IBM SPSS Modeler vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared IBM and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #3 in DM , with an average rating of 7.5, and holds a 20.6% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 14.1% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

IBM SPSS Modeler

Read 40 IBM SPSS Modeler reviews

2,258 Views
1,106 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,361 Views
13,864 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM SPSS Modeler

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SPSS Modeler and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Mining Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Mining

August 2025

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Helped 868,787 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Mining (3rd), Data Science Platforms (16th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

326

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM SPSS Modeler is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 20.6%, up 16.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 14.1% mindshare, down 21.7% since last year.

Data Mining Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler	20.6%
IBM SPSS Statistics	20.0%
KNIME Business Hub	18.7%
Other	40.7%

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	14.1%
Tableau Enterprise	10.3%
Amazon QuickSight	4.9%
Other	70.7%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo

Application Architect at Canada Border Services Agency

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.

Read full review

Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal

Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

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

"We had an IBM Guardium service contract where we used one of their resources to help us develop our prototype. It was a good experience, but they were helpful and responsive."

"We have a local representative who specializes in SPSS. He will help us do the PoC."

"The customer loves it at first glance because it is so easy to handle, and you get a solution pretty soon."

"It is very scalable for non-technical people."

"A lot of jobs that are stuck in Excel due to the huge numbers of rows are tackled pretty quickly."

"Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms."

"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."

"We use analytics with the visual modeling capability to leverage productivity improvements."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pros

"The best thing about this solution is that it is very user friendly. It is interactive in terms of visualizations. It is very eye-catching, and it attracts users. There are a lot of options to visualize the data in different drafts and views. I have used different visualization tools, and I found Power BI to be more efficient in terms of performance, user-friendliness, and ease of use."

"With the out-of-the-box Data Platform and Business Intelligence ecosystem, you get the entire platform with a single license."

"I also find connecting to different data sources is quite simple. Other solutions we were using before were complicated."

"Microsoft BI allows us to connect to any database or any dataset."

"Premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month."

"We have found the product very stable and reliable."

"Microsoft Power BI is an easy tool for data analysis."

"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"When you are not using the product, such as during the pandemic where we had worldwide lockdowns, you still have to pay for the licensing."

"The integration with sources and visualisation needs some improvement. The scalability needs improvement."

"I can say the solution is outdated."

"I understand that it takes some time to incorporate some of the new algorithms that have come out in the last few months, in the literature. For example, there is an algorithm based on how ants search for food. And there are some algorithms that have now been developed to complement rules. So that's one of the things that we need to have incorporated into it."

"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."

"The platform's cloud version needs improvements."

"It would be helpful if SPSS supported open-source features, for example, embedding R or Python scripts in SPSS Modeler."

"The forecasting could be a bit easier."

More IBM SPSS Modeler cons

"You need to purchase upgraded support separately."

"I am a SAP user and I would like this tool to have more connectors - and to more easily connect to - the ERP or SAP environment."

"I'm looking for something that can make it much easier to incorporate Power BI visuals or dashboards into, let's say, Power Apps – custom Power Apps or anything like that. The most important thing would be to seamlessly embed reports in applications. For example, to have buttons that can be navigated through multiple solutions – from Power Apps to Power BI to SharePoint – via links or something like that."

"The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team."

"It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use. For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that."

"I would like to see integration with Excel."

"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."

"It should be more scalable for an enterprise-level implementation. When you deploy large data sets, the response has to be faster in Power BI. This is one thing that needs to be improved in it."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."

"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."

"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."

"The scalability was kind of limited by our ability to get other people licenses, and that was usually more of a financial constraint. It's expensive, but it's a good tool."

"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."

"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."

"$5,000 annually."

"It is a huge increase to time savings."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pricing and cost advice

"No comment."

"I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for."

"We view it as an expensive product."

"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."

"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."

"Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions."

"No comment on pricing."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

11%

Government

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	32

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	134
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM SPSS Statistics vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 49% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 10% of the time

Alteryx vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

Altair RapidMiner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

Weka vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM SPSS Modeler Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 11% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Modeler

September 2025

Download IBM SPSS Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

September 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

IBM SPSS Modeler is an extensive predictive analytics platform that is designed to bring predictive intelligence to decisions made by individuals, groups, systems and the enterprise. By providing a range of advanced algorithms and techniques that include text analytics, entity analytics, decision management and optimization, SPSS Modeler can help you consistently make the right decisions from the desktop or within operational systems.

Buy
https://www.ibm.com/products/spss-modeler/pricing

Sign up for the trial
https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-19947

IBM

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

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

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Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining. Updated: August 2025.

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