KNIME vs. Galvanize (Formerly: ACL)
Modern audit analytics and automation: How KNIME compares to Galvanize.
Why audit teams choose KNIME
No barrier to entry
Build audit analytics with KNIME Analytics Platform for free—perfect for building repeatable processes for your fieldwork and upskilling auditors.
Robust analytics capabilities
Move beyond “point in time” testing to continuous auditing that can surface risks, patterns, and insights that traditional sampling misses. As the scope of audit evolves, KNIME gives you and your teams the flexibility to adapt tests, integrate new data sources, and apply advanced methods.
Open & future-proof
Connect directly to ERP, GRC, and any finance systems like SAP alongside 300+ other sources, and enrich analyses with Python/R/SQL or ML/GenAI libraries—all within transparent, auditable workflows.
Governed at scale
Roll out to 5, 100, or 10,000 users with access control, approvals, versioning, and audit trails via KNIME Business Hub.
Built for the future of continuous & agentic audit
Move beyond sampling and static tests—automate continuous monitoring and orchestrate AI “agents” that can read policies, generate queries, flag anomalies, and document results.
"Rabobank trained 300 auditors in two days to become data literate and to start using KNIME themselves."
— Global Head of Audit Data Excellence, Rabobank
Sophisticated, flexible, future-proof & built to scale
Analytics access for every auditor
- Non-technical auditors can design workflows via drag-and-drop—no coding required.
- Experienced analytics experts can embed Python/R/SQL for advanced analytics and custom controls.
- Use and share annotated workflows to improve explainability and documentation across teams.
- Break down silos between IT, forensic experts, and audit ops with shared pipelines.
Powerful audit analytics platform
- Analyze 100% of transactions or populations, not just samples, with transparent visual workflows.
- Replace fragile Excel formulas and ACLScript with reusable, auditable analytics workflows.
- Apply techniques like Benford’s Law, stratified sampling, and anomaly detection at scale—without custom coding and with existing pre-built templates as a guide.
- Build evidence-rich outputs (reports, dashboards, documentation) directly from workflows, ensuring reproducibility and regulator-ready audit trails.
Open-source innovation for audit agility
- Connect to ERP, GRC, finance, log, and ticketing systems, plus 300+ other sources—no more manual exports.
- Stay ahead of audit risks by leveraging bleeding-edge ML/GenAI, text processing, and signal detection techniques.
- Build reusable, auditable templates and share best practices across audit teams.
- Mix Python, R, SQL, or other scripts as needed within visual audit flows.
Governance & enterprise-scale audit operations
- Deliver governed audit workflows and dashboards to any number of stakeholders—from 5 to 10,000 users.
- Centrally manage access control, versioning, approvals, and audit trails through KNIME Business Hub.
- Enforce governance around LLMs and models—specify who, how, and on what data they’re used, with traceability.
- Standardize audit operations, enable onboarding through shared workflows, and monitor cost/usage centrally.
Transparency & Auditability
- Visual, self-documenting workflows make every test step clear—no hidden scripts or macros only one person understands.
- Every transformation, filter, and control check is traceable and reproducible, creating a defensible audit trail.
- Versioning and approvals ensure that audit logic changes are reviewed and recorded, supporting regulator and external auditor expectations.
KNIME vs. ACL — at a glance
ACL Analytics/Robotics (now under Diligent) remains a proprietary, rule-driven audit toolset. KNIME provides an open, extensible platform for analytics, automation, and agentic AI with enterprise governance.Built for tomorrow’s audit: Agentic + Explainable
Legacy audit tools like ACL speed up known tests—but miss emergent risks or new policies without manual rework. KNIME not only provides the analytics capabilities to perform broader and more complex audits – but also enables agentic AI: read policies, draft/execute queries, explain findings, and assemble audit trails with human-in-the-loop checkpoints and transparent workflows.Real results from audit teams
FAQ
Both. Auditors can build tests visually; experts can add scripts and advanced ML/GenAI as needed.
Yes. Teams standardize controls testing, automate continuous audit, and can add agentic steps that interpret policies and author queries—with full traceability for regulator-ready documentation.
For most audit teams, KNIME has a much lower TCO and offers more flexible scaling compared to ACL’s per-user pricing.
KNIME offers a free, open-source desktop platform, making it easy for audit teams to start completely for free, without any upfront costs. KNIME Pro & Teams are a lightweight paid option for small groups to collaborate and share workflows starting at $99/month, and KNIME Business Hub starts around $35k/year for full governance, deployment, and scaling.
ACL (now part of Diligent) uses a commercial licensing model, with costs around $1,500–$6,000 per user annually or tiered pricing that can scale into the hundreds of thousands.
KNIME Business Hub provides roles, approvals, version control, audit trails, and LLM governance so you can retain artifacts and justify conclusions.
Yes—interleave scripts directly in visual workflows.
Yes—KNIME and partners help translate tests to reusable workflows and set up governed automation.