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IBM Cognos vs TIBCO Jaspersoft comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)
TIBCO Jaspersoft
Ranking in Reporting
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.5%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Jaspersoft is 2.4%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
AnkurMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable and stable product that enables users to set properties dynamically
The solution is used mainly for reporting purposes. We generate PDFs, which are delivered to the recipient via email We can set any property dynamically. We have to use different currencies. Sometimes, we use the pound sign. Sometimes, we use the dollar sign. Our software is a multi-currency…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Comparing IBM Cognos to other applications, once a person is trained on it or they have developed a skill set to operate the application, it is best in its category."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"The feature that I like most is the drag and drop capability."
"The designer is the most valuable feature."
"With the online view, it's easier to create Ad Hoc reports. It has inbuilt reports so we can easily get data from the system and customize the fields."
"I give the stability of the solution a nine out of ten."
"It's easy to use and maintain."
"The growth time is the most valuable feature of TIBCO Jaspersoft."
"It offers high processing power for report generation and is cost-effective."
"You can do quite a lot with it in terms of automated reports and dashboards."
 

Cons

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"One key area for improvement is the need to improve the self-service nature and functionality of the product in terms of visual analytics."
"Need improvement towards Visualization."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The solution seems to slow down the servers."
"A better focus should be put on self-service reporting."
"There might be some compatibility issues with the dashboard if we're using the latest version and some clients are using the older version. Some features might not be supported."
"Currently, JSON format is the main format we use, however, in TIBCO Jaspersoft, XML format is the default and JSON did not work because TIBCO did not fix it."
"The reporting templates have room for improvement."
"I would like to see some analysis done prior to data extraction. The data extraction itself could also be improved."
"Customization is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement."
"The stability of TIBCO Jaspersoft needs improvement."
"The Ad Hoc Report Writer does not include as many features as Tableau and needs to be improved to meet expectations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"It is averagely priced."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"The solution is affordable."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"I would rate the pricing as four out of five because it's expensive."
"I give the cost of the solution a five out of ten."
"Since I checked last time, only one annual license costs about $25,000."
"I find the price to be reliable and not overly costly."
"The pricing is cost effective because it is based on servers rather than users."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
The best and open source (No cost involved) solution for all BI requirements is Jaspersoft Open Studio. Refer to rajeshsirsikar.com for more information.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Jaspersoft?
I am sharing a scenario for pricing: for ten thousand users and a robust server, it may cost in the hundreds of thousands USD. However, TIBCO is more enterprise-focused and might have different pri...
 

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.
Mosaic, Vander University, Telesoft, Entrust, Ericsson, BT, Groupon, John Hopkins, Puma
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. TIBCO Jaspersoft and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.