IBM Db2 Database vs SAP HANA comparison

IBM and SAP are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while SAP is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 6.6% mindshare in SQL, compared to SAP’s 7.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

IBM Db2 Database

Read 75 IBM Db2 Database reviews

3,607 Views
3,463 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

SAP HANA

Read 93 SAP HANA reviews

6,000 Views
4,860 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

IBM Db2 Database

SAP HANA

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

IBM Db2 Database and SAP HANA compete in the enterprise database field. SAP HANA seems to have the upper hand in performance due to its in-memory technology, while IBM Db2 is strong in platform versatility and SQL capabilities.

Features: IBM Db2 offers powerful SQL features like object tables, Java method support, and self-tuning memory management, making it flexible with multi-platform support. SAP HANA uses in-memory technology to reduce data storage needs and enhance processing speed, with strong data integration and real-time analytics.

Room for Improvement: IBM Db2 users point out a steep learning curve, complex licensing, and integration challenges, requesting better management tools and enhanced analytics. SAP HANA is noted for its high costs, complex customization, and needing improved third-party tool integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Db2 is most suitable for on-premises environments, which may limit cloud-centric setups. SAP HANA supports on-premises, hybrid, and private cloud deployments, offering flexible options. IBM Db2 support feedback is mixed, with varied response times. SAP HANA's support is recognized for technical expertise but criticized for high costs and slow responses.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Db2 is considered a mid-range option, more affordable than SAP HANA but facing criticism for complex licensing. SAP HANA is known as a high-cost solution, with a significant investment in licensing and deployment often justified by its advanced features and performance. Both promise substantial ROI, with IBM Db2 noted for cost-efficiency in certain scenarios, while SAP HANA provides ROI from processing and analytics efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Db2 Database vs. SAP HANA Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Database vs. SAP HANA

December 2025

Download the complete report

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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

6.6

IBM Db2 Database offers high ROI with enhanced efficiency and performance, despite initial costs, supporting seamless business projects.

Sentiment score

6.1

SAP HANA offers time and cost savings, with notable ROI and customization benefits, though integration costs challenge some companies.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

We do not feel we're getting value for the investment due to the additional resources needed for integration and maintenance.

A K 18

Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

I have seen a return on investment with SAP HANA as it typically delivers measurable ROI, especially in finance and month-end close processes.

PremKumarR

Finance Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

SAP HANA is a cost-saving solution that helps save money and serves as a time-saving solution that helps save time.

Joe Lau

Senior Manager at PwC

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.5

IBM Db2 support is generally reliable yet requires speed improvements; users find response times and expertise occasionally lacking.

Sentiment score

6.1

SAP HANA offers high-quality 24/7 customer service, but experiences vary, with concerns over slow responses and complex issue handling.

We normally receive substantial discounts on the price.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

The community support is better than the official SAP support.

Hari Priya

SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc

While issues are resolved eventually, the first level of support is not as good as we would like.

Richard Silhan

Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees

When we raise a ticket for AWS or Azure issues, we find their support is very proactive, while SAP's support is quite passive.

Dhiraj Jankar

Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.1

IBM Db2 excels in scalability for large companies but faces challenges with horizontal scaling and increasing costs.

Sentiment score

7.8

SAP HANA provides scalable enterprise-level solutions, allowing seamless vertical and horizontal expansion to efficiently handle substantial data volumes.

No quotes available

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SAP HANA handles large data volumes efficiently, allowing for adding more modules or users without performance issues.

PremKumarR

Finance Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Our operations have grown from a hundred data operations a day to as many in a couple of seconds.

A K 18

Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

It depends on what needs to change in the structure, as some entities cannot be changed and require a new implementation, while others can be modified.

Bassem Mohammed

IT Application Manager at TBTD

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.7

IBM Db2 Database is highly rated for stability and reliability, though performance can dip with significant data growth.

Sentiment score

7.8

SAP HANA is praised for its stability, reliability, and efficiency, with improvements seen in version 2.0 and initial configurations.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

We recently faced customer data loss during the cluster handover or failover fallback.

Dhiraj Jankar

Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

We have not had any problems in the last seven to eight years.

Richard Silhan

Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees

Regarding stability, they are using legacy systems and have implemented SAP HANA.

Hari Priya

SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Room For Improvement

IBM Db2 Database needs usability, integration, and cloud improvements, plus better licensing, analytics, security, and standardization tools.

SAP HANA needs improvements in interface, scalability, integration, and cost efficiency, with enhanced support, training, and mobile integration.

It might be slightly slower than other database vendors, but it works well since banks typically do not move quickly with leading-edge technology.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

The main issue is the ecosystem, which lacks the widespread support that SQL enjoys.

A K 18

Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

The setup process and deployment process for SAP HANA is complex.

reviewer8857240

Program manger at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Licensing costs with SAP HANA are very high.

Hari Priya

SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Setup Cost

IBM Db2 pricing is complex and expensive, especially in Africa and the Middle East, but offers robust features.

