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Hex vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

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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
20th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Hex is 0.7%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence3.0%
Hex0.7%
Other96.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Aman Thapa - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Scientist at Mathco
Transforms analytics with seamless integrations and AI-driven insights for quick decision-making
The best features Hex offers are rich analytics, seamless integrations, ease of use, flexibility, an intuitive interface, and powerful AI features, which I find very valuable.The unique aspects of Hex that stand out compared to other BI tools include its ease of use and flexibility, as well as its ability to seamlessly integrate SQL and Python for data analysis. Its intuitive interface and powerful AI features enable us to gain quick insights and efficient collaboration, making it a very valuable tool for both technical and non-technical users. Hex provides good data security and governance through access controls and permission management, so I feel confident using its AI features. I believe it has been reliable regarding data security. Using Hex's AI has been very helpful; it has been accurate and reliable, generally providing correct and useful outputs for data analysis and SQL generation. Hex integrates very seamlessly with other AWS services we use, especially with Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3, making connecting data straightforward.
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 has positively impacted my organization by improving my productivity."
"The best features Hex offers are rich analytics, seamless integrations, ease of use, flexibility, an intuitive interface, and powerful AI features, which I find very valuable."
"Hex offers excellent features that make it fast and easy to use."
"If I were to compare it with Power BI and I wanted to build proper well-formatted reports, BusinessObjects Business Intelligence does that much better."
"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"It gives you a lot of flexibility in designing your dashboards."
"The Universe in BO ensures consistent coding for business rules etc."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform outperforms all other tools such as Power BI and Tableau, showing more accuracy, reliability, and flexibility compared to all other BI tools worldwide."
"The combination of IDT and Web Intelligence has taken some of the burden of report creation off of our central data team."
"The platform uses a lot of Java technologies so the performance and system-level management are tricky because it needs a lot of resources."
 

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."
"Notebooks can quickly become messy once you start creating many cells in the same notebook, making it easy to lose your place while scrolling to find the cell you are looking for."
"We had stability issues, mainly with the integration of the SAP BI products with SAP’s EIM products (Data Services, Information Steward)."
"I don't like the fact that I have to use two tools. Web Intelligence is good for reporting and all kinds of stuff, but I would rather have one product. All the reporting features of Web Intelligence should be developed within Lumira. A lot of predictive abilities have been brought into the cloud version of SAP Analytics. It would be nice to see a lot of newer technologies and AI. Predictive capabilities are becoming a little more standard. Instead of having to get another model, we are just looking for one solution to deal with analytics including predictive."
"Integrations with things like Active Directory and LDAP tend to be a little complex."
"The setup was a little complicated. It's not as easy to install it and there is not much information on the internet, so you have to depend on yourself."
"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 is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."
"The platform is totally separated; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not easy to integrate with third parties or inside the SAP environment."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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.​"
"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."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"Its price is fair."
"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."
"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."
"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."
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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%
Construction Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.