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IBM SPSS Modeler vs KNIME Business Hub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KNIME Business Hub
Ranking in Data Mining
1st
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 17.9%, up from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME Business Hub is 24.3%, down from 26.6% 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

"It is a great product for running statistical analysis."
"I think the code modeling features are the most valuable and without the need to write a code back with many different possibilities to choose from. And the second one is linked to the activity of the data preparation."
"We have full control of the data handling process."
"It is pretty scalable."
"It handles large data better than the previous system that we were using, which was basically Excel and Access. We serve upwards of 300,000 parts over a 150 regions and we need to crunch a lot of numbers."
"So far, the stability has been rock solid."
"We are creating models and putting them into production much faster than we would if we had just gone with a strict, code-based solution, like R or Python."
"You take two quarters and compare them and this tool is ideal because it gives you a lot of visibility on the before and after."
"We are able to automate several functions which were done manually. I can integrate several data sets quickly and easily, to support analytics."
"From a user-friendliness perspective, it's a great tool."
"Easy to use, stable, and powerful."
"There are a lot of connectors available in KNIME."
"It's a very powerful and simple tool to use."
"One of the greatest advantages of KNIME is that it can be used by those without any coding experience. those with no coding background can use it."
"It's a huge tool with machine learning features as well."
"All of the features related to the ETL are fantastic. That includes the connectors to other programs, databases, and the meta node function."
 

Cons

"Regarding visual modeling, it is not the biggest strength of the product, although from what I hear in the latest release it's going to be a lot stronger. That, to me, has always been the biggest flaw in using this. It's very difficult to get good visualization."
"​I would like better integration into the Weather Company solution. I have raised a couple of concerns about this integration and having more time series capabilities.​"
"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."
"We would like to see better visualizations and easier integration with Cognos Analytics for reporting."
"It is not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI."
"It would be good if IBM added help resources to the interface."
"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."
"The product does not have a search function for tags."
"The predefined workflows could use a bit of improvement."
"I wish there were more video training resources for KNIME. The current videos are very short, and most learning is text-based. Longer training sessions would be helpful, especially for complex flowchart use cases. Webinars focusing on starting projects and analyzing data would also be beneficial."
"There are some parameters that I would like to have at a bigger scale. The upper limit of one node that tries to find spots or areas in photos was too small for us. It would need to be bigger."
"The license is quite expensive for us."
"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."
"Not just for KNIME, but generally for software and analyzing data, I would welcome facilities for analyzing different sorts of scale data like Likert scales, Thurstone scales, magnitude ratio scales, and Guttman scales, which I don't use myself."
"The ability to handle large amounts of data and performance in processing need to be improved."
"The solution is inconvenient when it comes to wrangling data that includes multiple steps or features because each step or feature requires its own icon."
 

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."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"This tool, being an IBM product, is pretty expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"Scaling to the on-premises version requires a licensing fee per user that is a bit expensive in comparison to R, Python, and SAS."
"They have different versions, but I am using the open-source one."
"At this time, I am using the free version of Knime."
"While there are certain limitations in functionality, you can still utilize it efficiently free of charge."
"This is a free open-source solution."
"KNIME Business Hub is expensive for small companies."
"It's an open-source solution."
"KNIME is free as a stand-alone desktop-based platform but if you want to get a KNIME server then you can find the cost on their website."
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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.
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
12%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

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?
I have seen the potential to interact with Python, which is currently a bit limited. I am interested in the newer version, 5.4, when it becomes available. The machine learning and profileration asp...
 

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 Business Hub and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.