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 8.0, and holds a 19.1% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 8.9% 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

2,695 Views
1,321 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 327 Microsoft Power BI reviews

23,151 Views
14,585 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM SPSS Modeler

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Data Mining

January 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,733 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 (12th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

327

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 19.1%, up 16.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 8.9% mindshare, down 21.4% since last year.

Data Mining Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler	19.1%
IBM SPSS Statistics	18.5%
KNIME Business Hub	13.5%
Other	48.9%

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	8.9%
Tableau Enterprise	6.2%
Amazon QuickSight	3.7%
Other	81.2%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Prof. Dr. Rudolf Bisping

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.

Read full review

Livia Vasilescu

HR Manager at PPB

Use advanced data preparation features in analytics projects

Microsoft Power BI can be quite slow when working with data sources that aren't from a data warehouse or a more robust source or data artifact. When working with exports, which we do frequently, the load takes considerable time. This occurs with any BI tool, and it's related to our working methods due to limitations within the area. In HR, we typically use exports because we have numerous data sources. Ideally, Microsoft Power BI would have a no-code or low-code solution for the data sources to be built by the actual developers or development team. This would eliminate the need to work directly with exports. We would have a middle ground to create a warehouse without all the infrastructure, as building a warehouse within an organization can require substantial resources, both in time and personnel.

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 have been able to do some predictive modeling with it"

"In the solution, I like the virtualization of data flow since it shows what goes where, which is mostly the strength of the tool."

"It helped me in that I didn't need to write them by hand, and I could get a result in one or two minutes. That helped me a lot."

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

"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 pretty scalable."

"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."

"It makes pretty good use of memory. There are algorithms take a long time to run in R, and somehow they run more efficiently in Modeler."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pros

"It is a little easier at buildings charts and graphs than Tableau."

"Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it."

"Power BI's integration with other tools is very good."

"It is easy to work with and very chic."

"Technical support has been great."

"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."

"It's a powerful platform."

"Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Unstructured data is not appropriate for SPSS Modeler."

"The biggest issue with the visual modeling capability is that we can't extract the SQL code under the hood."

"I think mapping for geographic data would also be a really great thing to be able to use."

"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."

"The forecasting could be a bit easier."

"It is not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI."

"The standard package (personal) is not supported for database connection."

"Initial setup of the software was complex, because of our own problems within the government."

More IBM SPSS Modeler cons

"Microsoft needs to do some more research and development to make it more stable."

"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."

"I believe Power BI could improve by making data tables and databases easier to handle, especially for non-programmers who may not be familiar with languages like Python. Simplifying these aspects would enhance the usability and accessibility of Power BI for a broader range of users."

"The setup took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff."

"Power BI's drillthrough feature could be improved. I didn't like drillthrough and those options much, but I did like it in MicroStrategy."

"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."

"Areas of Power BI that could be improved are the learning curve for developers who come from non-technical backgrounds."

"Microsoft BI has its own challenges in terms of user interface and how quickly somebody can learn how to use it."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive product."

"It is a huge increase to time savings."

"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."

"This tool, being an IBM product, is pretty expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pricing and cost advice

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

"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."

"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."

"The price of Microsoft BI is expensive. We found the price of Tableau to be less expensive."

"Power BI is subscription-based, and you have three options. The Pro edition, which is the standard one, is about $9 per user. The Premium edition, which provides AI and cloud capabilities but at a limited size, is for small to medium enterprises. It is about $20 per user. For large enterprises, such as manufacturing facilities, there is an option for the capacity. The capacity subscription is about $4,000 per capacity level. They also have an option for the on-premises version, but it is not common to see someone going for the on-premises version. The on-premises version requires a specific license that is attached to SQL Server. I believe it is about $17,000, but I'm not sure about it."

"Setup is easy, and the cost is economical. You do sometimes need to pay additional costs for third party products which "plug-in" to Microsoft BI."

"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."

"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."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

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

Government

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software 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	135
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Modeler?

See all answers

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...

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 46% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

Altair RapidMiner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

Weka vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM SPSS Modeler Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 13% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 3% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Modeler

January 2026

Download IBM SPSS Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

January 2026

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

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining. Updated: January 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Data Mining reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.