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FICO Blaze Advisor vs Pega Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

FICO Blaze Advisor
Ranking in Business Rules Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pega Platform
Ranking in Business Rules Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (4th), Process Automation (2nd), Rapid Application Development Software (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Business Rules Management category, the mindshare of FICO Blaze Advisor is 32.2%, up from 32.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pega Platform is 23.1%, up from 23.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Rules Management
 

Featured Reviews

PIOTR SHUBIANOK - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution is stable and has the ability to extend the built-in logic, but is difficult to deploy
FICO needs to provide a better user experience and user interface. Unfortunately, our clients are not able to add customization by themselves. So this limits their ability to use the solution. FICO Blaze is a complex technology, so it's more about engineering work. This means that we need to hire developers who will learn FICO Blaze as technology and use it. Without development knowledge, it is impossible to use the solution. Our clients do not always have a budget to hire huge salaried engineers, and they want to be able to tune small changes by themselves, but unfortunately, they can't because again, Blaze is really a complex technology. Currently, the solution's interface allows for really simple changes to be made by our clients. I would like to have an easier user-friendly interface to allow for more changes to be made by the client without the need for an engineer. This is not true for all companies. We are talking about some real strategies when we have a lot of decision tables, rules, and decision graphs. Because it's really hard for our business users/customers to make low-level customizations by themselves. The main reason why we switched to other solutions is that we don't see the possibility with FICO Blaze Advisor and vector of FICA company that they think to improve this because they created the decision model. This is an extension of FICO Blaze with some new modern UI items, but it's still not working 100 percent. Unfortunately, we see that it's a huge gap nowadays with this old technology that's why we continue to search for new software which we'll use.
Mallik-Kesavaraju - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly improves the overall cycle time, and offers robotic automation, and the BPM workflow
The extensive availability of ready-made gadgets in Pega BPM is a double-edged sword. While it offers convenience, it also leads to a steeper learning curve. Our developers and business analysts need to invest significant time and effort to fully understand and utilize the platform's capabilities. In essence, it's a complex product that demands a deep understanding to be used effectively. So, it cuts both ways. This complexity can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on the user's expertise. So, the learning curve is pretty high! So, it's very good if you are a professional user, but you need to be a really good professional user to use this solution effectively.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FICO Blaze Advisor's most valuable features are the analytics, the code change is not required, and even a business analyst can do that change in the rules when we set it up."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the IDE."
"The solution is customizable, so you can create your own data items and variables to suit your needs."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is the algorithm they use in the retail version. The execution there is very optimized - so even though we have a huge service with huge counter rules, we still get the results in milliseconds. That is something amazing I found about this tool."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is that it has a fast engine for decisioning."
"The rules management application is the best feature because BAs or even, perhaps, a businessperson, can directly create rules, change rules, and deploy them to production directly."
"The most important features of Pega BPM are case management and claims management, and soon they'll also be offering claims processing. I also love Pega BPM in terms of performance. It's also one of the very few user-friendly solutions in the market. It may take some time to learn Pega BPM, but once you get a proper handle on it, tracking and managing processes become very easy anytime, anywhere. Pega BPM also has very good documentation you can use to learn the solution. Pega has a community portal that has complete information and explanations, and if you're facing a challenge, you can post your challenge on the community portal and get a resolution at the same time."
"Scalable and stable BPM software with a powerful case management feature. It also has good workflow."
"The solution is operating well overall."
"The most valuable features of the solution are case management, routing, and low-code environment."
"The solution offers excellent workflows."
"The best part of Pega, for me, is that they let you reuse a lot of the aspects in the product."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its quick setup. Nowhere else you can create a good-looking application this quick. It's a fairly robust system."
"There are a lot of frameworks in the product. I use Pega PRPC the most."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more help on the internet and more training over the internet. They only have a few blogs there, so that should be increased."
"More online support such as a knowledge base should be available."
"FICO Blaze Advisor is still missing things for maintaining the version of something. For example, we have gates for programming, for storing, or scripts. In there, one developer can prepare a file or a piece of code or something, and another developer can work on the same code or on the same text file or something, and you can manage it. This is missing in FICO Blaze Advisor."
"Lacks notifications when code changes have been made."
"The initial setup of FICO Blaze Advisor was somewhat complex. The implementation took approximately three to four months. However, I left halfway through the process, I am not sure of the exact timeframe."
"The developer's tools on their optimized version should be a little bit more user friendly. Additionally, it really doesn't pick up the actual exception or error of what the developers are getting."
"FICO needs to provide a better user experience and user interface."
"An area for improvement in Pega BPM is security. It's secure, but it still has a lot of vulnerabilities. Pega BPM is robust, but it still needs some improvement performance-wise."
"Robotics could improve, as my learning curve in robotics has been challenging."
"The way the IDE works with the chatbox and the taxonomy imports could be a little smoother."
"I believe they simplify the application development. It is still complex. The learning is not easy, it takes time compared to other products on the market."
"I think there is room for improvement in the low code/ no code environment that they're promoting now. That needs to be aligned a little bit more. I still feel that it is not that friendly for a person who has no experience with Pega to just go in and try to create something."
"It should have integration with non-relational databases. A lot of databases are non-relational, and as a company, we are planning to move to NoSQL or open-source databases. It would be good if we are able to install and use Pega on a NoSQL database. They can also try to tailor or organize the company a bit differently and go more towards the microservice concept. I would like Pega to develop machine learning and intelligent AI algorithms. They have a good foundation in terms of the model and the stuff that we are using for some customers, and it will be good to onboard as many machine learning algorithms as possible."
"Sometimes when we are patching some data from the database, we are getting added as a timeout."
"There are some UX shortcomings within the solution. However, it's my understanding that they have addressed them and in the next three months they will come out with a new updated version. They will be moving away from HTML5."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The biggest disadvantage of Blaze Advisor is the initial cost... The price could be reduced to increase profit margins and the number of clients."
"As a starting price, it is around $40,000 for a perpetual license."
"There was an annual license required to use FICO Blaze Advisor. There were not any additional features."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of users."
"This upgrade process is very expensive; although I haven't been on the sales team responsible for the pricing, I know it costs millions of dollars."
"The price of this solution, including installation and configuration, is comparable to competing vendors."
"Licensing is expensive. You need to wisely select between per user and per case."
"Its pricing is on the higher side, but they have come up with different plans and different small products that can be used by smaller organizations that don't have that much money to spend. They have different pricing packages depending on the number of users or depending upon the number of cases created in the production or live environment."
"There are multiple Pega licensing models, including outcome- and revenue-based licensing models"
"The licensing is on a yearly basis. Because of our special relationship, all the training certifications are free of cost. All our employees can do Pega certifications at zero cost. It is all on Pega."
"They need to come up with licensing options. Right now they do have a cloud-based option, but the cloud prices I've seen are much more expensive compared to competing products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Insurance Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FICO Blaze Advisor?
FICO Blaze Advisor has two licensing models in addition to a free trial. One model is yearly maintenance, with regular costs and yearly payments. The other is related to payments for Blaze Advisor ...
Is Pega BPM easy to work with and can beginners utilize this software?
You do need some preparation to be able to use all functions of Pega BPM. However, all users of this platform are in luck as it comes with good documentation and you can learn pretty much everythin...
Have you encountered any issues while using Pega BPM and were you assisted by the company?
My company has been using this tool for years and the only issue we have had, if you can call it that, was while setting it up. When we were setting it up initially, we had some drawbacks and could...
When you consider the features and benefits of Pega BPM, would you say this product is fairly priced?
Pega BPM can be considered overpriced for some; it all depends on the size of your company and the requirements of your customers. Sure, there are products out there that do the things that Pega B...
 

Also Known As

Blaze Advisor
Pega BPM, Pegasystems, SmartBPM, PegaRULES
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aviva, Absa, Nationwide Building Society
The State of Maine, ANZ, Coca-Cola, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), ME, New South Wales, OptumRx, Texas Department of Transportation, UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement
Find out what your peers are saying about FICO Blaze Advisor vs. Pega Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.