Exasol Data Warehouse vs SAP IQ comparison

Exasol and SAP are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Exasol is ranked #32, while SAP is ranked #24 with an average rating of 6.8. Exasol holds a 1.4% mindshare in SQL, compared to SAP’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Exasol users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Exasol Data Warehouse

Read 8 Exasol Data Warehouse reviews

677 Views
596 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SAP IQ

Read 23 SAP IQ reviews

1,362 Views
640 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Exasol Data Warehouse

SAP IQ

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

SAP IQ and Exasol Data Warehouse are competitors in the data warehousing market. Exasol appears to hold the advantage due to its superior features and performance capabilities, despite SAP IQ's strong pricing and support.

Features: SAP IQ offers advanced data compression, column storage, and high performance for BI/analytics. Exasol features in-memory technology, rapid query execution, and automatic optimization, emphasizing speed and analytics.

Room for Improvement: SAP IQ could enhance cloud integration, streamline installation processes, and improve analytics capabilities. Exasol may benefit from expanding its customer support options, offering more flexible pricing models, and enhancing its documentation for diverse business needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Exasol is praised for its cloud-first deployment model that simplifies scaling, while SAP IQ follows a more traditional setup. SAP IQ receives high marks for responsive customer support, contrasting with Exasol's focus on comprehensive technical documentation and self-service resources.

Pricing and ROI: SAP IQ is attractive for its lower setup costs, offering a budget-friendly solution. Exasol, with higher initial costs, offers advanced capabilities that result in quicker returns on investment. Exasol's premium pricing aligns with its performance benefits, while SAP IQ delivers cost efficiency and value.

To learn more, read our detailed Exasol Data Warehouse vs. SAP IQ Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Exasol Data Warehouse vs. SAP IQ

December 2025

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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

Exasol Data Warehouse

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

32nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP IQ

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

24th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Warehouse (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Exasol Data Warehouse is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP IQ is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SAP IQ	1.5%
Exasol Data Warehouse	1.4%
Other	97.1%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Shubham-Agarwal

Manager Projects at Cognizant

Fast query processing and easy-to-store all the data

There are very few companies that are using Exasol, but the majority of companies are using SQL Server, Cloud or IBM Db2 Database, or any other databases. Therefore, the resources are limited, which is my only concern. So if I face any issues, limited resources are available to help me resolve the issue with Exasol. From that perspective, it can be a bit of a struggle for me to find a solution. In the next release, I would like to see better compatibility issues. Currently, Exasol has limited compatibility with other software like Python and R. For example, If I talk about SQL Server, we can connect it to big data or Python, which is also compatible with different servers.

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Akhilesh Narayanan

Tech Lead, Database Section. at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Compression performance gets high marks but user-friendly interface needs improvement

The downside of SAP IQ, from what I understood from the management side, is that the front end for the DBA, for the admin, is not that user-friendly. If you compare it with SQL Server Management Studio, it is not that user-friendly GUI for the admin. But the engine is very strong and powerful. It is easy to deploy SAP IQ; the implementation and installation are easy. The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup, those software integrated backups are not available. So, if you want to take a backup, you need to take it locally, and then only you can back it up to any storage or anything. Those features such as integrated backup, which would allow it to stripe into an appliance or something similar, are not present. One thing I notice as a downside is that if the CPU utilization is very high, there is no direct way we can find out which query is taking the most CPU. In any other RDBMS, there are DMVs available to find out which query is taking most of the CPU, but those features are not present in SAP IQ. If our CPU is hitting at 100%, it is not easy to identify which connection is taking the most CPU.

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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

"Its speed is great."

"The most valuable feature of Exasol is its speed."

"We mainly chose Exasol for its performance reasons."

"We can quickly scale the solution as it works on an MPP system."

"Performance is a top priority, and it excels in this aspect."

"It is easy to scale."

"The solution is hands-off; you set it up insert your data and it self tunes queries."

"The speed is very good compared to other databases, like SQL Server or Oracle."

"It is very robust for ad hoc DW queries and its columnar compression is unique and valuable."

"The initial setup is easy."

"IQ is a very high-performance and high-transaction database."

"The column-based technologies (basically all the database for ITP) are used for SAP IQ. It is used as a column-based solution."

"All data is compressed and indexed, allowing for fast execution of transactions."

"Valuable features for us include the compression, speed, fast response time, and easy object maintenance."

"The feature I appreciate the most about SAP IQ is the compression, which is very good; we cannot compare with any other type of EDW."

"The primary benefit of SAP IQ is its ability to limit the expansion of the costly SAP HANA database, which has limited storage capacity. This necessitates a form of data management that involves moving data from SAP HANA to SAP NLS, which is essentially archiving. This allows us to retain access to the data via a link whenever it is required."

More SAP IQ pros

Cons

"It's not cloud-native so many maintenance operations require downtime."

"They should improve the security features for MPP processing."

"Lacks a cloud-based platform."

"They don't talk very well to with other products when it comes to connectivity. Integration is lacking."

"You have to install Exasol drivers, and it's not easy to find or implement a driver into different systems."

"The only area where we found it could improve was in custom role creation and security, and it was difficult to work with."

"There are limited resources available to help me resolve the issue with Exasol."

"It would be beneficial if the updates would occur more often."

"I think the universe should be part of the Sybase IQ tool set."

"Concurrency and functional error messaging."

"There is very little documentation available."

"The solution works best when combined with other SAP solutions. If the environment has other systems other options might be better."

