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IBM SPSS Modeler vs KNIME Business Hub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
3rd
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
12th
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
3rd
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 February 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 19.1%, up from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME Business Hub is 13.5%, down from 24.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
KNIME Business Hub13.5%
IBM SPSS Modeler19.1%
Other67.4%
Data Mining
 

Q&A Highlights

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
Dec 30, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

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.
DG
BI Analyst at a photography company with 11-50 employees
Enables fast project development with efficient workflow modifications and promising features while offering modularity and reusability
KNIME is simple and allows for fast project development due to its reusability. I appreciate the ability to make improvements or modifications in existing workflows. Although I have not yet used the forecasting and customer profiling features, I find them promising. Another effective feature is the ability to use GET request objects to retrieve data from websites or APIs. This makes iterative steps easy to manage. It is more elastic and modern compared to SAP Data Services, allowing node creation and regrouping components or steps for reuse in different projects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy to use. The drag and drop feature makes it very easy when you are building and testing the streams. That's very useful."
"It is a great product for running statistical analysis."
"The quality is very good."
"It will scale up to anything we need."
"Some basic form of feature engineering for classification models. This really quickens the model development process."
"It is very scalable for non-technical people."
"Very good data aggregation."
"We have full control of the data handling process."
"I was able to apply basic algorithms through just dragging and dropping."
"Clear view of the data at every step of ETL process enables changing the flow as needed."
"KNIME is easy to learn."
"Easy to connect with every database: We use queries from SQL, Redshift, Oracle."
"The most valuable feature is the data wrangling, which is what I mainly use it for."
"The solution is good for teaching, since there is no need to code."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"It has allowed us to easily implement advanced analytics into various processes."
 

Cons

"If IBM could add some of the popular models into the SPSS for further analysis, like popular regression models, I think that would be a helpful improvement."
"I would not rate the technical support very well. The technicians have accents. When you do find someone, it is very hard to get somebody able to answer the technical questions."
"The standard package (personal) is not supported for database connection."
"The platform that you can deploy it on needs improvement because I think it is Windows only. I do not think it can run off a Red Hat, like the server products. I am pretty sure it is Windows and AIX only."
"Unstructured data is not appropriate for SPSS Modeler."
"The forecasting could be a bit easier."
"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."
"I can say the solution is outdated."
"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."
"They could add more detailed examples of the functionality of every node, how it works and how we can use it, to make things easier at the beginning."
"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."
"If they had a more structured training model it would be very helpful."
"There are a lot of tools in the product and it would help if they were grouped into classes where you can select a function, rather than a specific tool."
"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."
"To enhance accessibility and user-friendliness, there is a need for improvements in the interface and usability of deep learning and large-scale learning languages."
"For graphics, the interface is a little confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"$5,000 annually."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"KNIME is an open-source tool, so it's free to use."
"KNIME is a cost-effective solution because it’s free of cost."
"KNIME desktop is free, which is great for analytics teams. Server is well priced, depending on how much support is required."
"The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
"This is an open-source solution that is free to use."
"With KNIME, you can use the desktop version free of charge as much as you like. I've yet to hit its limits. If I did, I'd have to go to the server version, and for that you have to pay. Fortunately, I don't have to at the moment."
"It is expensive to procure the license."
"KNIME is a cheap product. I currently use KNIME's open-source version."
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Answers from the Community

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
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
Robotics Club President at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.