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Manufacturing · head to head

COPA-DATA zenon vs TrendMiner

COPA-DATA zenon logo

COPA-DATA zenon

Manufacturing

HMI, SCADA and energy automation platform licensed by I/O tag count

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
TrendMiner logo

TrendMiner

Manufacturing

Search-driven time series analytics for process engineers, now owned by Proemion rather than Software AG

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: COPA-DATA zenon the I/O count that determines your licence band is a weighted calculation, not a variable tally, so projects sized from a tag list routinely land in a higher and more expensive band than budgeted.; TrendMiner ownership moved from Software AG to Proemion in a 47 million euro sale during the Silver Lake break-up, so the integration roadmap tied to webMethods and Cumulocity is gone and the new owner is far smaller.
  • They diverge on capability: COPA-DATA zenon covers I/O-banded licensing, TrendMiner covers Pattern search.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which COPA-DATA zenon and TrendMiner actually diverge.

Attributes where COPA-DATA zenon and TrendMiner differ
AttributeCOPA-DATA zenonTrendMiner
PlatformsWindows, Linux, WebWeb, Windows, Linux

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Manufacturing).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in COPA-DATA zenon

  • I/O-banded licensing
  • IEC 61850 native
  • zenon Logic
  • Pharmaceutical compliance
  • Multi-project engineering
  • Redundancy

Only in TrendMiner

  • Pattern search
  • Value-based search
  • Monitors
  • Soft sensors
  • Context items
  • Dashboards
  • Machine learning models
  • ContextHub

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

COPA-DATA zenon

  • A pharmaceutical plant needing audit trail and electronic signature in the SCADA layer without building a validation wrapper around a generic HMInot TrendMiner
  • A utility automating substations that wants IEC 61850 SCL import and DNP3 in the base product rather than as chargeable driver optionsnot TrendMiner
  • A machine builder shipping identical HMI applications to many customers who wants one engineering project reused across machine and line levelnot TrendMiner
  • A food and beverage site in German-speaking Europe where local integrator availability for zenon is strong and Rockwell coverage is notnot TrendMiner

TrendMiner

  • Finding every prior occurrence of a heat exchanger fouling signature to estimate cleaning frequency from history rather than from a rule of thumbnot COPA-DATA zenon
  • Comparing golden batches against off-spec ones in a pharmaceutical process without exporting to a data science teamnot COPA-DATA zenon
  • Building a monitor that flags the early temperature signature that preceded the last three compressor tripsnot COPA-DATA zenon
  • Giving a process engineer a way to answer a question in an afternoon that previously required a historian export and a spreadsheet weeknot COPA-DATA zenon

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

COPA-DATA zenon

  • The I/O count that determines your licence band is a weighted calculation, not a variable tally, so projects sized from a tag list routinely land in a higher and more expensive band than budgeted.
  • The integrator and engineering talent pool is concentrated in German-speaking Europe; a North American or Asian site can find itself dependent on a single partner with no competitive quote available.
  • English-language documentation and community material lag the German equivalents, which slows engineers who are learning the product without formal COPA-DATA training.
  • The annual software maintenance contract is a percentage of licence value, so a large I/O estate carries a recurring cost that does not fall even when the plant is stable and nothing is changing.
  • Third-party ecosystem extensions are far fewer than for Ignition or FactoryTalk, so requirements outside the box tend to become custom engineering billed at partner day rates.

TrendMiner

  • Ownership moved from Software AG to Proemion in a 47 million euro sale during the Silver Lake break-up, so the integration roadmap tied to webMethods and Cumulocity is gone and the new owner is far smaller.
  • It is built for continuous time series and handles discrete manufacturing, relational quality data and event-driven production poorly, so plants that are not continuous process get limited value.
  • Value depends entirely on historian data quality and tag naming; sites with inconsistent tag descriptions and missing asset context spend months on data preparation before the search features are usable.
  • Licensing is by named analyst user, and the population who genuinely use pattern search is small, so organisations that buy broadly pay for seats that log in occasionally.
  • It reads history but does not fix it: there is no data collection layer, so an existing historian is mandatory and TrendMiner is always an additional cost on top of it.

