Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM SPSS Modeler vs KNIME 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

IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Mining
4th
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KNIME
Ranking in Data Mining
1st
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 17.3%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME is 25.7%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining
 

Q&A Highlights

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 30, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo - PeerSpot reviewer
Good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database. When streams become larger, performance bottlenecks may occur in the IBM SPSS Modeler server or the database. Sometimes the server crashes and needs to be restarted to release memory on both sides. I'm not sure exactly where the problem is caused, as I focus on stream design rather than server issues. The problem could be on the IBM SPSS Modeler server and database.
Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a drag-and-drop interface and AI capabilities
It's difficult to pinpoint one single feature because KNIME has so many. For starters, it's very easy to learn. You can get started with just a one-hour video. The drag-and-drop interface makes it user-friendly. For example, if you want to read an Excel file, drag the "read Excel file" node from the repository, configure it by specifying the file location, and run it. This gives you a table with all your data. Next, you can clean the data by handling missing values, selecting specific columns you want to analyze, and then proceeding with your analysis, such as regression or correlation. KNIME has over 4,500 nodes available for download. In addition, KNIME offers various extensions. For instance, the text processing extension allows you to process text data efficiently. It's more powerful than other tools like NVivo and Palantir. KNIME also has AI capabilities. If you're unsure about the next step, the AI assistant can suggest the most frequently used nodes based on your previous work. Another valuable feature is the integration with Python. If you need to perform a task that requires Python, you can simply add a Python node, write the necessary code,

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of use in the user interface is the best part of it. The ability to customize some of my streams with R and Python has been very useful to me, I've automated a few things with that."
"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."
"We have integration where you can write third-party apps. This sort of feature opens it up to being able to do anything you want."
"Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding."
"The quality is very good."
"Our go live process has been slightly enhanced compared to the previous programmatic process. There is now a faster time to production from the business end."
"It gives you a GUI interface, which is a lot more user-friendly and easier to use compared to writing R scripts or Python."
"It is just a lot faster. So you do not have to write a bunch of code, you can throw that stuff on there pretty quickly and do prototyping quickly."
"KNIME is more intuitive and easier to use, which is the principal advantage."
"The most valuable features of KNIME are its ability to convert your sub-workflow into a node. For example, the workflow has many individual native nodes that can be converted into a single node. This representation has simplified my workflow to a great extent. I can present my workflow in a very compact way."
"KNIME is fast and the visualization provides a lot of clarity. It clarifies your thinking because you can see what's going on with your data."
"We have found KNIME valuable when it comes to its visualization."
"This solution is easy to use and it can be used to create any kind of model."
"The product is open-source and therefore free to use."
"The visual workflow tools for custom and complex tasks always beat raw coding languages with the agility, speed to deliver, and ease of subsequent changes."
"Since KNIME is a no-code platform, it is easy to work with."
 

Cons

"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. But when I use it for my own stuff now I don't have any problems."
"It is very good, but slow. The slowness may be because we have not finalized all the background information in SPSS. It still needs some tweaking."
"​Initial setup of the software was complex, because of our own problems within the government."
"We would like to see better visualizations and easier integration with Cognos Analytics for reporting."
"The platform's cloud version needs improvements."
"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."
"C&DS will not meet our scalability needs."
"I'd like something that would make it easier to connect/parse websites, although I will fully admit that I'm not as proficient in KNIME as I would like to be, so it could be I'm just missing something."
"KNIME's licensing and data management aren't as straightforward relative to Alteryx. Alteryx's tools are more sophisticated, so you need fewer to use it compared to KNIME. I think tab implementation could be easier, too."
"The documentation needs a proper rework. ​"
"In my environment, I need to access a lot of servers with different characteristics and access methods. Some of my servers have to be accessed using proxy which is not supported by KNIME, so I still need to create the middleware to supply the source of my KNIME configurations."
"We do not have much documentation in Portuguese."
"In the last update, KNIME started hiding a lot of the nodes. It doesn't mean hiding, but you need to know what you're looking for. Before that, you had just a tree that you could click, and you could get an overview of what kind of nodes do I have. Right now, it's like you need to know which node you need, and then you can start typing, but it's actually more difficult to find them."
"If they had a more structured training model it would be very helpful."
"System resource usage. Knime will occupy total system RAM size and other applications will hang."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"$5,000 annually."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"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."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"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."
"At this time, I am using the free version of Knime."
"KNIME Business Hub is expensive for small companies."
"For beginners, the free desktop version is very attractive, but the full server version can be more expensive. I have only used the free version and it offers a fair pricing system. I have been promoting it to others without any compensation or request from the company, simply because I am enthusiastic about it. I am not aware of the pricing for the server version, but it seems to be widely used."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
"This is a free open-source solution."
"We're using the free academic license just locally. I went for KNIME because they have a free academic license."
"This is an open-source solution that is free to use."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 30, 2019
Dec 30, 2019
The main difference lies in the community that has KNIME because the additional modules serve a multitude of different jobs from image processing, management of ssh file systems to chemical molecule calculations.
2 out of 4 answers
ZW
Dec 27, 2019
KNIME. It free, open-source, and you can plug in Java, Python, R, and Matlab. The community is awesome.
JP
Dec 28, 2019
The main difference lies in the community that has KNIME because the additional modules serve a multitude of different jobs from image processing, management of ssh file systems to chemical molecule calculations.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
12%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Modeler?
Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding.
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?
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performanc...
What do you like most about KNIME?
Since KNIME is a no-code platform, it is easy to work with.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KNIME?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with KNIME?
For graphics, the interface is a little confusing. So, this is a point that could be improved.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
KNIME Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Infocom Corporation, Dymatrix Consulting Group, Soluzione Informatiche, MMI Agency, Estanislao Training and Solutions, Vialis AG
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. KNIME and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.