Altair RapidMiner vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

Altair and Starburst are both solutions in the Data Science Platforms category. Altair is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.5, while Starburst is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.5. Altair holds a 3.4% mindshare in Data Science Platforms, compared to Starburst’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Altair users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Starburst users who would recommend it.

Altair RapidMiner

Read 26 Altair RapidMiner reviews

5,563 Views
4,617 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Starburst Galaxy

Read 11 Starburst Galaxy reviews

1,681 Views
1,328 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Altair RapidMiner

Starburst Galaxy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Altair RapidMiner and Starburst Galaxy are leading products in data analytics and management. Altair RapidMiner offers more competitive pricing and support, but Starburst Galaxy shines in features, providing advanced capabilities for willing investors.

Features: Altair RapidMiner includes comprehensive data preparation, machine learning capabilities, and vast support for predictive models. Starburst Galaxy excels in robust data querying, security features, and seamless integration with diverse data sources, making it ideal for complex data environments.

Room for Improvement: Altair RapidMiner could enhance its generative AI capabilities and user interface intuitiveness. Improvements in automation for complex datasets would also be beneficial. Starburst Galaxy might focus on simplifying its deployment model and expanding its user community support. Enhancing cost-effectiveness for smaller businesses is another potential improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Altair RapidMiner allows straightforward deployment backed by effective customer service, fostering strong client satisfaction. Starburst Galaxy, while offering a more complex deployment due to its enterprise-grade functionalities, provides efficient customer assistance tailored for intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: Altair RapidMiner offers lower setup costs and a good ROI, thanks to its pricing structure suited to a broad range of projects. Starburst Galaxy entails higher upfront costs but promises significant ROI through extensive features and integration options, appealing to enterprise-level analytics needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy

June 2026

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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

Altair RapidMiner

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Predictive Analytics (5th)

Starburst Galaxy

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

6th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

2.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Altair RapidMiner is 3.4%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy	1.5%
Altair RapidMiner	3.4%
Other	95.1%

Data Science Platforms

Featured Reviews

Satesh P

Solution Architect at Hitachi Digital Services

Visual workflows have empowered teams to build and deploy reliable predictive maintenance models

The best features Altair RapidMiner offers in my experience are the visual workflow designer in AI Studio, which is the foundation of everything. Building complete machine learning pipelines, data ingestion, transformation, feature engineering, model training, validation, and deployment in a drag-and-drop visual environment without extensive coding is what makes this accessible to organizations that cannot staff a team of Python developers for every analytics project. That capability opens the door.Auto Model is the feature I lean on most when doing rapid prototyping with clients. It evaluates multiple algorithms automatically, surfaces the best-performing model for the data, and explains why. That dramatically compresses the experimentation phase. What would take a data scientist days of manual testing, Auto Model does in an hour.

Read full review

Niketan Kumar

Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies

Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery

Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it can read a large number of file formats including CSV, Excel, and in particular, SPSS."

"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it is code free. It is similar to playing with Lego pieces and executing after you are finished to see the results. Additionally, it is easy to use and has interesting utilities when preparing the data. It has a utility to automatically launch a series of models and show the comparisons. When finished with the comparisons you can select the best one, and deploy it automatically."

"The data science, collaboration, and IDN are very, very strong."

"The documentation for this solution is very good, where each operator is explained with how to use it."

"RapidMiner has a freemium pricing model so, as long as your dataset has fewer than 10,000 rows, you have free software."

"Since the beginning, we had a really nice onboarding experience with RapidMiner."

"RapidMiner is a no-code machine learning tool. I can install it on my local machine and work with smaller datasets. It can also connect to databases, allowing me to build models directly on the data stored there. RapidMiner offers a wider range of operators than other tools like Dataiku, making it a better option for my needs."

"This solution is a great tool for users that are experimenting and is an alternative to doing the coding and everything themselves."

More Altair RapidMiner pros

"I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources."

"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."

"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."

"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."

"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."

"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."

"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."

"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."

More Starburst Galaxy pros

Cons

"The visual interface could use something like the-drag-and-drop features which other products already support. Some additional features can make RapidMiner a better tool and maybe more competitive."

"RapidMiner loads very slowly, which is something that should be improved."

"I would like to see more integration capabilities."

"Altair RapidMiner can be improved as the cloud-native story is still maturing."

"I think it's a great product but confusing in some way with regard to the user interface and integration with other tools."

"In terms of the UI and SaaS, the user interface with KNIME is more appealing than RapidMiner."

"It would be helpful to have some tutorials on communicating with Python."

"RapidMiner would be improved with the inclusion of more machine learning algorithms for generating time-series forecasting models."

More Altair RapidMiner cons

"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."

"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."

"Multi-tenancy could be improved. In order to have multiple environments for SSO, we maintain multiple tenants that are connected to different AWS accounts via the Marketplace."

"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."

"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."

"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."

"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Although we don't pay licensing fees because it is being used within the university, my understanding is that the cost is between $5,000 and $10,000 USD per year."

"I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment."

"For the university, the cost of the solution is free for the students and teachers."

