing.

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

Pentaho Business Analytics vs. ThoughtSpot

July 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:

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

6.6

Users find ThoughtSpot beneficial for efficiency and decision-making despite challenges in financial tracking and initial investment costs.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

Using ThoughtSpot has resulted in significant time savings and improved business sales by allowing us to identify sellers and buyers across regions, facilitating targeted marketing.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Based on our implementation in one project, we are trying to raise more funding to expand its use.

Sreetej Reddy

Senior Business Intelligence Architect at Mphasis

ThoughtSpot saves a significant amount of time compared to other tools and is very user-friendly.

Subhan Bhanu

Data Analyst at Wipro Limited

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

6.1

ThoughtSpot support is responsive with mixed feedback; praised for quick responses but criticized for insufficient resources and lengthy processes.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses.

Software Engineer (Data specialist) at Salesforce

ThoughtSpot provides a dedicated customer success person and the ability to submit tickets online, with a response time of no more than a day.

Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

The knowledge base for ThoughtSpot is less robust compared to others.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

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

6.0

ThoughtSpot excels in scalability for large datasets, despite user management challenges, with strong Snowflake integration enhancing automatic scaling.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

Tableau, Power BI, or Looker have separate tools for preparation, customization, and storytelling.

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

The platform does not have technical problems with scaling data or connections.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Software Engineer (Data specialist) at Salesforce

As our data has grown, I have validated huge datasets and complex models without significant issues.

Subhan Bhanu

Data Analyst at Wipro Limited

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

6.0

ThoughtSpot is reliable with high stability, though some users report performance challenges and increased costs from integration limitations.

It can handle large datasets.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia

I use it primarily for large datasets, and it performs faster than regular data visualization tools such as Power BI, which has limits on dataset size.

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

The upgrades are smooth with no downtime, which is super important.

Software Engineer (Data specialist) at Salesforce

The responsiveness of accessing live data is exceptional and faster than most other BI tools.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Room For Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.

ThoughtSpot needs better visualization, dashboard customization, data integration, and performance features to compete effectively with Power BI.

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.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia

Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau.

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

Handling governance when there are many models and dashboards is complex.

Software Engineer (Data specialist) at Salesforce

Enhancing integration capabilities with other tools like DBT would also be beneficial as it would make our lives easier.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.

ThoughtSpot offers competitive pricing, often cheaper than Tableau and more than Power BI, with flexible, negotiable billing options.

Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia

HubSpot is expensive.

Software Engineer (Data specialist) at Salesforce

ThoughtSpot's pricing is reasonable and in line with other BI tools.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.

ThoughtSpot offers intuitive search, fast analytics, AI insights, and user-friendly interfaces for efficient, self-service data exploration.

It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.

For more quotes and insights, download the Pentaho Business Analytics report

DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia

Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily.

For more quotes and insights, download the ThoughtSpot report

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

This alerting feature is very beneficial for our company at the moment, and we use it extensively.

reviewer2686410

Works

When I upload a data dump, AI analytics suggest possible data visualizations and insights, which I can pin to dashboards or live boards for modification.

Subhan Bhanu

Data Analyst at Wipro Limited

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Operations Analytics (5th), Reporting (12th)

ThoughtSpot

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (8th), Embedded BI (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 ThoughtSpot is 1.6%, up from 1.4% 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.

Read full review

Creates user-friendly analysis environments for large datasets

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

The tool is user-friendly for the end users. It is primarily a search-based tool. Users do not need a technical background to work directly on the dataset. Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily. ThoughtSpot is fast, even with one to ten terabytes of data.

Read full review

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

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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

15%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare 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 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?

The pricing is on the higher end but reasonable for what ThoughtSpot offers.

What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?

I do not think there is anything that needs improvement at the moment. It is being improved continuously. They are connecting to many AI-type tools. Their pricing has recently changed to be more pr...

What is your primary use case for ThoughtSpot?

Clients use ThoughtSpot because of its search facility. It is easy for searching and does not require analysts to provide reports. There is no drill-down path on the data, so users can drill data a...

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Product Reports

Pentaho Business Analytics

August 2025

Download Pentaho Business Analytics product report

Download ThoughtSpot product report

July 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

ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable.

The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.

Sample Customers

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

Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs