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

Hex 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

Hex
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
23rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Hex is 0.8%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 2.7%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence2.7%
Hex0.8%
Other96.5%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SuperSonic - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Daily transcription has boosted my productivity and made spoken input replace manual typing
The best features Hex offers are simplicity and being really lightweight. Simplicity and being lightweight are valuable for me because it just works, making my day easier. I would also add that Hex is free, which is a nice feature. Hex has positively impacted my organization by improving my productivity. My productivity improved because before I started using Hex, I was typing everything and it was taking longer than just saying the same things. I have cut my working day by a few minutes every day because of that.
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

"Hex offers excellent features that make it fast and easy to use."
"Hex has positively impacted my organization by improving my productivity."
"If anything, BO is great at controlling the user's interface eg highly user friendly capable."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"It's provided us with best practice reports out of the box for various modules, as well as an interface for creating adhoc reports with more analytical capabilities."
"I like the fact that we can integrate it seamlessly within our Epic environment, but probably the best thing that Crystal Reports offers is the ability to do visualizations. They're simple to do, and they're catchy. So, it is a really great tool."
"Everything from the broadcasting to the scheduling, to the user management and the reporting, is very powerful."
"We have used all the business objects tools, but this one satisfies all of the business requirements in an optimized way."
"In order to grow, you really need some sort of analysis element to help guide you, and this solution fulfills that need."
"It gets people off Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and sharing the same reports/dashboards, so departments receive the same figures for KPIs and company performance."
 

Cons

"Hex can be improved if they could implement new models because there are new LLMs appearing on a weekly basis, and they are still using the same one."
"The stability is again dependent on your sizing activity. If you don't have enough hardware and use it a lot, the tool will crash."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform can be improved by developing another module of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform to integrate with the existing system."
"It should have a better integration with Excel."
"The platform is totally separated; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not easy to integrate with third parties or inside the SAP environment."
"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."
"The calculation engine requires some improvement."
"Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau."
"They need to improve the processing of software as it has lag when it initially starts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
913,683 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
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Hex?
Hex can be improved if they could implement new models because there are new LLMs appearing on a weekly basis, and they are still using the same one. It would be nice if Hex would have a feature to...
What is your primary use case for Hex?
My main use case for Hex is that I use it daily as my transcription tool. It is really lightweight and easy to use. As a transcription tool in my daily workflow, Hex helps me to speak faster than w...
What advice do you have for others considering Hex?
Regarding Hex's AI capabilities, I think it is secured because it is using a local model. Regarding Hex's AI capabilities, its accuracy and reliability of output are quite nice, and it is one of th...
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 Hex vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.