Board vs Knowage comparison

Board International and Knowage are both solutions in the Reporting category. Board International is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.3, while Knowage is ranked #22. Board International holds a 1.6% mindshare in RT, compared to Knowage’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Board International users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Knowage users who would recommend it.

Board

Read 37 Board reviews

2,679 Views
563 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

1,142 Views
571 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Board

Knowage

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Knowage and Board are competitors in the business intelligence market. Data comparisons show a preference for Board due to its advanced features and perceived value.

Features: Knowage offers open-source versatility, integration capabilities, and customization, making it cost-efficient. Board provides comprehensive analytics, planning, and simulation tools with a robust unified platform.

Room for Improvement: Knowage needs improvement in simplifying its setup process and user interface. Its reporting capabilities could be enhanced. Board requires better data integration flexibility, more customization options, and a simpler interface for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Board supports both cloud and on-premise deployments with extensive support ensuring a smooth onboarding process. Knowage, while flexible, demands more initial setup and technical expertise, potentially slowing down deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Knowage attracts price-sensitive businesses with lower setup costs. Board's higher initial costs can be offset by greater ROI from its enhanced features and integrations.

To learn more, read our detailed Board vs. Knowage Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Knowage

January 2026

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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

Board

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

22nd

Ranking in Reporting

17th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (8th)

Knowage

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

33rd

Ranking in Reporting

22nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 1.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knowage is 1.6%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Board	1.6%
Knowage	1.6%
Other	96.8%

Reporting

Featured Reviews

reviewer2645016

Manager, Software Delivery at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers flexibility in design and saves time in budgeting and forecasting processes

I find Board to be simple and easy to use. It offers significant flexibility in designing solutions. The system overall is very useful, with many capabilities that provide flexibility. Our budgeting and forecasting processes support around three hundred twenty users who would otherwise rely on Excel, making Board invaluable for saving time.

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BlessingSithole

Software Engineer at syntegra

Open-source with great embedding capabilities but the dashboards could be better

I know the initial setup is pretty straightforward. It doesn't take a long time to deploy. Even on your own personal computer, when you want to try it out, it doesn't take too long to get it running. For the initial setup, I'd say it's maybe a four out of five in terms of how easy it is. You need to add these Java dependencies and so forth, which can be a bit boring, however, it's almost perfect. To deploy Knowage usually takes about a day. In terms of the implementation strategy, it's just following the instructions that they give us on the installation and then just knowing how to handle the process. Usually, there is a group of engineers who do that for us and manage the server itself. If a team is knowledgeable, then it doesn't take a long time. When you need a new instance, it's very quick. The implementation strategy is based on just following instructions on the installation process from Knowage. For deployment and maintenance, we need just maybe two people simply to monitor the traffic coming in. However, it's maintained by people who were doing other jobs like maintaining our other server. They just monitor the Knowage server and make sure that it's up and running and that there are no bugs. There are not too many bugs coming out from the debugger.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a good set of visual elements that you can use and can explain quite well."

"The most valuable features are the reporting and the charts. The reporting functionality is handy for aggregation, when it comes to planning. That ability is fascinating and our users are very happy with it. The charts and the reporting allow our users to see all the data and to see how things are going this year or in the COVID situation. They're seeing everything. Instead of having to check data line by line, they're seeing it in a graph and they're seeing it in charts."

"The ease of being able to get the data into BOARD is what makes it nice for people with a semi-IT background."

"Where it used to take me three days at the beginning of the year to create the new financial statement, now it is a matter of minutes because all the data is in the system."

"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."

"The support from the BOARD team and their consultants is great. Whenever I use technical support, they are good."

"we are able to easily export data. When directors need financial information, we can go in the system and export the data, then send it out so they have it ready and available. If they are not in the office, we can email it to them. In addition, all the managers are now more on top of their expenses and their budget."

"A lot of flexibility from the data modeling standpoint. It can add specific line items into our budget, for example, or if we want to make changes to the data model itself, we have that flexibility."

More Board pros

"The embedding feature is great."

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."

Cons

"Building similar models entirely from scratch could be made quicker with transfer abilities between databases and capsules."

"Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance."

"Sometimes, the data disappears from the product."

"The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance. The consolidated finance area also needs improvement."

"We can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model."

"What could be better is the manual... nowadays, most people use a web client, but on the Board manual website, a lot of the information is only about the Windows client. If they could update that, it would be helpful."

"One of the things that I would like to see is the ability to have a rule directly referenced on the cubes."

"If we could upload other data, e.g., pivot tables which can be done in BOARD already, that we have pre-existing and have that data distribute to more complex spreadsheets, I would like that going forward."

More Board cons

"The dashboard components could be better."

"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Marketing Services Firm

13%

University

Insurance Company

Hospitality Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?

We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...

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What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

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What needs improvement with Board?

Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance.

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Comparisons

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 19% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 6% of the time

Jedox vs Board

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Board

Compared 5% of the time

CCH Tagetik vs Board

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

SAS Visual Analytics vs Knowage

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OpenText Intelligence vs Knowage

Compared 7% of the time

Plotly Dash Enterprise vs Knowage

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Knowage

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Board

February 2026

Download Board product report

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

January 2026

Download Knowage product report

Also Known As

No data available

SpagoBI

Overview

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Board International

Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

Knowage

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital

Buyer's Guide

Board vs. Knowage

January 2026

Free Report: Board vs. Knowage

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