IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.
$11.25
per month per user
Microsoft Power BI
Score8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.
$168
per year per user
Pricing
IBM Cognos Analytics
Microsoft Power BI
Editions & Modules
On Demand - Standard
USD 11.25
per month per user
On Demand - Premium
USD 44.90
per month per user
Power BI Pro
$14
per month (billed annually) per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month (billed annually) per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cognos Analytics
Microsoft Power BI
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Power BI Desktop is the data exploration and report authoring experience for Power BI, and is available as a free download.
Microsoft Power BI has a more user friendly interface and it is integrated very well with the other Microsoft products but IBM Cognos Analytics has a more advanced reporting and complex data analysis capabilities.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics is good in few things, but we find more value in other BI tools where IBM Cognos Analytics is lacking. So we use all these above BI tools in our enterprise as a supplemental value for things where IBM Cognos Analytics is not helping with the analysis, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Analyst in Finance and Accounting at WTW (Insurance, 10,001+ employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics is robust in terms of reporting, governance and scheduling while Power BI excels in use, interactivity and visuals. In nutshell, IBM Cognos Analytics has edge over Power BI for enterprise grade , structured reporting needs.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Head of analytic infrastructure in Engineering at ALH Gruppe (Insurance, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Cognos Analytics builds your core numbers, Planning Analytics shows you how the forecast in the future and gives you valuable insights on what to focus, on how oganisations perform and where to have a deeper dive to controll and steer your organisation. Cognos isn't good in …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Business Intelligence Developer in Information Technology at American Iron & Metal (Renewables & Environment, 51-200 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Power BI is stronger for quick ad-hoc analysis and dashboards, but IBM Cognos Analytics is better when consistency, precision, and mass distribution matter. Tableau is best for interactive analysis, while IBM Cognos Analytics is better for standardized, repeatable enterprise …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Salesforce Data Analyst in Quality Assurance at Arcserve (Information Technology & Services, 501-1000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics was more matured enterprise modeling-based tool. Our power Bi struggled against large ERP data sets, which IBM didn't after few initial days.
IBM had much better scalability and security when comes to user reports distribution. The schedule feature worked …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Compared to other tools like Power BI, Tableau, and Google studio, IBM Cognos Analytics is better for the companies who looks strong control on detailed reports. Power BI and Tableau are easy to use and good for quick presentation, but Cognos has more options for security, such …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Data Analyst and Risk Assessor in Finance and Accounting at Banco Bci (Banking, 10,001+ employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Tableau, Power BI, QlikView were the other options considered. Tableau lacked the following key components of business intelligence and analytics. Some other statistical functions that are available on the platform were not matched by Power BI. QlikView lacked robust …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
System operations in Information Technology at DP Wagner (Logistics & Supply Chain, 11-50 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We selected IBM Cognos Analytics based on the following. The scalable and robust features for large organizations allowing it to grow as we do. The nest feature is the strong data governance and security features. It also supports a wide variety of data sources. Lastly, it …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
BI Developer at Shorewise (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
It was due to trust in IBM. Very good support provide by IBM. Response time is pretty good Product is proven in past & well robust feature Many good enterprises have used this product
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
It does well however, we need more user friendly interfaces, integration options and visualizations.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics is our legacy BI solution. It hadn't stacked up well against its modern contemporaries. We are thinking of replacing it with Microsoft BI.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We looked at Qlik Sense, SAP Analytics Cloud, and IBM Cognos Analytics for our financial brand's needs. Qlik Sense is super user-friendly, great for quick data digging. SAP Analytics is perfect when we're working with other SAP stuff; it just clicks. But for our big project, …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Lead Engineer in Information Technology at Kipi.bi (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
Cognos Analytics provides wide range for reporting, data visualization, and self service analytics. Cognos has strong security and governance features. Sigma Computing is purely cloud native approach and has spreadsheet like interface and doesn't provide many customization …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
I feel like IBM Cognos Analytics offers a more in depth look into the business’ analytics and data and has more functionalities with AI.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Team lead in Information Technology at United software group (Information Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
While all of them have their own advantages. IBM Cognos Analytics is highly scalable and have unmatched data analytics capabilities which makes the data from IBM Cognos Analytics of very high quality and data governance also makes sure your data is safe and protected.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
I like the cloud native character and ease of deployment with Sigma and ThogthSpot, I also like the metadata modelling capabilities of Power BI. I prefer the ability of Cognos to create and publish a metadata model that provides both ad hoc access and managed reporting and …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
They are better in Dashboarding and performance analysis.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We have alot of resources already invested in Cognos and it would be a humongous effort to migrate. CA is more inline with Power BI and Tableau now that there are dashboarding capabilities.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Tech Manager, BI & Analytics in Information Technology at Ideagen (Environmental Services, 51-200 employees)
Chose IBM Cognos Analytics
We could deliver a corporate wide solution with Cognos, it is an end-to-end platform. No other option provided the same breadth of scope. I can't think of a feature that the others provide that Cognos lacks, but the others do not provide the same features and governance of …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Microsoft
Verified User
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Some of the strengths are 1. User-Friendliness 2. Self-Service BI (Caters to all levels of the employees 3. Cost-effective. 4. Easy integration with Microsoft Suits. 5. DAX Calculations 6. Familiar Interface like traditional Excel. 7. Easier Self-Service platform for …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI stacks up robustly on a visuals standpoint. It has great slicer tools and visuals that are stunning. Content is fresh, easy to transmit and the design of a new dashboard is easy. Power BI is useful in identifying outliers in your data (even data integrity issues). …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Regional Product & Solution Architect Manager in Information Technology at GRUPO DATCO (Information Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Although both MicroStrategy and Cognos currently offer better business analytical capabilities, Power BI is an excellent option to extend the use of this type of solutions to a greater number of users due to its low cost.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Practice Lead - Corporate Performance Management in Information Technology at The Normandy Group (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is a lot easier to use. The designs are also much nicer. Costs to implement Power BI (minus the existing data infrastructure) is much lower than other tools commercially available. However, the tool is still relatively new and still lacks many common features that …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Software Administrator in Information Technology at Rowmark, LLC (Plastics, 201-500 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I thinking Microsoft Power BI is a great start for someone who wants something more powerful and distributable than Excel. During my relatively short evaluation, I did not find Power BI to be up to the task of more powerful tools. However it might compete well if properly …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Microsoft Power BI
As mentioned earlier it is free of cost and easy to learn as it is part of the Microsoft suite product. It blends well with ETL package tools such as SSRS and SSIS. It is also easy to distribute the dashboard to users of Office 365. It is a a complete Microsoft product which …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For Transaction monitoring, we build reports for executive management, providing insights into the number of alerts, the types or categories of detection scenarios, the risk profile, and a snapshot of high- or urgent-priority cases to be reported to AUSTRAC. Congos helps to build the report by ingesting alert data exported from SAS datasets. It joins with other data from Teradata and Customer Hub (Oracle).