"The client only has to pay the licensing costs. There are not any maintenance or hidden costs in addition to the license."

"I used an educational license for this solution, which is available free of charge."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

University

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RapidMiner?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that the licensing model is based on Altair Units, which is their shared token-based system across their product portfolio and is flexibl...

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What needs improvement with RapidMiner?

Altair RapidMiner can be improved by enhancing the newer GenAI features, which are interesting but honestly still quite early, and the documentation does not yet match the ambition of what they are...

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What is your primary use case for RapidMiner?

My main use case for Altair RapidMiner is predictive quality analysis on the manufacturing site, as Wagner Spraytech manufactures spray finishing equipment and we generate a significant amount of o...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?

I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?

Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose. We rely on third-party tools for ingesti...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?

My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is querying petabytes of data across vast data sources, and I use a federated query engine to join data sources from different databases and then join them usi...

See all answers

Comparisons

KNIME Business Hub vs Altair RapidMiner

Compared 12% of the time

Alteryx vs Altair RapidMiner

Compared 8% of the time

Dataiku vs Altair RapidMiner

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Altair RapidMiner

Compared 7% of the time

IBM SPSS Statistics vs Altair RapidMiner

Compared 4% of the time

More Altair RapidMiner Competitors

Starburst Enterprise vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 22% of the time

Databricks vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 10% of the time

Dremio vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Talend Cloud vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 6% of the time

Dataiku vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 5% of the time

More Starburst Galaxy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner

June 2026

Download Altair RapidMiner product report

Buyer's Guide

Starburst Galaxy

May 2026

Download Starburst Galaxy product report

Overview

Altair RapidMiner is a GUI-driven, code-free data science tool ideal for users seeking efficiency and user-friendliness, featuring automated data cleaning and versatile model support for diverse tasks.

Altair RapidMiner offers an accessible platform with drag-and-drop functionality, supporting multiple file formats to streamline data science workflows. It enables quick prototyping and integrates with APIs, Python, and R, enhancing user flexibility. Comprehensive documentation and tutorials support learning, while features like model fine-tuning and predictive analytics cater to advanced analysis. Enhancements in automation and deep learning, alongside improvements in data service integration and metadata handling, remain a focus for development.

What are the key features of Altair RapidMiner?

Code-Free Interface: Simplifies data science with GUI support.
Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Streamlines process setup.
Automated Data Cleaning: Saves time in data preparation.
Machine Learning Algorithms: Supports a wide range for various tasks.
API & Python/R Integration: Enhances flexibility for data projects.
Tutorials & Documentation: Provides robust learning resources.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Efficiency: Reduces time spent on data processing.
Flexibility: Offers adaptable integration options.
Scalability: Suited for both educational and business environments.
Usability: User-friendly interface encourages wider adoption.
Predictive Capabilities: Empowers advanced business analytics.

Industries such as telecom and finance utilize Altair RapidMiner for tasks like data preparation and forecasting. Universities employ it for education and research projects, while businesses apply it to areas such as financial crime management and market analysis. It assists companies in predicting customer behavior and analyzing pharmaceutical data, allowing seamless integration with other systems.

Altair

Starburst Galaxy offers rapid query speeds and robust cluster management, enhancing data engineering efficiency while supporting AWS integrations and cross-database functionality. Users benefit from its advanced data integration and federated querying capabilities.

Starburst Galaxy stands out with a compute-focused architecture that excels in facilitating seamless data integration. Technological innovations like autoscaling clusters and automated metadata management optimize operations in multi-tenant environments. With a keen emphasis on compatibility, the platform provides support for AWS Glue and enables federated querying across S3, Snowflake, and Redshift. This adaptability ensures comprehensive ETL processes and enhances analytics through querying SQL Server, Google Sheets, and blob stores. While noted for its robust capabilities, users seek improvements in cluster startup times, Tableau and AI support, and desire infrastructure-as-code enhancements.

What are Starburst Galaxy's key features?

Rapid Query Speeds: Enhances data processing with quick responses.
Cluster Autoscaling: Optimizes resource allocation for varying workloads.
Federated Querying: Cross-database functionality for seamless integration.
Compute-Focused Architecture: Ensures efficiency and scalability.
Automated Metadata Management: Streamlines data handling processes.
AWS Integration: Broad compatibility with AWS services.

What benefits should users evaluate in reviews?

Data Engineering Efficiency: Reduces operating expenses and improves productivity.
Cost Reduction: Highlights lower storage costs with efficient data handling.
Seamless Integration: Enables robust data integration across various platforms.
Cluster Management: Supports diverse workloads with advanced management tools.

In industries focusing on large-scale data efforts, Starburst Galaxy plays an essential role in connecting data sources like Amazon S3 and RDS, streamlining tasks in data engineering and ad-hoc analysis across complex environments. Teams leverage its cross-database querying to boost AWS analytics, with features tailored for sectors needing agile data solutions, from ETL pipelines to secure data federation.

Starburst

Sample Customers

PayPal, Deloitte, eBay, Cisco, Miele, Volkswagen

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy

June 2026

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