Knowage vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Knowage and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Knowage is ranked #34, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.5. Knowage holds a 1.1% mindshare in BIT, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Knowage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

3,548 Views
2,590 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Pentaho Business Analytics

Read 45 Pentaho Business Analytics reviews

5,548 Views
3,218 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Knowage

Pentaho Business Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Pentaho Business Analytics and Knowage compete in the business intelligence software category. Pentaho appears to have the advantage in pricing and support, offering a comprehensive feature set that many users appreciate.

Features: Pentaho offers a comprehensive suite including Data Integration tools, a robust Analyzer, and a rich plugin architecture. It facilitates easy dashboard creation with CDE and supports extensive customization. Knowage focuses on self-service BI, enabling user-driven data exploration and reporting, leveraging tools such as data mining and integration with various engines.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho needs to enhance its visualization tools and user interface, which often require technical expertise for customization. There are significant differences between its open-source and enterprise editions, posing challenges for scalable transitions. Knowage requires improvements in documentation and robustness, with consistency and user interface needing refinement to enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both solutions primarily deploy on-premises, with Pentaho also supporting private and hybrid cloud environments. Pentaho benefits from a strong community and satisfactory technical support, although documentation gaps exist. Knowage enjoys community support but lacks the commercial-grade support required by large organizations.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho provides a free community edition, which reduces costs but has limitations, while its enterprise edition offers better features at higher costs. The comprehensive feature set adds value to users. Knowage, as an open-source solution, presents budget-friendly options but may incur higher internal development costs. Users report a decent ROI, which varies depending on deployment scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

September 2026

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Knowage

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

34th

Ranking in Reporting

22nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pentaho Business Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

21st

Ranking in Reporting

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Operations Analytics (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Pentaho Business Analytics	1.0%
Knowage	1.1%
Other	97.9%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Albert Masanja

Margin Assurance Analyst at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

A stable open source suite for modern business analytics with a useful replication feature

It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products.

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Julien Baluka

Founder at SJT Consult

Solution enables effective ETL processes and exhibits high satisfaction

From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this is based on what I have heard about novelties in the market. I do not see the need to extend the coverage of Pentaho Business Analytics's domain. For things that it does not do, there are better solutions on the market, and it would be costly to implement them. Pentaho Business Analytics is a very great tool for very specific standardized scenarios. If you need more complex elastic solutions because the process is different, there are better tools available.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."

"In terms of ROI, much better than any other solution when it offer full fledged features in open source, planned to have direct contact with SpagoBI for better support."

"Nice features available in SpagoBI compared with other open-source BI are Auditing, Collaborative BI, Query By Example, and User Profiling."

"Instead of just relying on emails to disperse our reports, having a central server to do this for us has helped our organization and has pushed us into a better place."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."

"It's a great product. It has a lot more features than many other BI tools. You can get the most out of machine learning, the best connectivity to Python, and it cuts across enterprise sections."

"The most valuable features to us are application implementation, development, and analysis."

More Knowage pros

"With the launch of Pentaho the organization has aggregated information about the various functional areas and the ability to generate real-time analysis (OLAP) without the need of IT."

"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."

"Pentaho is based on industry standards to build scalable solutions and it is very simple to scale up, horizontally, and vertically."

"The ROI of this product is good, because in little time you can have the first’s outputs."

"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."

"We were able to configure our data warehouse and implement more than eight data cubes in a very short period of time."

"We use both DataStage and Pentaho, but I don't see any special features in Pentaho that is not available in DataStage, except Big Data plugins and connectors."

"It covers most of our ETL requirements."

More Pentaho Business Analytics pros

Cons

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

"The dashboard components could be better. They could do a lot more."

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."

"The demands of some jobs would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing."

"We had stability issues."

"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."

"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."

"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"

More Knowage cons

"From which the latter is not yet the strongest use-case for using Pentaho yet."

