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Databricks vs IBM SPSS Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 8.2%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 3.3%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks8.2%
IBM SPSS Modeler3.3%
Other88.5%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
RB
Business Owner at SASS GmbH
Support and flexibility enable effective project initiation and meet customer needs but deployment requires enhancement
The customer comes to you and says they want to deploy it and make a production out of this, which is very difficult and expensive with IBM SPSS Modeler. With MATLAB, there is no problem. I have a solution, and then I convert my MATLAB solution to C programming language. This I can deploy, and I can check it, and it is MISRA compatible. It is very easy to deploy it, to go from MATLAB to C or C++, which is actually needed in the car industry. In the car industry, they want to have it in the hardware. You cannot put MATLAB or IBM SPSS Modeler in the hardware of a car, but with C, there is no problem with a microcontroller. They can shoot it into the microcontroller, and I can check it with Polyspace, and it is MISRA compatible, which is an industrial standard. There is nothing similar in IBM SPSS Modeler. I made solutions with IBM SPSS Modeler, and then the customer said they wanted to make a production out of it, and it was not possible. I stopped with IBM SPSS Modeler 18. It is now 18.6 from what I know at the moment. I do not believe that there is a possibility to design a graphic user interface with it. It is itself a graphic user interface, where you put all sorts of little icons into the display.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Databricks is a unified platform that provides features like streaming and batch processing so all the data scientists, analysts, and engineers can collaborate on a single platform and it has all the features you need, so you don't need to go for any other tool."
"It's very simple to use Databricks Apache Spark."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Databricks helps crunch petabytes of data in a very short period of time for data scientists or business analysts, helping with fraud analysis, finance, projections, and more, which is exactly the purpose of big data and analytics."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
"Databricks gives us the ability to build a lakehouse framework and do everything implicit to this type of database structure."
"We chose Databricks because the processing power was better and it was a better fit for our use case."
"Databricks is based on a Spark cluster and it is fast. Performance-wise, it is great."
"We have been able to do some predictive modeling with it"
"So far, the stability has been rock solid."
"Our business units' capabilities with SPSS Modeler is high. They no longer waste time on modeling and algorithms, meaning they are not coding any more."
"I used it mostly for the PCA, the principal component analysis, and I have been using that for my bachelor's thesis."
"I would recommend IBM SPSS Modeler for people who need to do statistical analysis of this type."
"It is a great tool even for an individual with no or basic predictive modeling experience."
"I would recommend SPSS to someone who has just started trying to run a lot of modeling, it's a good starting point."
"We have full control of the data handling process."
 

Cons

"The cost of this solution is high, on the expensive side."
"In my view, the fundamental approach of implementing Databricks is still very code heavy, more than you find in Azure Data Factory and other technologies like Informatica or SQL Server Integration Service."
"The query plan is not easy with Databrick's job level. If I want to tune any of the code, it is not easily available in the blogs as well."
"The first deployment is difficult. It is not straightforward and you have to think about a lot of stuff."
"Generative AI is catching up in areas like data governance and enterprise flavor. Hence, these are places where Databricks has to be faster."
"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."
"Databricks' performance when serving the data to an analytics tool isn't as good as Snowflake's."
"The solution could be improved by integrating it with data packets. Right now, the load tables provide a function, like team collaboration. Still, it's unclear as to if there's a function to create different branches and/or more branches. Our team had used data packets before, however, I feel it's difficult to integrate the current with the previous data packets."
"Time Series or forecasting needs to be easier. It is a very important feature, and it should be made easier and more automated to use. For instance, for logistic regression, binary or multinomial is used automatically based on the type of the target variable. I wish they can make Time Series easier to use in a similar way."
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"When I used it in the office, back in the day, we did have some stability issues. Sometimes it just randomly crashed and we couldn't get good feedback."
"This is an expensive predicament software solution."
"The time series should be improved."
"Neural networks are quite simple, and now neural networks are evolving to these architecture related to deep learning, etc. They didn't incorporate this in IBM SPSS Modeler."
"It would be good if IBM added help resources to the interface."
"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"The price is okay. It's competitive."
"We implement this solution on behalf of our customers who have their own Azure subscription and they pay for Databricks themselves. The pricing is more expensive if you have large volumes of data."
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."
"Price-wise, I would rate Databricks a three out of five."
"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"Having in mind all four tools from Garner’s top quadrant, the pricing of this tool is competitive and it reflects the quality that it offers."
"This tool, being an IBM product, is pretty expensive."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten users use the server with ten licenses, it runs faster. But if forty users use the same appliance, everything slows down. People then think it's not easy to do things and prefer using remote tools like Python to extract data from the database. It's not about being expensive or cheap, but about people's knowledge and experience in how to do the work."
"$5,000 annually."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"It is an expensive product."
"When you are close to end of quarter, IBM and its partners can get you 60% to 70% discounts, so literally wait for the last day of the quarter for the best prices. You may feel like you are getting robbed if you can't receive a good discount."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Modeler?
The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten us...
What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Modeler?
The customer comes to you and says they want to deploy it and make a production out of this, which is very difficult and expensive with IBM SPSS Modeler. With MATLAB, there is no problem. I have a ...
What is your primary use case for IBM SPSS Modeler?
I have been using IBM SPSS Modeler for a long time. I am using IBM SPSS Modeler mainly for ETL. Sometimes I use it to compare the results of the modeling as compared to MATLAB. MATLAB is the main t...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
SPSS Modeler
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Reisebªro Idealtours GmbH, MedeAnalytics, Afni, Israel Electric Corporation, Nedbank Ltd., DigitalGlobe, Vodafone Hungary, Aegon Hungary, Bureau Veritas, Brammer Group, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, InSites Consulting, Fortis Turkey
Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.