IBM Cognos vs IBM Planning Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared IBM Cognos and IBM Planning Analytics solutions aren't in the same category. IBM Cognos is ranked #7 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 3.6% mindshare in the category. IBM Planning Analytics is ranked #3 in BPM , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 8.7% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of IBM Cognos users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM Planning Analytics users who would recommend it.

IBM Cognos

Read 134 IBM Cognos reviews

6,182 Views
3,189 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Planning Analytics

Read 25 IBM Planning Analytics reviews

1,812 Views
1,188 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,103 Views
17,369 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM Cognos

IBM Planning Analytics

Microsoft Power BI

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Cognos, IBM Planning Analytics, and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: March 2025).

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BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

March 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:

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Business Performance Management

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU

Senior BI-ETL Consultant at CMA Consulting Services

Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding

There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.

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Gnanavel-Chakkarapani

Junior Consultant at CMA CGM

Can easily create dashboards and helps businesses improve forecasting accuracy

The product has improved our company's forecasting accuracy since it serves as a very useful tool for our sales and controller teams as they easily get to enter the inputs using views in TM1, which gets loaded into our main database. If there are sales team members in different parts of the world, like in Hong Kong and Singapore, they may prefer to use IBM Planning Analytics, which is easy to use when compared to the Excel tool. Speaking about planning analytics and data analysis, I would say that our company used to use IBM Cognos Analytics for reporting, where we used to use Cognos Dynamic Cubes so that users can easily use its drag and drop features while getting to see the data for which the users had to wait for two to three minutes prior to its use. In our company, tons of data are loaded into the memory, and users can use Cognos Dynamic Cubes to analyze data and understand it. The AI capabilities of IBM have benefited our planning strategy as they are very useful for business. The tool allows the easy creation of dashboard reports using AI capabilities. No technical knowledge is required for business use cases. It is possible to integrate the product in scenarios where some new integrations are available. I remember that my company used Azure Data Factory to connect Azure, Oracle, and IBM WebSphere Application Server. When it comes to IBM Planning Analytics, it is complex to integrate it with LDAP and or any other authentication tool offered by Microsoft. In our company, some users like to integrate IBM Planning Analytics with the common LDAP or Microsoft AD, which we currently use for all our applications. The authentication part is difficult to configure with IBM Planning Analytics. The maintenance of the product is easy. My company has scheduled maintenance on the product every week, especially during forecast times, so that memories automatically lapse and users can freely access their servers. The use of the tool has had an impact on collaboration within our company's planning team since everyone knows how to easily access the data and publish the results. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

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James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."

"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."

"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."

"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Navigating through the data to make analysis is really quick."

"The most valuable feature is that it is able to slice and dice the data."

"The flexibility of IBM Planning Analytics is a great feature of this solution. The design flexibility with data rules and defining calculations The ability to combine online and offline calculations are a benefit. Additionally, the forecasting features and predictive analytics is very good."

"The product's stability is good."

"The tool is flexible."

"A lot of the platform is in-memory, so Planning Analytics can run calculations quite fast. It also offers several user interfaces. And in the newest version of Planning Analytics, there is a new one called the Planning Analytics Workspace. Maybe it could be useful for the business side."

"IBM Planning Analytics can help us build scenarios through a sandbox environment, allowing us to test multiple variables and assess their impact on our budget and planning."

"IBM Planning Analytics is easy to use and deploy. It is quick to develop. The calculation machine is also very fast."

More IBM Planning Analytics pros

"Reports, dashboards, and visualizations are most valuable."

"The visualization and reporting are the most valuable features of this solution."

"Easy to use and the visualization is valuable."

"The data manipulation and data cleaning tasks are handled in the backend by Power Query in Microsoft Power BI."

"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."

"There is continual improvement year-over-year."

"As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools."

"The flexibility of the program is valuable. We are able to add other information to the reporting information and expand upon it."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."

"Extending dynamic cubes aggregate awareness with calculated measures."

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."

"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."

"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."

More IBM Cognos cons

"It would have been better if the solution was not just a tool kit."

"The workspace API should be improved and documented so we know better which objects are used."

"It's wonky, and not super user-friendly with Excel."

"It is a bit expensive, but it does the job."

"If we talk only about the TM1 engine, it's quite rich and possibly too rich, making it complex to perform simple tasks."

"The local authentication part is difficult to manage in the product, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Adding predefined templates could be beneficial."

"Extracting data is a little slow."

More IBM Planning Analytics cons

"They can improve it in terms of rule-based security. Currently, it has very limited rules."

"Microsoft BI’s integration and visualization could be improved."

"The maps in Power BI could be improved. You deal with many maps over the years, like maps of America and Saudi Arabia. The maps aren't detailed enough, and there aren't enough visualization tools. Whenever I want to use a map, I struggle with choosing the right visualization."

"Visualization systems are still relatively young."

"The dynamic browsing tables could be better in Microsoft Power BI."

"Real-time data integration is an area for improvement."

"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface with Microsoft BI."

"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."

"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."

"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."

"It is pretty expensive."

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"It is averagely priced."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"Compared with the other tools in the market, IBM Planning Analytics is a bit expensive."

"It is a bit expensive, but you get what you are paying for."

"The license of this solution is paid annually. Most of my customers choose a license that includes support."

"IBM Planning Analytics is priced well, and licensing costs are yearly."

"I would rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten since it's expensive."

"Our licensing cost is approximately $50,000.00 per year."

"IBM Planning Analytics is not the cheapest solution, but it's priced per the market standard for this type of solution. I rate the price at seven out of ten."

"It's straightforward licensing."

"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."

"Compared to others, I think it is reasonable."

"The pricing is very reasonable compared to any other tool."

"For my primary use case, i.e. teaching students, the free version of Power BI is adequate."

"Downloading Power BI Desktop is free."

"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."

"This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

41%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Planning Analytics?

The most valuable features of IBM Planning Analytics for streamlining planning processes include a unified database w...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Planning Analytics?

TM1 is quite expensive, and I'd rate the pricing as an eight out of ten. While we do get what we want in terms of fun...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Planning Analytics?

Since I'm using TM1 as an old version of Planning Analytics, it wouldn't be fair to specify what needs improvement be...

See all answers

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 wou...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Qlik Sense vs IBM Cognos

Compared 6% of the time

MicroStrategy vs IBM Cognos

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Planning Analytics

Compared 19% of the time

Anaplan vs IBM Planning Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

Jedox vs IBM Planning Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Planning Analytics

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Essbase vs IBM Planning Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Planning Analytics Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

April 2025

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Planning Analytics

April 2025

Download IBM Planning Analytics product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Cognos TM1, IBM Cognos TM1

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

IBM

IBM Planning Analytics is an integrated planning solution that uses AI to automate planning, budgeting, and forecasting and drive more intelligent workflows.

Built on TM1, IBM’s powerful calculation engine, this enterprise performance management tool allows you to transcend the limits of manual planning and become the Analytics Hero your business needs. Quickly and easily drive faster, more accurate plans for FP&A, sales, supply chain and beyond.

IBM

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

ManpowerGroup, Convergys, AIG, Orchard Brands, Citibank, InterGen, Northwestern University, EF Education First, Ironside, Bazan Group, CSOB Insurance, Macquarie Group, Charles Stanley, SATO, Government of Sint Maarten, BMW Financial Services

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

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March 2025

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