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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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)
TIBCO Jaspersoft
Ranking in Reporting
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Jaspersoft is 2.4%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AnkurMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and stable product that enables users to set properties dynamically
The solution is used mainly for reporting purposes. We generate PDFs, which are delivered to the recipient via email We can set any property dynamically. We have to use different currencies. Sometimes, we use the pound sign. Sometimes, we use the dollar sign. Our software is a multi-currency…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"We can set any property dynamically."
"I give the stability of the solution a nine out of ten."
"The solution is standalone with the flexibility to use visualize.js to embed within the application."
"It offers high processing power for report generation and is cost-effective."
"The feature that I like most is the drag and drop capability."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...The deployment process of TIBCO Jaspersoft is easy."
"The end-user reporting is very handy and the standard reports that can be achieved by using Jaspersoft Studio are quite impressive."
"It's easy to use and maintain."
 

Cons

"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."
"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"The upgrades are not easy."
"We'd like to see the community version offer a little bit more support and better documentation and we'd like the enterprise edition to have better pricing."
"The Ad Hoc Report Writer does not include as many features as Tableau and needs to be improved to meet expectations."
"TIBCO Jaspersoft would benefit from enabling you to run multiple reports in one file and incorporating more options related to multiple reports."
"I would like to see better support for big data."
"A better focus should be put on self-service reporting."
"I would like to see some analysis done prior to data extraction. The data extraction itself could also be improved."
"Jaspersoft should focus on user interaction features, and one should not expect it to suit every niche."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"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."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"The pricing is cost effective because it is based on servers rather than users."
"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 would rate the pricing as four out of five because it's expensive."
"I give the cost of the solution a five out of ten."
report
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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%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

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

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: July 2025.
863,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.