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Has significantly improved collation of data and visualisation especially with business across Europe. Has given me the ability to see the Site availability at the click of a button to see which Site is in the "money" and seize opportunities based on Market data
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Enterprise reporting - Create, customise, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, etc.
Dashboard creation and data exploration & analysis - Using drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualisation. Additionally, using AI powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input (formation of pie, bar, line charts). It's useful for no-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheet data to get quick answers.
Building insights for accurate decision making - Package reports with data backed insights for stakeholders in pdf, and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting and strategic recommendations on relevant asks.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IBM Cognos Analytics enables customer data segmentation, which is essential for marketing, improving and streamlining purchasing behavior and preferences. This helps companies create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Our clients Through data analysis, we can identify and observe trends in the behavior of other clients, allowing us to anticipate needs and adjust strategies to avoid consequences.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For an existing solution, renewing licenses does provide a good return on investment. Additionally, while rolling out scorecards and dashboards with little adhoc capabilities, to end users, cognos is very easily scalable. It also allows to create a solution that has a mix of OLAP and relational data-sources, which is a limitation with other tools. Synchronizing with existing security setup is easy too.
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
We have a strong user base (3500 users) that are highly utilizing this tool. Basic users are able to consume content within the applied security model. We have a set of advanced users that really push the limits of Cognos with Report and Query Studio. These users have created a lot of personal content and stored it in 'My Reports'. Users enjoy this flexibility.
Automating reporting has reduced manual data processing by 50-70%, freeing up analysts for higher-value tasks. A finance team that previously spent 20+ hours per week on Excel-based reports now does it in minutes with Microsoft Power BI's automated Real-time dashboards have shortened decision cycles by 30-40%, enabling leadership to react quickly to sales trends, operational bottlenecks, and customer behavior.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Reports can typically be viewed through any browser that can access the server, so the availability is ultimately up to what the company utilizing it is comfortable with allowing, though report development tends to be more picky about browsers and settings as mentioned above. It also has an optional iPad app and general mobile browsing support, but dashboards lack the mobile compatibility. What keeps it from getting a higher score is the desktop tools that are vital to the development process. The compatibility with only Windows when the server has a wide range of compatibility can be a real sore point for a company that outfits its employees exclusively with Mac or Linux machines. Of course, if they are planning on outsourcing the development anyways, it's a rather moot point
Overall no major complaints but it doesn't handle DMR (Dimensionally Modeled for Relational) very well. DMR modelling is a capability that IBM Cognos Framework Manager provides allowing you to specify dimensional information for relational metadata and allows for OLAP-style queries. However, the capability is not very efficient and, for example, if I'm using only 2 columns on a 20-column model, the software is not smart enough to exclude 18 columns and the query side gets progressively larger and larger until it's effectively unusable.
Why is their web application not working as fast as you think it should? They never know, and it is always a a bunch of shots in the dark to find out. Trying to download software from them is like trying to find a book at the library before computers were invented.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Onsite training provided by IBM Cognos was effective and as expected. They did not perform training with our data which was a bit difficult for our end-users.
The online courses they offer are thorough and presented in such a way that someone who isn't already familiar with the general design methodologies used in this field will be capable of making a good design. The training environments are provided as a fully self contained virtual machine with everything needed already to create the environments. We've had some persisting issues with the environments becoming unavailable, but support has been responsive when these issues arise and straightening them out for us
Make sure that any custom tables that you have, are built into your metadata packages. You can still access them via SQL queries in Cognos, but it is much easier to have them as a part of the available metadata packages.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Power BI is stronger for quick ad-hoc analysis and dashboards, but IBM Cognos Analytics is better when consistency, precision, and mass distribution matter. Tableau is best for interactive analysis, while IBM Cognos Analytics is better for standardized, repeatable enterprise reporting. Sigma shines for customizable dashboards and drill-down analysis while IBM Cognos Analytics holds an edge in data discovery and visualization.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would not pay for Tableau or Sigma anymore. Not worth it at all.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We rate IBM Cognos Analytics a 9 out of 10 for overall scalability. The platform handles large numbers of users, reports, and analytical workloads very reliably. We have experienced strong performance even in demanding enterprise environments with substantial data volumes. Its architecture provides sufficient flexibility to scale resources according to demand, making it well suited for large, business-critical deployments.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
