IBM SPSS Modeler vs Weka comparison

Read 14 Weka reviews

1,721 Views
859 Comparison Views

78% willing to recommend

IBM SPSS Modeler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

IBM SPSS Modeler and Weka are both key players in the data analysis and machine learning sector. IBM SPSS Modeler stands out with its strong enterprise integration and support, whereas Weka is favored for its open-source accessibility and comprehensive algorithm library.

Features: IBM SPSS Modeler provides advanced predictive analytics, easy integration with enterprise systems, and strong visualization tools. Weka offers a wide array of machine learning algorithms, open-source access, and flexibility in algorithm implementation.

Room for Improvement: IBM SPSS Modeler could improve by enhancing open-source collaboration, reducing costs, and increasing algorithm diversity. Weka might benefit from richer visualization capabilities, professional customer support, and improved large-scale data handling.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SPSS Modeler offers professional deployment services with dedicated customer support, ideal for enterprise-level needs. Weka is straightforward to install with community-backed support, catering to users valuing self-reliance and flexibility.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SPSS Modeler has higher initial costs but potentially greater ROI for businesses demanding extensive analytics and enterprise features. Weka is cost-effective with zero-cost setup, attracting budget-conscious users and educational institutions focused on efficiency over high upfront investment.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Weka Report (Updated: June 2025).

IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Weka

Download the complete report

Helped 860,592 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

Ranking in Data Mining

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Science Platforms (17th)

Weka

Ranking in Data Mining

2nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Anomaly Detection Tools (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 17.9%, up from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Weka is 17.7%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Mining

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

AwaisAnwar

Treasury Management in Finance Department at National University of Pakistan

Open source, good for basic data mining use cases except for the visualization results

I haven't found it particularly useful. It lacks state-of-the-art algorithms and impressive outcomes. While it might offer insights for basic warehouse tasks, it falls short of deeper understanding and results. Moreover, a new user interface would be great, especially for beginners. Something that guides them through the available tools and helps them achieve their goals. I haven't seen anything like that myself, though maybe it's there and I missed it.

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

"The ease of use in the user interface is the best part of it. The ability to customize some of my streams with R and Python has been very useful to me, I've automated a few things with that."

"Very good data aggregation."

"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."

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

"It will scale up to anything we need."

"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."

"I think it is the point and drag features that are the most valuable. You can simply click at the windows, and then pull up the functions."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pros

"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."

"The interface is very good, and the algorithms are the very best."

"With clustering, if it's a yes, it's a yes, if it's a no, it's a no. It gives you a 100% level of accuracy of a model that has been trained, and that is in most cases, usually misleading. Classification is highly valuable when done as opposed to clustering."

"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."

"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."

"In Weka, anyone can access the program without being a programmer, which is a good feature since the entry cost is very low."

"I mainly use this solution for the regression tree, and for its association rules. I run these two methodologies for Weka."

More Weka pros

Cons

"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."

"It is very good, but slow. The slowness may be because we have not finalized all the background information in SPSS. It still needs some tweaking."

"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."

"I can say the solution is outdated."

"We have run into a few problems doing some entity matching/analytics."

"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."

"It's not as user friendly as it could be."

"The product does not have a search function for tags."

More IBM SPSS Modeler cons

"Weka could be more stable."

"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."

"While it might offer insights for basic warehouse tasks, it falls short of deeper understanding and results."

"If there are a lot more lines of code, then we should use another language."

"Weka is a little complicated and not necessarily suited for users who aren't skilled and experienced in data science."

"I believe is there are a few newer algorithms that are not present in the Weka libraries. Whereas, for example, if I want to have a solution that involves deep learning, so I don't think that Weka has that capability. So in that case I have to use Python for ... predict any algorithms based on deep learning."

"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."

More Weka cons

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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More IBM SPSS Modeler pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is free and open-source."

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

860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

10%

Government

University

17%

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

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?

What do you like most about Weka?

It is a stable product.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Weka?

Weka is free and open-source software. That is why I used it over KNIME.

What needs improvement with Weka?

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

IBM SPSS Statistics vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 22% of the time

KNIME vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 15% of the time

Altair RapidMiner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 8% of the time

SAS Enterprise Miner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM SPSS Modeler Competitors

KNIME vs Weka

Compared 62% of the time

IBM SPSS Statistics vs Weka

Compared 15% of the time

SAS Analytics vs Weka

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk User Behavior Analytics vs Weka

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Advanced Analytics vs Weka

Compared 4% of the time

More Weka Competitors

Product Reports

IBM SPSS Modeler

Download IBM SPSS Modeler product report

Download Weka product report

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler

No data available

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

Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or called from your own Java code. Weka contains tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization. It is also well-suited for developing new machine learning schemes.

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

Information Not Available

IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Weka