SAP HANA is costly due to licensing, setup, and hardware expenses, affecting affordability for smaller businesses despite robust capabilities.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

It's a recurring subscription model, which is expensive compared to legacy systems with just a maintenance fee.

A K 18

Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

SAP is not a cheap company, and its licenses are expensive.

Richard Silhan

Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees

I would rate the price for SAP HANA as high.

Dhiraj Jankar

Senior SAP Basis Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Valuable Features

IBM Db2 Database offers SQL, Java integration, scalability, security, and seamless IBM integration for flexible, reliable enterprise applications.

SAP HANA offers real-time processing, integration, scalability, and user-friendly interface, enhancing speed, reporting, and diverse business adaptability.

IBM Db2 Database, because of enterprise performance and support, is why banks still maintain their relationship with it.

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The IBM Db2 Database is trusted, and IT effort is less than any other product.

Mona Mohamed

Network Administrator at GAEB

For more quotes and insights, download the IBM Db2 Database report

This architecture allows for faster data processing and real-time analytics that were not possible with traditional databases.

A K 18

Director of Infrastructure at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

The concept enhances speed, allowing the database to serve and move data quickly.

Richard Silhan

Sup-basis consultant at a security firm with 51-200 employees

One of our dashboards using Excelsius was previously developed on normal BW on Oracle data, which took 10 minutes to open. After developing the same calculation views using those tables and replacing them with calculation views in Excelsius, the dashboard opened in seconds.

Hari Priya

SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc

For more quotes and insights, download the SAP HANA report

Categories and Ranking

IBM Db2 Database

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAP HANA

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (2nd), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Db2 Database is 6.6%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 7.5%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SAP HANA	7.5%
IBM Db2 Database	6.6%
Other	85.9%

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

reviewer2708292

Associate Director, Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Support improves setup and maintenance while pricing influences decision

If you have a similar use case and the same deal with IBM as our company, it is definitely a good option and choice. The company I work with has more than 50,000 people and more than 500 support staff. We are not locked into one database vendor. We typically work with multiple database vendors simultaneously, selecting the top choice based on the deals we make and other considerations. We do not use IBM Db2 Database related to AI at this moment because our AI project PLC is still very small scale. We may consider it in the future if we have enough scale. Overall rating for IBM Db2 Database is 8.5 out of 10.

Read full review

Hari Priya

SAP Analytics Lead at Miracle Software Systems, Inc

Performs well with high database and reporting performance

We face difficulties replicating the AC DOCA table, which is a huge table, from S/4HANA to SAP HANA BAS, Business Application Studio, or HANA Studio using SLT. For developing Power BI reports using the AC DOCA table, we are replicating full data daily. We want to implement delta load, and while we used OData service for one client, the delta OData service link is not properly updating delta records. Licensing costs with SAP HANA are very high. Due to high pricing, many clients are moving from BW on SAP HANA and S/4HANA to Azure SQL. I have worked with several clients who have moved all data flows to Azure and developed Power BI queries on top of Azure. Many clients are also using Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The certification costs are also very high, more than ₹1,40,000 INR. Previously, it was ₹30,000 to ₹40,000. I want to pursue three certifications but am unable to do so due to the cost.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	48

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	62

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Db2 Database?

Db2 database scalability and performance capabilities match our database needs. It covers pretty much everything a database administrator or engineer might need.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Db2 Database?

IBM Db2 is an expensive solution. While I am not heavily involved with pricing, additional companies provide capabilities or products like those from BMC, which many installations might also purchase.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Db2 Database?

The IBM Db2 Database is a good solution, but now there is a high maintenance charge. The IBM Db2 Database needs improved support, and there are many difficulties in using it. We tend to use the clo...

See all answers

What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?

Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...

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Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?

We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...

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Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?

SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...

See all answers

Comparisons

SQL Server vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 40% of the time

Oracle Database vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 17% of the time

Teradata vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 9% of the time

MySQL vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Informix vs IBM Db2 Database

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Db2 Database Competitors

Oracle Database vs SAP HANA

Compared 28% of the time

SQL Server vs SAP HANA

Compared 14% of the time

MySQL vs SAP HANA

Compared 7% of the time

DuckDB vs SAP HANA

Compared 4% of the time

Oracle Database In-Memory vs SAP HANA

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP HANA Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Database

January 2026

Download IBM Db2 Database product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP HANA

January 2026

Download SAP HANA product report

Also Known As

DB2

SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA

Overview

DB2 Enterprise for Linux, UNIX, and Windows is the ideal data server for the most demanding workloads. New XML support is designed to help firms minimize the time and effort it takes to persist and use their XML data reducing development costs and improving business agility.

IBM

SAP HANA, also known as SAP High-performance Analytics Appliance, is a multi-model database that stores data in its memory, allowing users to avoid disk storage. The product combines its robust database with services for creating applications. SAP HANA is faster than other database management systems (DBMS) because it stores data in column-based tables in main memory and brings online analytical processing (OLAP) and online transaction processing (OLTP) together.

