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Knowage vs SAP Crystal Reports comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 Reporting
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (34th)
SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Knowage is 2.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Crystal Reports2.4%
Knowage2.0%
Other95.6%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

AM
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.
Salman Mukhtar Baig - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP Technical Manager at VS Furniture Middle East
Unlock data insights with seamless integration and robust reporting features
I assess the impact of SAP Crystal Reports' dynamic parameters on the customization and flexibility of my reports as very good. Sometimes it creates a problem when it suddenly closes during work due to improper shutdowns, but most of the time it's beneficial since I can fetch the data in one report very efficiently, which is great for the company. The sub reports in SAP Crystal Reports help me enhance the depth and detail of my reports by allowing me to use multiple sets of records, especially when I have very large requirements, such as company dashboards that show what sales, purchases, productions, and HR are doing. Using sub reports as the main report is very beneficial because I can pull multiple department data into the main report. Over the years, SAP Crystal Reports has had a very positive impact and benefits. It's a powerful tool to design any kind of report if you have knowledge of the database, and it can attach to both HANA and SQL databases. I can also connect this data with Excel, which makes it a very powerful tool for me.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"Customer Service: Excellent."
"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"
"The embedding feature is great."
"It's very easy to get the historical reports you need based on the business requirements and this helps our executives for taking decisions."
"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."
"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."
"Using Crystal Reports means all this manual work is eliminated."
"I like Crystal Reports, I think it's very easy to use and there are numerous forums I can look to when I need help."
"I value it's ability to satisfy most demanding reporting requirements with ease."
"The product is easy to learn for the basics."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"Using SAP Crystal Reports had a strong impact on our organization; it saves significant time by automating routine reporting tasks and reduced manual effort in preparing customer letters and reports."
"We were able to develop several On-Time Performance reports to assist with correcting scheduling errors and location errors for our buses, allowing us to get a much more accurate picture of where we are and how to get where we want to be."
"It is a pillar of our product to provide embedded reports so I would say it has been an essential part of our system."
 

Cons

"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."
"When it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports."
"We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is."
"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."
"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."
"As all software and especially the open-source ones have always something that can work better, in this case, SpagoBI is slightly difficult to implement."
"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."
"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"I feel an improvement would be allowing users to change the font on translated fields."
"This was a good platform when it first came out but right now, it has become a complicated behemoth."
"The functionality is not evolving much over newer releases."
"It needs better support for child reports."
"Long, complex, crosstab reports are nearly impossible, and with Crystal it is nearly impossible to work with the raw, row-by-row data."
"Installation takes more than 15 minutes on our workstations."
"Crystal Reports makes too many assumptions, causing odd results, which can sometimes be corrected by altering the SQL or changing the links (providing you understand the link options)."
 

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 cost of licensing can be a significant factor to consider when upgrading or transitioning to a new version of SAP Crystal Reports. It's important to evaluate the benefits and features offered by the new version against the associated costs to ensure it aligns with your organization's needs and budget."
"We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee."
"SAP Crystal Reports is a very expensive solution."
"I feel that SAP Crystal Reports is a reasonably priced product."
"This product costs a lot of money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
22%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Marketing Services Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
SAP Crystal Reports could be improved with more modern user-friendly interfaces and better integration with cloud platforms and AI tools. It would be beneficial to have easier integration with Azur...
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
I have been using SAP Crystal Reports for six months. I am using SAP Crystal Reports to develop data-driven reports and use customer data printing. When I use SAP Crystal Reports for customer data ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Crystal Reports?
I am aware that the pricing of SAP Crystal Reports gradually changes. When I bought it last time, I don't remember the exact price, and I need to check the current price on the portal. SAP Crystal ...
 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. SAP Crystal Reports and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.