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IBM Cognos vs QlikView 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
6.5
IBM Cognos improves decision-making and efficiency, with substantial ROI, cost savings, and enhanced reporting capabilities for faster data processing.
Sentiment score
6.4
QlikView ROI appears through time savings, decision-making improvements, and efficient deployment, despite licensing complexity impacting perception.
I have seen a return on investment, as I mentioned earlier about time saving and productivity gains, with a consistent governed data model that reduces the risk of errors.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The biggest return on investment is the time saving for the customer.
Managing Director at Hurricnae
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support receives mixed reviews, with feedback on responsiveness, complexity, solution speed, and service cost and personalization.
Sentiment score
6.1
QlikView's customer support is highly rated, with quick responses, a helpful community, and generally strong availability despite geographic factors.
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Senior Project Manager at BD
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
I would rate the customer support a solid 10.
Managing Director at Hurricnae
I am totally satisfied with technical support from Qlik.
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Cognos is scalable, efficiently handling growth with the right infrastructure, but may face performance challenges under heavy load.
Sentiment score
7.0
QlikView scales well with efficient resource management, but superior scalability features are found in Qlik Sense, requiring robust infrastructure.
The scalability of IBM Cognos is very good, as it has continued growing with my organization's needs, allowing us to analyze and store a significant amount of data and handle our organization's growth efficiently.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
If you want better performance with a larger volume of data, you can simply add an additional server.
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Cognos is reliable with minimal downtime, though performance may lag under heavy loads; proper maintenance enhances stability.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users rate QlikView's stability highly, with issues mainly due to infrastructure or large data, resolved with hardware tweaks.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
Senior Project Manager at BD
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Cognos needs better data visualization, improved performance, real-time connectivity, simpler interface, and enhanced support for user satisfaction.
QlikView needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, integration, predictive analytics, and cost-effective licensing for improved user experience.
Integration with Azure login makes trouble.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
Senior Project Manager at BD
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
In QlikView, I believe the improvement that should be made is to bring the costs down, as you'll have to be competitive with Power BI, aiming for at least a 30% reduction to stop the hemorrhaging to Power BI.
Managing Director at Hurricnae
It would be beneficial to have AI or ML features in QlikView.
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing, but enterprises should negotiate or use partners for better rates and licensing solutions.
QlikView pricing is variable and can be costly, but strategic planning can maximize ROI for organizations.
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
Senior Project Manager at BD
The license cost per user or per year for QlikView is about 500 Euros annually.
Managing Director at Hurricnae
I would rate the pricing for QlikView as not cheap, but it is reasonable.
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM Cognos delivers essential enterprise analytics with powerful reporting, integration, security, and AI-driven insights for improved decision-making.
QlikView offers powerful data analysis with dynamic dashboards, intuitive interface, and rapid visualization for enhanced business performance and insights.
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
I love the seamless and efficient data integration capability of IBM Cognos Analytics, where it allows us easy merging of data from various sources such as customer feedback and sales figures.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis.
Senior Project Manager at BD
The best features in QlikView are rapid development, the fact that I can do what I want in QlikView, and full control along with ease of use.
Managing Director at Hurricnae
Building metrics using simple language, similar to what you have in Excel, is what I have found most valuable in QlikView.
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
QlikView
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 2.9%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QlikView is 3.7%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos2.9%
QlikView3.7%
Other93.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

RL
Senior Project Manager at BD
Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions
IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.
SG
Financial Controller with task of Business Intelligence Implementation at a wholesaler/distributor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Daily invoice analytics has become streamlined and complex data modeling is now simplified
We are not using analytics features and possibly predictive analytics and forecasting features in QlikView, although they are available. QlikView is very flexible, but we are currently using only tabular presentation of data because that is what we need. Presenting a large volume of data in QlikView with graphics can be overwhelming for the majority of people who want to see a lot of information in one picture. It would be beneficial to have AI or ML features in QlikView. However, I think they will decommission QlikView, and AI features are already available in Qlik Sense, so you would need to migrate to that platform.
report
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883,546 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise76
 

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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
One area where IBM Cognos can be improved is that customer service sometimes is not very responsive, and I would love to see the user interface improved, especially to look somehow updated. In addi...
What do you like most about QlikView?
If you correctly use the product for your use cases, it provides value for money.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for QlikView?
I would rate the pricing for QlikView as not cheap, but it is reasonable.
What needs improvement with QlikView?
We are not using analytics features and possibly predictive analytics and forecasting features in QlikView, although they are available. QlikView is very flexible, but we are currently using only t...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

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.
Canon, Gatorade, Amcor, Panasonic, Fila, Cambridge University Hospitals, Global Retail Bank, North Yorkshire Police department, Lanoo Group Publishers, and AonGroep Nederland.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. QlikView and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
883,546 professionals have used our research since 2012.