No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Apache Superset vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Apache Superset
Ranking in Data Visualization
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in Data Visualization
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Apache Superset is 2.7%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 3.6%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence3.6%
Apache Superset2.7%
Other93.7%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

MP
Founder & CEO at Lanzar
Have saved significant operational costs and streamlined alert-driven analytics with customizable dashboards
I definitely see some disadvantages in Apache Superset, particularly in the tagging feature which is not up to the mark, creating a little bit of mess for the administrators. We work with a Role-Based Access Control feature in the product. I assess this feature as good; they have permissions which are in more plain English, but there is a little bit of convenience missed out because if I have to create a super user apart from admin, I need to add all the permissions manually.
TarunKumar7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
Data insights have driven faster financial forecasts and improved role-based decision making
The best features SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers include cross-enterprise sharing, where sharing insights is easier and seamless across my organization, and creating role-based dashboards. The role-based dashboards help my team and organization by providing information to specific users, allowing them to make decisions more easily, anytime, anywhere, across any device. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to perform financial reporting to make decisions faster. Since we started using SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, we have been able to make faster, data-driven business decisions based on actual data insights and data analysis, which has accelerated our ability to make better decisions for our business productivity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy, reliable, and trustable because it's an Apache open-source product."
"I see savings from using Apache Superset in both time and money, particularly with the cost reduced by roughly 99% compared to Tableau where we previously paid almost 50k annually."
"It is a good visual solution tool in an open-source category."
"The benefits I have seen from using Apache Superset for the business team are that they have been able to look at the numbers easily, log into the portal, and look at different dashboards, which are at different granularities."
"The main benefit I have seen from working with Apache Superset so far is the speed from discovery and SQL to making charts and dashboards, along with its customizability."
"Apache Superset allows us to set up alerts; for instance, if the failure rate exceeds 1.5%, we receive an alert to address the issue with our integration partners."
"Being able to quickly build standard dashboards around relational data in Apache Superset provides tremendous visibility for everyone on the team."
"What I appreciate the most about Apache Superset is that it's free and easy to set up."
"The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."
"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"The solution is stable."
"It is more user-friendly and easier to work with the report creation part, creating reports out of an established universe. Maybe a business person could liberate the existing universe and create a report on top of it, as well. So that's one cool feature."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its stability and user-friendliness, making it easy to manage."
"What I find useful in SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is that it has a lot of flexibilities, where you can develop so many reports, and it is able to connect to multiple source systems."
"The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great."
"​It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities.​"
 

Cons

"I definitely see some disadvantages in Apache Superset, particularly in the tagging feature which is not up to the mark, creating a little bit of mess for the administrators."
"Apache Superset needs more rich charting capabilities."
"Areas of Apache Superset that could be improved include enhancing the data visualization features and addressing the overall data sourcing limitations, such as the 800 kilobyte limit per query that sometimes restricts our analysis, especially if we need to access data from many years back."
"The platform's reporting feature needs enhancement."
"Automation in terms of APIs for creating roles, and giving privileges to the user can be improved."
"Dark mode would be the main thing I would like; it does not really work because the chart text cannot be white in a dark mode setup, so it is not feasible."
"Dynamic dashboarding could improve to enable smooth navigation when transitioning from a higher to a lower view, allowing for easy accessibility."
"With Apache Superset, we had some problems with the permissions when we had too many users."
"We regret that versions that are initially released do not seem to be well finished (a lot of bugs), and that a lot of patching is necessary to get to a stable version (our experience for BOXIR3, BI4 and so on)."
"I am not sure about how it supports my compliance and data governance requirements."
"It should have a better integration with Excel."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective."
"The stability isn't quite as good as it could be."
"We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform can be improved by developing another module of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform to integrate with the existing system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Apache Superset is less than some of its competitors."
"Apache Superset has a three-year licensing model."
"Apache Superset is open-source and free."
"Apache Superset is an open-source solution."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"The product's pricing falls on the spectrum's cheaper side, excluding its licensing cost. The product's pricing is good compared to other tools in the market. My company makes payments towards the licensing costs of the product on a yearly basis."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Visualization solutions are best for your needs.
911,493 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Apache Superset?
I definitely see some disadvantages in Apache Superset, particularly in the tagging feature which is not up to the mark, creating a little bit of mess for the administrators. We work with a Role-Ba...
What is your primary use case for Apache Superset?
My major use case for Apache Superset is anything related to analytical dashboards.
What advice do you have for others considering Apache Superset?
In terms of dashboarding tools, I work with them on a daily basis and can help with Apache Superset. We use Apache Superset for dashboarding. I always use it for read purposes, and we don't manage ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Apache Superset vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,493 professionals have used our research since 2012.