Pricing, plan by plan

COPA-DATA zenon

On request
  • zenon$undefined/year
    • Runtime licensed in bands by calculated I/O count
    • Numeric variables weighted upward in the I/O calculation, binary counted singly
    • Engineering Studio licensed separately from runtime

TrendMiner

On request
  • TrendMiner$undefined/year
    • Annual subscription sized by named users and connected historian tag volume
    • Separate licence tiers for full analyst users and view-only dashboard consumers
    • Historian connectors quoted per source system

Which should you pick?

Choose COPA-DATA zenon if

  • You need i/o-banded licensing.
  • You work on Windows, Linux, Web.
  • You also want iec 61850 native.
COPA-DATA zenon review

Choose TrendMiner if

  • You need pattern search.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux.
  • You also want value-based search.
TrendMiner review

Questions people ask

Is COPA-DATA zenon or TrendMiner better?
Neither clearly leads. COPA-DATA zenon starts at On request and TrendMiner at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, COPA-DATA zenon or TrendMiner?
COPA-DATA zenon starts at On request and TrendMiner at On request.
Does COPA-DATA zenon or TrendMiner run on more platforms?
COPA-DATA zenon runs on Windows, Linux, Web. TrendMiner runs on Web, Windows, Linux.
What is COPA-DATA zenon best used for?
COPA-DATA zenon is most often used for a pharmaceutical plant needing audit trail and electronic signature in the scada layer without building a validation wrapper around a generic hmi, a utility automating substations that wants iec 61850 scl import and dnp3 in the base product rather than as chargeable driver options, a machine builder shipping identical hmi applications to many customers who wants one engineering project reused across machine and line level, a food and beverage site in german-speaking europe where local integrator availability for zenon is strong and rockwell coverage is not. Of those, a pharmaceutical plant needing audit trail and electronic signature in the scada layer without building a validation wrapper around a generic hmi and a utility automating substations that wants iec 61850 scl import and dnp3 in the base product rather than as chargeable driver options are not what TrendMiner is typically brought in for.
What can COPA-DATA zenon do that TrendMiner cannot?
COPA-DATA zenon covers I/O-banded licensing, IEC 61850 native, zenon Logic, Pharmaceutical compliance. TrendMiner covers Pattern search, Value-based search, Monitors, Soft sensors.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

COPA-DATA zenon: How is a zenon licence sized?

By calculated I/O count. Numeric variables are weighted upward in that calculation and binary values counted singly, so ask your partner for the calculated figure, not the variable count, before signing.

TrendMiner: Who owns TrendMiner now?

Proemion, a German industrial analytics company backed by Battery Ventures, which bought it from Software AG for 47 million euros in 2024.

COPA-DATA zenon: Is zenon only for factories?

No. A significant part of its installed base is electrical substation automation, where IEC 61850 support is native rather than an add-on.

TrendMiner: Does it replace my historian?

No. It connects to PI, IP.21, PHD, Exaquantum and others and reads from them. The historian remains the system of record.

COPA-DATA zenon: Is there a free version?

There is a demo mode for evaluation and a free educational licence, but production runtime always needs a paid, I/O-banded licence.

TrendMiner: Do I need a data scientist to use it?

No, and that is the point. The pattern search and soft sensor tooling are aimed at process engineers with no coding background.

COPA-DATA zenon: Can zenon replace a PLC?

zenon Logic is an IEC 61131-3 soft PLC and can control non-safety-critical processes, but most deployments keep a hardware PLC and use zenon for visualisation and supervision.

TrendMiner: Is pricing per user?

Yes, largely, with tiers for analyst and view-only access plus charges for historian connectors and data volume.

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