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IBM Cognos vs Sisense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
IBM Cognos enhances productivity and decision-making, with significant savings, improved reporting, and ROI depending on implementation.
Sentiment score
6.8
Sisense enhances productivity and decision-making, offering cost savings and improved reporting despite initial expenses, boosting client insights and efficiency.
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
This demonstrates that it requires a lesser number of people. You do not need a huge team for maintaining or working with IBM Cognos.
Sr Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
It makes it very easy for us to make data-driven decisions and we are able to forecast our future predicament or future plans, hence increasing or boosting productivity in my organization.
Lead Software Engineer at Ernst & Young
Due to the data presented to stakeholders, they are able to make informed decisions that impact the day-to-day operations of the client, giving them more insights into what's happening within their organization.
System Integration Specialist at a non-profit with self employed
I have seen a return on investment in that we can manage the Sisense environment with a very small number of users.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support receives mixed reviews, with praise for resources but concerns over costs and response times.
Sentiment score
7.6
Sisense customer service excels with responsive, knowledgeable support, resolving issues efficiently and providing personalized, proactive solutions.
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Senior Project Manager at BD
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
The support was very good.
Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
We typically get responses within 24 hours.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Sisense customer support has been top-notch, great, and very responsive.
Senior Business Analyst at Target
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Cognos scales efficiently, handling large data volumes and integrating seamlessly, meeting medium to large enterprise needs.
Sentiment score
7.4
Sisense offers scalability for medium to large businesses, though some face slower queries with large datasets and complex use cases.
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
The scalability of IBM Cognos is fine.
Sr Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
It is scalable to a very large extent and we can integrate any third-party tools.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Sisense's scalability is impressive as it can crunch a lot more data and has consistently better performance.
Lead Software Engineer at Ernst & Young
Sisense works really well for simple to medium use cases and scales well.
System Integration Specialist at a non-profit with self employed
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
IBM Cognos is stable and reliable, with minimal issues, especially when maintained well with updates and optimizations.
Sentiment score
8.0
Users generally find Sisense stable, though some encounter issues with data import and dashboard load times, but improvements noted.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Sisense is very stable and can handle a large amount of data quickly.
Senior Business Analyst at Target
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Cognos needs a more intuitive interface, improved visualizations, and better integration for competitiveness against Tableau and Power BI.
Sisense needs better data connections, control, mobile usability, technical support, customization, integration handling, admin features, and CI/CD support.
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
Senior Project Manager at BD
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
IBM Cognos can improve its error messages, as whenever something is wrong, it does not give us the proper error message, and we end up rebooting the entire software.
Sr Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster.
Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
It could provide more connectors to integrate with emerging different data sources to exponentially increase the amount of data it can handle.
System Integration Specialist at a non-profit with self employed
I give Sisense a nine because the integration with some third-party tools is good.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

IBM Cognos offers versatile yet expensive pricing, justified by features and scalability, suitable for medium to large enterprises.
Sisense provides flexible pricing for SMEs, generally cheaper than ThoughtSpot, but can incur extra costs for add-ons.
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
Senior Project Manager at BD
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is cost-effective, but for smaller organizations working under a tight budget, this tool might be a bit expensive for them.
Lead Software Engineer at Ernst & Young
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot.
Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that pricing is a little bit higher when compared to other applications, but that justifies the use case.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

IBM Cognos excels in reporting, dashboards, data integration, AI insights, user-friendly interface, scalability, and comprehensive business intelligence.
Sisense offers rapid data processing, seamless integration, and intuitive dashboards, enhancing strategic insights and decision-making efficiency with ease.
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis.
Senior Project Manager at BD
Our dedicated cybersecurity team ensures that sensitive data does not become public, making it crucial that data stored in IBM Cognos remains secure throughout the entire data cycle, which is where these enterprise-grade security measures prove invaluable.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It offers two ways to access data: by cubing the data or hitting it live.
Business Intelligence & Reporting Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
It allows the user to cater to different use cases and is a very fast aggregator across different data sources, giving you the historical context and helping in operationalizing your data.
System Integration Specialist at a non-profit with self employed
Sisense has positively impacted my organization by drastically reducing the time taken to build the data cube, and we can see real-time analytics.
Project Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sisense
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
11th
Ranking in Reporting
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Analytics (4th), Data Visualization (9th), Embedded BI (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sisense is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Sisense1.5%
Other97.2%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

RL
Senior Project Manager at BD
Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions
IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.
Caramel Moana - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Analyst at Target
Data analytics has transformed our KPI tracking and now drives faster sales decisions
This tool has given me the power to convert data into new analytical applications, giving me transparency about working on multiple platforms, and since it is cloud-based, it combines different pages for a complete progress report. Overall, it is playing a perfect, fantastic role in my organization. Some of the best features Sisense offers include its speed due to the In-Chip methodology, great visualization that makes BI easier, and the ability to load millions of data in seconds, which did not seem possible with other traditional reporting tools. It also has a robust architecture and provides REST APIs for external access. I emphasized the In-Chip methodology because it allows for accessing millions of data in a short span of seconds while providing the best visual effects for our business data.
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise92
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
One area where IBM Cognos can be improved is that customer service sometimes is not very responsive, and I would love to see the user interface improved, especially to look somehow updated. In addi...
What needs improvement with Sisense?
So far, Sisense is performing well, but some visualizations lack flexibility in design options. Sisense should improve on handling extremely large data sets, and they should improve on maintaining ...
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
In our organization, we use Sisense for business intelligence where it helps us with complex data from multiple sources and provides excellent insights, which makes it easy for us to make data-driv...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, as the price is relatively affordable compared to other solutions, and I have no challenges with the pricing. The setup is s...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Sisense and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.