Knowage vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Knowage and SAP are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Knowage is ranked #34, while SAP is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. Knowage holds a 1.1% mindshare in BIT, compared to SAP’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Knowage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

3,099 Views
2,262 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Read 114 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence reviews

12,944 Views
9,190 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Knowage

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence and Knowage compete within the business intelligence solutions category. SAP seems to have the upper hand for large organizations due to its comprehensive features, while Knowage attracts smaller enterprises looking for cost-effective, open-source options.

Features: SAP BusinessObjects includes dynamic visibility, query prompt selector, and a powerful semantic layer known as Universes. These features are designed for large enterprises, enabling complex data integration and automated report scheduling. Knowage focuses on user-friendly visualization development and self-service capabilities, making it ideal for smaller organizations or those with tight budgets.

Room for Improvement: SAP users highlight difficulties in ease of use and integration, especially regarding licensing and deployment. It sometimes struggles with big data performance and integration depth. Knowage is noted for limited documentation and lack of support for some advanced BI features, which can hinder user adaptation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BusinessObjects offers hybrid and cloud deployment flexibility but requires expert handling due to its complexity, with variable tech support quality. Knowage is primarily on-premises, limiting scalability for larger firms. Its tech support is competent for basic issues, consistent with its open-source nature.

Pricing and ROI: SAP BusinessObjects has substantial licensing costs but promises significant ROI through its advanced analytics capabilities suitable for environments with high data volumes. Knowage provides financial advantages with its free open-source license, appealing to smaller organizations looking for cost-effective BI solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

August 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

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (21st)

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence is 2.7%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence	2.7%
Knowage	1.1%
Other	96.2%

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.

Read full review

TarunKumar7

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."

"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."

"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."

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

"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."

"The most valuable feature of SpagoBI is that it is open source and 100% free without limits."

More Knowage pros

"The SAP BusinessObjects product suite is made of different products; this review refers to the Web Intelligence product, whose user-friendly interface enables non-IT-literate persons to create their own queries without needing SQL knowledge, and that has been the case for a very long time."

"It's provided us with best practice reports out of the box for various modules, as well as an interface for creating adhoc reports with more analytical capabilities."

"There are many tools that help the organization like SAP Lumira, SAP Business Explorer, SAP Design Studio and Dashboard to give you the summary and detailed analysis."

"I rate SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform an eight out of ten."

"The platform uses a lot of Java technologies so the performance and system-level management are tricky because it needs a lot of resources."

"There are two tools inside BusinessObjects' schematic layout called the Universal Design Tool and Information Design Tool. These are the most powerful tools that set BusinessObjects' reporting from other solutions. If my organization has 300 or 400 tables, I can combine all of them into one universe, and everyone can use that. It is just a schematic layout that does not hold any data but the table relationships."

"The nicest part of BOE remains the semantic layer (Designer), giving developers a powerful way to encapsulate business logic and push it out to users through Webi or WRC."

"Web Intelligence has allowed our company to move to a self-service delivery model by allowing our internal clients to access, run and schedule reports dynamically without intervention of the BI team."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pros

Cons

"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."

"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."

"Tomcat configuration was tricky in earlier versions."

"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."

"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."

"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."

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

More Knowage cons

"SAP should work on performing the deployment and post-implementation support a bit easier."

"SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality."

"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."

"The platform is totally separated; SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is not easy to integrate with third parties or inside the SAP environment."

"It should have a better integration with Excel."

"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."

"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."

"According to our experience, SAP BO is too heavy and very difficult for customers with medium, or smaller-sized businesses to install and maintain."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 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."

"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."

"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."

"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."

"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."

"It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."

"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."

"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."

"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."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6663

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

University

Retailer

Construction Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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	34
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	67

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

SAP BTP is an expensive solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Knowage

Compared 8% of the time

Pentaho Business Analytics vs Knowage

Compared 7% of the time

Procurify vs Knowage

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Knowage

Compared 5% of the time

Domo vs Knowage

Compared 3% of the time

More Knowage Competitors

SAP Business Data Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 6% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

Compared 3% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

August 2026

Download Knowage product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

August 2026

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence product report

Also Known As

SpagoBI

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects, SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio

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

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform offers powerful tools for enterprise reporting and data visualization, enhancing strategic decision-making through robust integration and secure analytics capabilities.

Designed for comprehensive enterprise reporting, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP, supporting organizations in creating detailed financial, operational, and academic reports. The platform allows data manipulation across multiple sources using a semantic layer and provides intuitive tools like Web Intelligence and Lumira for user-driven report creation. It features centralized management, versatile connectors, and supports large-scale data analytics critical for business forecasting.

What are the key features of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

Integration Capabilities: Seamless connection with SAP ERP and various data sources.
Dynamic Scheduling: Automate report generation for timely insights.
Robust Security: Protects data with stringent security measures.
Semantic Layer: Simplifies data manipulation across sources.
Intuitive Tools: Facilitates user-driven report creation with Web Intelligence and Lumira.

What benefits should be considered in reviews?

Comprehensive Reporting: Enables detailed and accurate enterprise reports.
Decision-Making Support: Enhances strategic decisions with reliable data.
Scalability: Efficiently manages large-scale and complex data analytics.
Versatility in Analysis: Offers flexibility for ad hoc analysis and KPI monitoring.

Organizations across sectors like healthcare, education, insurance, and retail leverage SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform for its capability in facilitating detailed reports and integrating dashboards for key performance indicators. Its extensive reporting features support in-depth analytics vital for business prediction and decision-making processes.

SAP

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

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

August 2026

Free Report: Knowage vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence

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