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IBM Cognos vs TIBCO Jaspersoft 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
137
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (9th)
TIBCO Jaspersoft
Ranking in Reporting
12th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Jaspersoft is 1.9%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos3.3%
TIBCO Jaspersoft1.9%
Other94.8%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Dishan Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at McKinsey and Company
Efficient reporting with strong scheduling and time-saving features
The best features IBM Cognos offers include scheduled reports, calculation and transformation of raw data, and flexibility with the Excel format, which all stand out as especially valuable. I rely most on scheduling, calculation and transformation, and Excel flexibility, and these features affect my daily work by allowing me to use this tool for reporting to make and schedule reports easily. We are able to schedule over 300 reports in a day, where we also schedule them weekly to over 40 executives. Additionally, IBM Cognos transforms raw data into insights and analytics, enabling our data team to make great insights and data-driven decisions easily. IBM Cognos has positively impacted my organization by enhancing our data analysis capability which has helped us in our business planning. It is a great tool for reporting capacity, enabling us to update all of the leadership management about our business in one report. Auto scheduling and report generation are strong features that save a lot of time. Precisely, we have been able to save about 60% of our time from IBM Cognos Analytics, which helps us to make data decisions easily while also saving a lot of time.
Ashish-Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager at Bahwan CyberTek
Has delivered visually appealing reports and improved user interaction
The integration of TIBCO Jaspersoft with some data sources has limitations that I encountered, and it was not very straightforward. This was one of the concerns with TIBCO Jaspersoft. The limitations include compatibility with some drivers where we do not have adequate JDBC drivers, and because of that, I am not able to make the connection pool. I do see a negative side in terms of support. I am a little disappointed because when we report any defect, it takes time to get a resolution. There are also limitations on some connectors where we do not have connectivity established. These are the few issues I faced while using TIBCO Jaspersoft.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"With the online view, it's easier to create Ad Hoc reports. It has inbuilt reports so we can easily get data from the system and customize the fields."
"We can set any property dynamically."
"You can do quite a lot with it in terms of automated reports and dashboards."
"We find the access restrictions on different user groups valuable."
"The feature that I like most is the drag and drop capability."
"The solution is standalone with the flexibility to use visualize.js to embed within the application."
"The designer is the most valuable feature."
"The growth time is the most valuable feature of TIBCO Jaspersoft."
 

Cons

"The charts and graphics are weak."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"We need more predictive analytical functions, not only diagnostic or decryptic analytics."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"The upgrades are not easy."
"I would like to see some analysis done prior to data extraction. The data extraction itself could also be improved."
"Customization is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement."
"The integration of TIBCO Jaspersoft with some data sources has limitations that I encountered, and it was not very straightforward."
"Jaspersoft should focus on user interaction features, and one should not expect it to suit every niche."
"A better focus should be put on self-service reporting."
"The Ad Hoc Report Writer does not include as many features as Tableau and needs to be improved to meet expectations."
"Currently, JSON format is the main format we use, however, in TIBCO Jaspersoft, XML format is the default and JSON did not work because TIBCO did not fix it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"It is averagely priced."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing is cost effective because it is based on servers rather than users."
"I would rate the pricing as four out of five because it's expensive."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"I find the price to be reliable and not overly costly."
"Since I checked last time, only one annual license costs about $25,000."
"I give the cost of the solution a five out of ten."
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise87
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

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?
Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
The best and open source (No cost involved) solution for all BI requirements is Jaspersoft Open Studio. Refer to rajeshsirsikar.com for more information.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Jaspersoft?
I am sharing a scenario for pricing: for ten thousand users and a robust server, it may cost in the hundreds of thousands USD. However, TIBCO is more enterprise-focused and might have different pri...
What needs improvement with TIBCO Jaspersoft?
The integration of TIBCO Jaspersoft with some data sources has limitations that I encountered, and it was not very straightforward. This was one of the concerns with TIBCO Jaspersoft. The limitatio...
 

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.
Mosaic, Vander University, Telesoft, Entrust, Ericsson, BT, Groupon, John Hopkins, Puma
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. TIBCO Jaspersoft and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,282 professionals have used our research since 2012.