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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
136
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

reviewer2648136 - PeerSpot reviewer
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized reporting has supported university-wide regulatory dashboards and secure data access
From my experience, we use regular dashboarding with IBM Cognos for producing scheduled reports and for mandatory regulatory reporting. All our departments use IBM Cognos, with each department developing their own reports while our corporate IT team provides the data. Some people use the interactive dashboards feature of IBM Cognos, and there are also other tools in use. I think some users utilize Power BI and Tableau, but our IT organization only provides IBM Cognos as an enterprise business intelligence and reporting tool. IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards. In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable. It has been around for many years and many users are familiar with it, ensuring it performs well in its intended capacity. The benefits of choosing IBM Cognos, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos.
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

"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."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"IBM Cognos is an excellent solution for tax, planning, budgeting, profit and loss statements and balance sheets."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"We find the access restrictions on different user groups valuable."
"It offers high processing power for report generation and is cost-effective."
"The feature that I like most is the drag and drop capability."
"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."
"The designer is the most valuable feature."
"It's easy to use and maintain."
"We can set any property dynamically."
 

Cons

"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"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."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"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."
"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."
"TIBCO Jaspersoft would benefit from enabling you to run multiple reports in one file and incorporating more options related to multiple reports."
"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."
"The upgrades are not easy."
"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."
"The integration of TIBCO Jaspersoft with some data sources has limitations that I encountered, and it was not very straightforward."
"The reporting templates have room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"I find the price to be reliable and not overly costly."
"I would rate the pricing as four out of five because it's expensive."
"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."
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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%
Government
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 Enterprise86
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.
880,511 professionals have used our research since 2012.