Birst vs IBM Cognos Analytics
Birst
infor.com
IBM Cognos Analytics
ibm.comSide by side
| Figure | Birst | IBM Cognos Analytics |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $10.60/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Bi Platforms | 8.5 (#6) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Spec score · Business Analytics | 8.5 (#6) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Spec score · Business Intelligence & Analytics - Midmarket Software | 8.5 (#6) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Spec score · Business Intelligence & Analytics - Enterprise Software | 8.5 (#7) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Business Intelligence Tools | 8.4 (#24) | 8.9 (#10) |
| Deployment | Infor lists public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises deployment options; its product documentation also describes cloud and appliance deployments. | Deployment options include on-premises, IBM-hosted cloud and certified containers for cloud or on-premises environments. |
| Headquarters | Atlanta, Georgia, United States | Armonk, New York, United States |
| Integrations | Infor lists application connectors including Marketo and Salesforce, plus JDBC data sources, SAP, and R Server integration. | IBM lists integrations with Planning Analytics, SPSS Statistics, watsonx BI and watsonx.data. |
| Natural-language queries | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Infor Birst combines data from different sources in a Networked BI platform and presents reports and dashboards in a browser or native mobile app. | IBM Cognos Analytics is a business intelligence platform for reporting, business analytics and AI-assisted insights. |
| Refresh frequency | real-time | real-time |
| Scheduled reports | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Infor describes technical support that provides assistance, case management, product updates, a global knowledge base, and a peer community. | IBM Support provides cases, fixes, technical documentation and known-issue information, and requires registration, an IBM Customer Number and Site Administrator approval. |
Plans
In their own words
Birst
Birst is an analytics platform that combines data from multiple sources and presents reports and dashboards in a browser or native mobile app. It offers interactive dashboards, self-service notifications, visual data discovery, and pixel-perfect operational reporting. Automated data refinement and ETL merge and model information from different platforms into a user data store. Its Networked BI approach combines centralized and decentralized analytics with reusable governed business definitions, blended models, and self-service analytic sandboxes. Infor describes prebuilt industry content across more than 11 industries, with role-specific material and out-of-the-box data models. Birst Enterprise includes AI/ML integrations, Smart Insights for automatically creating personalized dashboards, and 1TB of storage. Deployment options include hosted multi-tenant cloud, an on-premises virtual appliance, and embedding; mobile analytics work on iOS and Android, with offline access included in Enterprise. Listed functions also include real-time refresh, row-level security, scheduled reports, natural-language queries, planning, budgeting, rolling forecasts, scenario modeling, management reporting, and financial consolidation. Pricing is on request, and no free plan is listed.
IBM Cognos Analytics
IBM Cognos Analytics is a paid business-intelligence platform for reporting, business analytics and AI-assisted insights. It supports hybrid deployment, real-time refresh, scheduled reports and natural-language queries across Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, web, API and self-hosted environments. Users can build multipage reports and share them as HTML, CSV, PDF or Excel files. Interactive dashboards provide visualizations, drill-downs and email or Slack sharing. Time-series modeling supports trend prediction, while the AI Assistant answers natural-language questions about selected data sources and can create dynamic dashboards. Standard costs $10.60 a month per authorized user and includes dashboards, data modules, mobile access, basic administration and AI capabilities, but users receive reports only. Premium costs $42.40 a month per authorized user and adds report creation, execution and scheduling, data explorations, custom visualizations, advanced administration and reporting agents. A free 30-day On-Demand trial supports up to five users.