Oracle Essbase vs Toad for Oracle comparison

Oracle and Quest Software are both solutions in the Database Development and Management category. Oracle is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.9, while Quest Software is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.3. Oracle holds a 1.1% mindshare in DDM, compared to Quest Software’s 2.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Oracle users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

Oracle Essbase

Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews

1,744 Views
279 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Toad for Oracle

Read 17 Toad for Oracle reviews

1,222 Views
1,198 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Toad for Oracle

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Oracle Essbase and Toad for Oracle operate within the data management arena, each specialized in distinct functionalities. Oracle Essbase is more adept at offering advanced analytics through multidimensional data analysis, whereas Toad for Oracle has superior capabilities in database management and query execution, making it preferable for database administrators.

Features: Oracle Essbase delivers powerful multidimensional analysis, detailed forecasting, and flexibility for various analytical models beyond finance, including mathematics and statistics, with a scalable solution that effectively manages significant data volumes. Toad for Oracle stands out for its UI navigation, session management, and PL/SQL debugging capabilities. It provides excellent query tools including session browsers, schema browsers, and performance tuning, all packed into a single software package.

Room for Improvement: Oracle Essbase could enhance its user experience by simplifying setup processes and reducing initial learning curves. Users might benefit from more flexible licensing options. Its complex interface can also be streamlined for easier navigation. Toad for Oracle may improve by offering more intuitive user interfaces and better visualization tools. Enhancements in real-time collaboration features could also be beneficial. Pricing transparency and more extensive documentation might address some user frustrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Oracle Essbase requires considerable setup and training, which extends deployment time. However, it compensates with comprehensive support options post-deployment. Toad for Oracle, in contrast, boasts a straightforward deployment, benefiting from developer-friendly features and strong support services that facilitate continuous integration and ease initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: Oracle Essbase involves higher initial costs due to its complex implementation but provides substantial long-term analytics value, justifying its higher price by delivering data insights. Toad for Oracle is cost-effective in initial deployments, with a focus on efficient database operations that enhance ROI in maintenance and querying tasks, offering better value in database management scenarios.

To learn more, read our detailed Oracle Essbase vs. Toad for Oracle Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase vs. Toad for Oracle

December 2025

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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

Oracle Essbase

Ranking in Database Development and Management

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Toad for Oracle

Ranking in Database Development and Management

7th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of Oracle Essbase is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Toad for Oracle is 2.8%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database Development and Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Toad for Oracle	2.8%
Oracle Essbase	1.1%
Other	96.1%

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Bhavya N

Senior System Engineer at Infosys

Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements

The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

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Mark Stocks

Vice President, Director Enterprise Architecture at JE Dunn Construction

Uses trusted data to support financial forecasting and automate complex calculations through daily development workflows

The best features Toad for Oracle offers are the ability to access the database objects and see them in a very simplified manner. The simplified view helps me in my work as it makes troubleshooting easier. Toad for Oracle has positively impacted our organization because our financial forecasting data set is trusted throughout the company because of the ability for us to debug and analyze the data with Toad for Oracle. This trust in the data set has affected business decisions and efficiency by creating a completely separate data department because of the value that we saw with our data because of how we were able to organize and extract data from Oracle with Toad for Oracle.

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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

"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."

"Oracle's capability to define custom hierarchies and dimensions has helped my organization in performing nuanced data exploration and advanced modeling because we use Oracle Essbase for dimension definition and also to define the properties of these members, such as dynamic members, stored members, shared members."

"The solution can handle a large volume of data."

"The solution is scalable."

"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."

More Oracle Essbase pros

"Simply the best GUI software for administration is the most valuable aspect for me."

"A quite simple feature that I have not encountered elsewhere is the "Make Code" feature. I can easily export a complex SQL statement to a programming language. This is a great timesaver as I do not have to type in all of the escape/concatenation characters just to create a SQL statement in C# or C++."

"It is very easy to manage all of the objects."

"The most valuable feature of Toad for Oracle is the fashion browser and the Schema browser. It is very complete."

"Toad has a lot of features that are very useful, fast, and well developed."

"I like that it's very flexible and helpful in query accuracy, analysis, and data visualization. I also like the move facilities available in Toad for Oracle. Overall, I think it's a fantastic product for analyzing SQL queries and managing all kinds of queries."

"I find Toad easy to use and I love the Workspace feature, which allows me to set up projects so that I can open SQL files applicable to what I am working on at any particular time."

"Oracle has advanced query optimization and tuning features that help improve the performance of SQL queries."

More Toad for Oracle pros

Cons

"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

More Oracle Essbase cons

"I'd like reporting to be more available. If it was a feature that was already installed, more people would take advantage of it."

"Toad for Oracle could improve code completion, it is very slow."

"An area where the solution could use some improvement is in terms of user-friendliness. During the initial setup phase, the solution was not very intuitive when attempting to establish connections."

"The way the dialog boxes appear can be improved."

"It would be better if they had an online option allowing me to connect from anywhere on any device. Sometimes I face some errors, depending on the network and setup. It's not a big issue."

"It would be beneficial if Toad for Oracle could incorporate OEM features, as having monitoring capabilities in the same interface would simplify workload and management tasks."

"Once in a while, I may encounter a memory exception and have to abort the application. On a few occasions, the file that stores the saved connections for the New Connection window will become corrupt and I will lose all of my saved connections. I am not sure if that is a Windows or TOAD issue, but it has happened to all of my developers at some point or another."

"Sometimes it works in some areas, but in others, it doesn't. Like when you copy, you find that it's blank and doesn't copy anything. So, there are some objects that do copy, and sometimes they don't."

More Toad for Oracle cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"It is a costly solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"The product's pricing is just right because if it were slightly higher, it would not have been as widely adopted as it currently is in our organization."

"My advice is to try to use the three-year maintenance agreement if possible."

"I would rate it six, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"There are paid and free-for-use versions of the product."

"The pricing is okay, it's reasonable."

"In my opinion, this solution is a little expensive, but I understand that good programs cost more money."

"Toad for Oracle has a relatively high cost compared to other similar tools."

"The professional edition is about $1,000 AUD ($700 USD) and the developer version is about twice that much."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

11%

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Toad for Oracle?

The licensing cost for Toad for Oracle is relatively high, with their license and DPA suite totaling around five thousand dollars.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Toad for Oracle?

Toad for Oracle can be improved by working with Microsoft Fabric.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Toad for Oracle?

My main use case for Toad for Oracle is accessing data in Oracle and building PL/SQL database objects, packages, procedures, and functions. A quick specific example of how I use Toad for Oracle in ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 21% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

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DbVisualizer vs Toad for Oracle

Compared 13% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Toad for Oracle

Compared 13% of the time

Toad Edge vs Toad for Oracle

Compared 12% of the time

Toad Data Modeler vs Toad for Oracle

Compared 11% of the time

More Toad for Oracle Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

January 2026

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Buyer's Guide

Toad for Oracle

January 2026

Download Toad for Oracle product report

Also Known As

Essbase

No data available

Overview

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

Oracle

With Toad for Oracle, you'll reduce costs and risks by easily ensuring the health and performance of your Oracle Cloud Platform and on-premises databases. ... On the operations side, you can automate administration tasks and proactively manage your databases while embracing performance optimization and risk mitigation.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

intel, ebay, uber, mars, microsoft

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase vs. Toad for Oracle

December 2025

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