Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Cognos vs TIBCO Jaspersoft comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
TIBCO Jaspersoft
Ranking in Reporting
7th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.9%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Jaspersoft is 2.9%, up from 2.7% 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.
Chan Sambopol - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use with a nice design and good connectivity
TIBCO Jaspersoft has two versions. Version one is the enterprise version, The other one is the community version, and which allows us to use it for free. In the free version, we have to support ourselves. For the enterprise version, you have technical support if you need it. I wish that we had more support while in the portal, at least for the community version, or if we could talk to someone regarding issues, like how to configure or fine-tune would be helpful. We'd like to have help on how to solve some problems when we use the product and have some error or limitation. They need to, at the very least, improve the community. The Enterprise Edition has support, and we can force some tickets through the portal and then have an engineer support us in some cases. However, in terms of the subscription price, it's a bit high. Therefore, 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"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."
"The correlation analysis is excellent. It's one of the best that I have used to date."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"It offers high processing power for report generation and is cost-effective."
"The growth time is the most valuable feature of TIBCO Jaspersoft."
"The feature that I like most is the drag and drop capability."
"We find the access restrictions on different user groups valuable."
"The designer is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is standalone with the flexibility to use visualize.js to embed within the application."
"It's easy to use and maintain."
"You can do quite a lot with it in terms of automated reports and dashboards."
 

Cons

"It is a costly product; it is comparatively expensive."
"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."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"The solution's support could be better."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"Customization is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement."
"There might be some compatibility issues with the dashboard if we're using the latest version and some clients are using the older version. Some features might not be supported."
"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."
"A better focus should be put on self-service reporting."
"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."
"TIBCO Jaspersoft would benefit from enabling you to run multiple reports in one file and incorporating more options related to multiple reports."
"The stability of TIBCO Jaspersoft needs improvement."
"The reporting templates have room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"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 quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"It is averagely priced."
"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."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"I would rate the pricing as four out of five because it's 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."
"The pricing is cost effective because it is based on servers rather than users."
"I give the cost of the solution a five out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

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?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great f...
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: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.