"Multiplex is very problematic. There are consistency problems in the metadata, meaning it is possible to lose metadata consistency. You should make sure you have healthy backups."

"The primary negative aspect is the cost, which can be a challenge due to the economic conditions in Peru."

"The tool gets stuck sometimes."

"The downside I see is that it doesn't allow most integrated backups; many of the marketplace players such as NetBackup or Veritas, those software integrated backups are not available."

More SAP IQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's cost is mid-ranged."

"It's not that costly. So, the pricing is cheap."

"Negotiation is very important."

"Negotiate based on the features required."

"The only costs after standard licensing fees are for add-ons and upgrades."

"Evaluate all options; check to see if you need expensive add-ons."

"The cost of implementation is about $3,000."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Logistics Company

Insurance Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

36%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP IQ?

IQ implementation costs about three thousand dollars. It's less expensive compared to alternatives like Teradata Base in terms of transactional efficiency.

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What needs improvement with SAP IQ?

When it comes to SAP IQ, the areas that could be improved or enhanced include the error messaging and the locking capabilities, as that's where we often encounter problems. When there is an issue, ...

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What is your primary use case for SAP IQ?

Our usual use cases for SAP IQ is that we have a Software-as-a-Service architecture where this database is the foundation for our SAP BusinessObjects platform. This is where it's getting its data f...

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Comparisons

Oracle Database vs Exasol Data Warehouse

Compared 15% of the time

SQL Server vs Exasol Data Warehouse

Compared 14% of the time

Teradata vs Exasol Data Warehouse

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database In-Memory vs Exasol Data Warehouse

Compared 12% of the time

OpenText Analytics Database (Vertica) vs Exasol Data Warehouse

Compared 9% of the time

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SQL Server vs SAP IQ

Compared 11% of the time

SAP HANA vs SAP IQ

Compared 9% of the time

Snowflake vs SAP IQ

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Database vs SAP IQ

Compared 8% of the time

Snowflake Analytics vs SAP IQ

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Exasol Data Warehouse

January 2026

Download Exasol Data Warehouse product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP IQ

January 2026

Download SAP IQ product report

Also Known As

No data available

Sybase IQ

Overview

Exasol is a high-performance data warehouse solution that accelerates BI and reporting features. Its speed, stability, and self-tuning queries make it valuable, and it doesn't require a database administrator. It's a backend database for Tableau dashboards, resulting in faster report loading times and increased efficiency in querying data.

Exasol's high performance allows users to connect insights and fire queries instead of looking at cached dashboards. It has impressive aggregation capabilities that help calculate metrics on the fly based on user-selected filters.

Exasol

SAP® IQ software delivers speed and power for extreme-scale enterprise data warehousing and analytics. Its column-oriented, grid-based massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and patented data compression and indexing technologies enable companies to exploit the value of huge amounts of data at the speed of business.

SAP

Sample Customers

1&1 Internet SE 11880 Internet Services AG AB Svenska Spel Accarda AG Aera Technology Inc. AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG Apotheken-Rechen-Zentrum GmbH AQR Capital Management, LLC arvato distribution GmbH ARZ Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH Badoo Limited Baur Versand (GmbH & Co. KG) BIScience Ltd Blocket Blue Yonder GmbH Codilink UK Ltd T/A Coniq crealytics GmbH dailyme TV GmbH Dailymotion S.A. Dataforce Verlagsgesellschaft für Business Information mbH Deutsche Postbank AG Digitales Rezept Zentrum GmbH DIKW Groep direct services Gütersloh GmbH DR Technologies Ltd. dress-for-less GmbH econda GmbH emetriq GmbH empiriecom GmbH & Co. KG Flaconi GmbH Fresenius Netcare GmbH Fyber GmbH GfK SE Grant Street Group, Inc. Gruner + Jahr GmbH Gymshark UK Hahn Air Lines GmbH Hermes Einrichtungs Service GmbH & Co. KG INNOVATIVE SCHEDULING, LLC internetstores GmbH INTERSPORT Deutschland eG IQVIA Commercial GmbH & Co. OHG IQVIA Commercial Sp. z o.o. IQVIA Incorporated iVantage Health Analytics K - Mail Order GmbH & Co. KG LIQ CORP SA Manor AG Basel Match2Lists Limited MEDION AG Midasplayer AB Monsoon Accessorize Limited m-pathy GmbH msales Ltd. MTG Modern Services AB MW Aviation GmbH & Co. KG Myntra Designs Pvt Ltd Netzeffekt GmbH New Company Services Ltd. NOVENTI HealthCare GmbH Olympus Europa SE & Co. KG Operation Fistula OpsDataStore OTTO (GmbH & Co KG) Panda Retail Co. PAPSTAR GmbH Piedmont Healthcare, Inc. Questback GmbH RatePAY GmbH Revolut Ltd. Saarland-Sporttoto GmbH Sagarmatha Ltd. SIA Damara Technologies Supermärkte Nord Vertriebs GmbH & Co. KG The National Research Center for College & University Admissions, Inc. United Utilities Water Ltd. Verlag C.H. Beck oHG Vocal Planet Ltd. Vodafone Group Services GmbH Webtrekk GmbH wer liefert was? GmbH Windeln.de SE Wooga GmbH XING SE Zalando SE

ASR Group, Citrix, State of Indiana, PocketCard Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

Exasol Data Warehouse vs. SAP IQ

December 2025

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