"In the reporting tool, I would like to see what code it generates. As of now, there is no provision to see the underlying code of the PRD file."

"Pentaho Business Analytics is not a good tool for visualization. Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."

"R Script."

"The ad-hoc reporting needs to be improved."

"There are too many bugs in our version."

"Pentaho has a solid foundation and decent user interfaces. They are lacking, however, in the tool space for data exploration/presentation."

"There are issues with clustering, and partitioning which we have reported."

More Pentaho Business Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

"Pentaho is expensive ."

"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."

"Free and commercial versions are available."

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Comparison Review

it_user6978

Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

22%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Marketing Services Firm

Outsourcing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?

Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...

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What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?

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Comparisons

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Microsoft Power BI vs Knowage

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Compared 4% of the time

ElegantJ BI vs Knowage

Compared 4% of the time

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Tableau Enterprise vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 7% of the time

icCube vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 3% of the time

More Pentaho Business Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

September 2026

Download Knowage product report

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Business Analytics

September 2026

Download Pentaho Business Analytics product report

Also Known As

SpagoBI

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics

Overview

Knowage is an open-source business intelligence suite offering features like engine concepts and report customization. It's favored for its integration capabilities and self-service BI functionality, allowing users to leverage cross-platform access and conduct comprehensive data analysis.

Knowage stands out in the BI landscape by providing tools that facilitate autonomous data exploration, with an emphasis on flexibility and extensive integration options. With capabilities for embedding reports and dynamic dashboards, it supports various analysis needs through integration with databases and tools like Jasper and BIRT. Despite its technical complexity and interface limitations, Knowage's features such as GIS integration and big data visualization enhance operational efficiency and profitability analysis.

What are the key features of Knowage?

Powerful engines: Facilitate complex data processing with high efficiency.
Report customization: Tailor reports to meet specific business requirements.
Cross-platform access: Enable data accessibility across different devices.
Open-source: Leverage the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open-source solutions.
Embedding capabilities: Integrate seamlessly with tools like Jasper for enhanced functionality.
Python support: Use Python for advanced data correlation and analyses.
GIS integration: Incorporate geographical data for enriched insights.

What benefits should you consider in reviews?

Increased efficiency: Streamlined report deployment and big data visualization.
Comprehensive analysis: Tools for evaluating activities and profitability.
Data export options: Support for exporting data in preferred formats simplifies reporting tasks.
Operational cost savings: Eliminates the need for third-party BI solutions.

In the healthcare and financial sectors, Knowage is used for deriving insights from health data warehouses and performing financial analyses. Companies use it to create dashboards and reports from MySQL databases, embedding them for wider distribution, and enabling effective resource evaluation and decision-making.

Knowage

Pentaho Business Analytics, recognized for its powerful ETL capabilities, delivers robust data management and analytics. Its adaptable interface and custom plugins enable effective data transformations, appealing to enterprises seeking efficient data handling and integration.

Pentaho Business Analytics offers a comprehensive suite for data warehousing, ETL processes, and business intelligence. Known for integrating and analyzing data from multiple systems, it supports industries like marketing, automotive, telecom, and insurance. Despite critiques on its interface and Java reliance, its ability to manage both small and complex data loads makes it a cost-effective choice.

What are the key features of Pentaho Business Analytics?

Pentaho Data Integration: Delivers powerful ETL capabilities for seamless data transformations and connectivity.
Custom Plugins: Supports adaptability with diverse data transformation and integration options.
Dashboard Integration: Facilitates effective visualizations and dashboard creation.

What benefits can be expected from Pentaho Business Analytics?

Cost-Effective: Suitable for enterprises handling complex data loads.
Community Support: Driven by an active user community for better troubleshooting.

Pentaho Business Analytics finds application in sectors requiring extensive data storage and management like telecom and insurance. Companies utilize its capabilities for creating ETL pipelines, managing data flows, and enabling data-driven decision-making.

Hitachi Vantara

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

September 2026

Free Report: Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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