The column-oriented in-memory database design allows users to run high-speed transactions alongside advanced analytics, all in a single system. This provides companies with the ability to process very large amounts of data with low latency and query data in an instant. By combining multiple data management capabilities, the solution simplifies IT, helps businesses with innovations, and facilitates digital transformation.

The solution is structured into five groups of capabilities, categorized as:

Database design
Database management
Application development
Advanced analytics
Data virtualization

There are three more SAP products that work alongside SAP HANA and complete the experience for users together. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a ready-to-run cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP). SAP BW/4HANA is a packaged data warehouse, based on SAP HANA, which allows users to consolidate data across the enterprise to get a consistent view of their data. Finally, SAP Cloud is a single database as a service (DBaaS) foundation for modern applications and analytics across all enterprise data. All three products can combine with SAP HANA to deliver to users an optimized experience regarding their data.

SAP HANA Features

Each architectural group of capabilities of SAP HANA has various features that users can benefit from. These include:

Parallel processing database: SAP HANA utilizes a single platform to run transactional and analytical workloads.
ACID compliance: This feature ensures compliance with requirements for Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) standards.
Multi-tenancy: This feature allows multiple tenant databases to run in one system while sharing the same memory and processors.
Multi-tier storage and persistent memory support: SAP HANA's native storage extension is a built-in capability to manage between memory and persistent storage, including SAP HANA Cloud Data Lake.
Scaling: The scaling feature supports terabytes of data in a single server and distributes large tables across multiple servers in a cluster to scale further.
Data modeling: This feature consists of graphical modeling tools that enable collaboration between stakeholders and the creation of models to execute complex business logic and data transformation in real time.
Stored procedures: The product has a native language to build stored procedures and uses advanced capabilities to create complex logic.
Administration: This feature consists of administration tools for various platform lifecycle, performance, and management operations and automations.
Security: SAP HANA provides its users with real-time data anonymization features to extract value from data while protecting privacy.
Availability and recovery: The tool supports high availability and disaster recovery through an array of techniques, including backup, storage mirroring, synchronous, asynchronous, and multitarget system replication.
Extended application services: Through its built-in application server, users can develop services such as REST and ODATA, as well as web applications that can run on multiple locations.
Client access: The product offers clients the ability to access it via other application platforms and languages, including Java, JavaScript, R, and Go.
Application lifecycle management: This set of features facilitates the building and packaging of applications, transporting them for development to test to production, and then deploying them.
Application development: This feature consists of a set of tools that offer application development on premises and in the Cloud. The programming language ABAP includes additional optimized features to build extensions to SAP applications.
Search: The search feature uses SQL to locate text promptly across multiple columns and textual content.
Spatial processing: This product feature provides native support for spatial data types and spatial functions.
Graph: Through this feature, users of the product can store and process highly connected data using a property graph.
Streaming analytics: This feature combines various data sources that users can utilize to discover trends over a set period.
Data integration and replication: The solution offers comprehensive features to handle all data integration scenarios.
Data federation: This feature allows users to perform queries on remote data sources in real time with data federation.
Caching: The capacity to cache data provides users with the ability to optimize federated queries against remote sources of data.

SAP HANA Benefits

SAP HANA provides many benefits for its users. These include:

This solution offers a high level of data and application security, beginning from a secure setup and providing continuous support.
SAP HANA offers augmentation for applications and analytics with built-in machine learning (ML).
The solution works in a timely manner, as it provides a response to queries within seconds in large production applications.
SAP HANA simplifies work, as it provides a single gateway to all user data with advanced data virtualization.
The product is very flexible, as it allows users to deploy applications in a public or private cloud, in multiple clouds, on premises, or hybrid.
SAP HANA scales easily for data volume and concurrent users across a distributed environment.
This is a powerful solution in terms of querying large datasets with a massively parallel processing (MPP) database.
SAP HANA is a versatile product that supports hybrid transactional and analytical processing as well as many data types.
The product provides a smaller data footprint with no data duplication or advanced compression, and reduces data silos.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a database consultant at a pharma/biotech company, SAP HANA is a very robust solution with good data access.

Bruno V., owner at LAVORO AUTOM INF E COM LTDA, likes SAP HANA because the product offers advanced features, helps reduce hours, and makes it easy to find what you need.

SAP

Sample Customers

Knorr-Bremse, Mizuho Bank Ltd., Australian Government Department of Defence, SCHWENK Zement, Friedhelm Loh Group, YAZAKI Europe Limited, Ekornes ASA, Baldor Electric, VSN Systemen BV, Lion Brewery (Ceylon) PLC, PLANSEE Group, TE Connectivity, Hansgrohe SE, Openmatics, University of Toronto

Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited

Buyer's Guide

IBM Db2 Database vs. SAP HANA

December 2025

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