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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
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
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 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 TIBCO Jaspersoft is 1.9%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos2.9%
TIBCO Jaspersoft1.9%
Other95.2%
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.
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."
"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"It is a stable product."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"You can do quite a lot with it in terms of automated reports and dashboards."
"We can set any property dynamically."
"The solution is standalone with the flexibility to use visualize.js to embed within the application."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...The deployment process of TIBCO Jaspersoft is easy."
"It's easy to use and maintain."
"The end-user reporting is very handy and the standard reports that can be achieved by using Jaspersoft Studio are quite impressive."
"The reports I prepare using TIBCO Jaspersoft are quite user-friendly, and the look and feel are much better compared to other report generation tools."
"I give the stability of the solution a nine out of ten."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"We are generally satisfied, but I am not certain if IBM Cognos meets every feature request from users since we only provide IBM Cognos as our standard and do not maintain infrastructure for other tools."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"Customization is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement."
"I would like to see better support for big data."
"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."
"The stability of TIBCO Jaspersoft needs improvement."
"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."
"Jaspersoft should focus on user interaction features, and one should not expect it to suit every niche."
"The integration of TIBCO Jaspersoft with some data sources has limitations that I encountered, and it was not very straightforward."
 

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 cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"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."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
"Pricing should be improved."
"It is averagely priced."
"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."
"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."
"I find the price to be reliable and not overly costly."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"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."
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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
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
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 Enterprise90
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?
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...
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: March 2026.
884,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.