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IBM SPSS Modeler vs Weka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 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
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (13th)
Weka
Ranking in Data Mining
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Anomaly Detection Tools (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 20.2%, up from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Weka is 9.7%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler20.2%
Weka9.7%
Other70.1%
Data Mining
 

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.
XS
Manager at XS AMSAFIS DATASETS, S.L.
A good solution offering a range of tools but is limited by its user-handling capacities
In a new machine learning job, if the method is a bit foreign to me, if I have to do it in R, it could be a tedious task. First, I need to identify the libraries required for the new methodology. This can involve identifying two, three, or even four libraries. Then, I need to read their manuals thoroughly. This is time-consuming. In Weka, as all machine learning tools are on my desktop, I easily find out the method. As a freelancer, people send me datasets, and I work on the statistics at home before providing the solution. When a solution needs to be implemented on a server, server programmers install it on the server. This is similar to Power BI, where I prepare files on my desktop, and someone else uploads them to the server for others to access. I think I cannot send a Weka solution to a server programmer. In Weka, anyone can run the program without being a programmer, which is a good feature since the entry cost is very low.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use analytics with the visual modeling capability to leverage productivity improvements."
"I was familiar with using IBM SPSS Modeler separately in the private sector before that. It's a good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data."
"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."
"Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful."
"A lot of jobs that are stuck in Excel due to the huge numbers of rows are tackled pretty quickly."
"The most valuable features of the IBM SPSS Modeler are visual programming, you don't have to write any code, and it is easy to use. 90 to 95 percent of the use cases, you don't have to fine-tune anything. If you want to do something deeper, for example, create a better neural network, then you have to go into the features and try to fine-tune them. However, the default selection which is made by the tool, it's very practical and works well."
"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."
"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."
"Weka is a very nice tool, it needs very small requirements. If I want to implement something in Python, I need a lot of memory and space but Weka is very lightweight. Anyone can implement any kind of algorithm, and we can show the results immediately to the client using the one-page feature. The client always wants to know the story. They want the result."
"It doesn’t cost anything to use the product."
"The path of machine learning in classification and clustering is useful. The GUI can get you results. No programming is needed. No need to write down your script first or send to your model or input your data."
"I like the machine algorithm for clustering systems. Weka has larger capabilities. There are multiple algorithms that can be used for clustering. It depends upon the user requirements. For clustering, I've used DBSCAN, whereas for supervised learning, I've used AVM and RFT."
"The interface is very good, and the algorithms are the very best."
"There are many options where you can fill all of the data pre-processing options that you can implement when you're importing the data. You can also normalize the data and standardize it in an easier way."
"Weka eliminates the need for coding, allowing you to easily set parameters and complete the majority of the machine learning task with just a few clicks."
"Working with complicated algorithms in huge datasets is really easy in Weka."
 

Cons

"​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.​"
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"We would like to see better visualizations and easier integration with Cognos Analytics for reporting."
"Expensive to deploy solutions. You need to buy an extra deployment unit."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The standard package (personal) is not supported for database connection."
"The filter section lacks some specific transformation tools. If you want to change a variable from a numeric variable to a categorical variable, you don't have a feature that can enable you to change a variable from a numeric variable to a categorical variable."
"The product is good, but I would like it to work with big data. I know it has a Spark integration they could use to do analysis in clusters, but it's not so clear how to use it."
"If there are a lot more lines of code, then we should use another language."
"The visualization of Weka is subpar and could improve. Machine learning and visualization do not work well together. For example, we want to know how we can we delete empty cells or how can we fill in the empty cells without cleaning the data system and putting it together."
"In terms of scalability, I think Weka is not prepared to handle a large number of users."
"If you have one missing value in your dataset and this missing value belongs to a specific attribute and the attribute is a numeric attribute and there is only one missing data, whenever you import this data, the problem is that Weka cannot understand that this is a numeric field. It converts everything into a string, and there is no way to convert the string into numerical math. It's really very complicated."
"A few people said it became slow after a while."
"Within the basic Weka tool, I don't see many tools that are available where we can analyze and visualize the data that well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"$5,000 annually."
"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."
"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."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"The solution is free and open-source."
"Currently, I am using an open-source version so I don't know much about the price of this solution."
"As far as I know, Weka is a freeware tool, and I am not aware if they have an online solution or if it is a commercial product."
"We use the free version now. My faculty is very small."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
15%
University
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

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...
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Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
No data available
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Weka and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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