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IBM SPSS Statistics vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Statistics
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (1st), AI Data Analysis (14th), AI Research (6th)
Starburst Galaxy
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Streaming Analytics (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Statistics is 3.5%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Starburst Galaxy is 1.5%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy1.5%
IBM SPSS Statistics3.5%
Other95.0%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
Advanced predictive analytics have supported my research and student projects across many methods
The only function I may need to be added or hope to be added to IBM SPSS Statistics is how to treat unstructured data. This mainly exists with IBM SPSS Modeler, but I do not think it is able to treat something like videos and similar content unless you are using languages like Python inside IBM SPSS Modeler or inside IBM SPSS Statistics. For the menu itself, for the selection, it does not exist. Thinking of the future, I believe that the owners of IBM SPSS Statistics should think about improving the package itself to be able to treat unstructured data.
NK
Advisory Solutions Architect at Dell Technologies
Unified data querying has accelerated petabyte-scale analytics and simplified dashboard delivery
Starburst Galaxy offers me several best features, which include very fast querying results, automatic indexing of data for long tables, a cost-based optimizer which reduces the time to query large tables, and an agentic feature that lets me talk to my data.I find myself relying most on querying from different databases as well as automatic indexing in my day-to-day work, as I am a data science architect who needs to get the queries in a very short period of time. Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best. Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization since we were struggling with Denodo and Dremio, which had their own features but were not helpful in querying large amounts of data, especially semi-structured or unstructured data. Starburst Galaxy addresses this with many YAML files and manifest files for automated maintenance, and it helps reduce the small file problem in different HDFS systems. Additionally, Starburst Galaxy has an MCP server that connects to various agentic pipelines, reducing the time to market for data consumption.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers very good visualization."
"The most valuable feature is its robust statistical analysis capabilities."
"Capability analysis is one of the main and valuable functions, and we also do some hypothesis testing in Minitab and summary stats; these are the functions that we find very useful."
"I've found the descriptive statistics and cross-tabs valuable. The very simple correlations and regressions are as well."
"They have many existing algorithms that we can use and use effectively to analyze and understand how to put our data to work to improve what we do."
"Since we are using the software as a statistical tool, I would say the best aspects of it are the regression and segmentation capabilities. That said, I've used it for all sorts of things."
"I can recommend it, as it's a good, stable solution with a proven track record."
"in terms of the simplicity, I think the SPSS basic can handle it."
"Starburst has provided us with virtually guaranteed performance on complex queries across datasets that are in the tens of gigabytes which complete in seconds."
"Starburst on Trino, combined with our SQL-native data transformation tool SQLMesh, has delivered anywhere from a two to five times improvement in compute performance across our transformation DAG."
"Starburst Galaxy has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to rethink the strategy for data and architect data differently; instead of having multiple data marts and siloed data marts, we have a unified vision, and that is how it is changing."
"Starburst Galaxy serves the best purpose for me because if my SLAs are not met with my customers, they will raise a case, and I have tried many other tools, but Starburst Galaxy fits the best."
"Starburst Galaxy has improved our organization by unifying access to all major data sources, reducing the need for complex ETL processes."
"Starburst Galaxy serves as our primary SQL-based data processing engine, a strategic decision driven by its seamless integration with our AWS cloud infrastructure and its ability to deliver high performance with low-latency responses."
"Starburst Galaxy is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."
"The most fundamental feature is the query engine, which is much faster than any of the competitors; Starburst is able to finish most queries within 10 seconds, which is especially important for many non-technical employees."
 

Cons

"Perhaps in terms of visualization. It's not really easy to do some data visualization, just simple, descriptive analysis in SPSS. I think that could be an area for improvement."
"I think there is an issue with the charting and visualization, and I don't think it works as well as the competitive product."
"The product should provide more ways to import data and export results that are user-friendly for high-level executives."
"The output of charts and graphs that SPSS produces is hideous."
"The areas of SPSS Statics that have room for improvement — where it can be simplified to make it better — have to do with how you connect the SPSS solution with the data."
"SPSS is a tool that's been around since the late 60s, and it's the universal worldwide standard for quantitative social science data analysis. That said, it does seem a bit strange to me that the graphical output functions are so clunky after all these years. The output of charts and graphs that SPSS produces is hideous."
"Another issue is that it does not handle very large data sets well. When there are 100,000 respondents, it does not manage effectively and crashes more often when the data set becomes very large or while merging yearly waves such as 2018, 2019, 2020 to 2026."
"It would be helpful if there was better documentation on how to properly use the solution. A beginner's guide on how to use the various programming functions within the product would be so useful to a lot of people. I found that everything was very confusing at first. Having clear documentation would help alleviate that."
"I would like Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."
"Cluster startup time is another pain point, typically 3 to 5 minutes, which is not the worst with proper planning but can be annoying for ad-hoc work."
"As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options."
"I think there are areas of improvement with respect to AI adaptability, and also in general, the amount of connectors working with other tools are areas where it can be expanded."
"Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose."
"The most persistent issue is the cluster spin-up time."
"I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs."
"Cluster startup time can be slow, sometimes taking over a minute."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"We think that IBM SPSS is expensive for this function."
"The price of IBM SPSS Statistics could improve."
"While the pricing of the product may be higher, the accompanying service and features justify the investment."
"It's quite expensive, but they do a special deal for universities."
"More affordable training for new staff members."
"Our licence is on a yearly renewal basis. While pricing is not the primary concern in our evaluation, as products are assessed by whether they can meet our user needs and expertise, the cost can be a limiting factor in the number of licences we procure."
"The pricing of the modeler is high and can reduce the utility of the product for those who can not afford to adopt it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Statistics?
I think the price of the solution is very reasonable. The cost depends; you have the option for subscription or you can purchase the license. Most of our customers are paying every year for a type ...
What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Statistics?
One of the frustrations I have with IBM SPSS Statistics is the licensing, which is more of a company issue because we have limited licenses and have to ask someone to get off IBM SPSS Statistics so...
What is your primary use case for IBM SPSS Statistics?
My main use case for IBM SPSS Statistics involves data cleaning and tabulation. I also use it sometimes for data validation. I use IBM SPSS Statistics to perform correlations, check data, remove re...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Starburst Galaxy?
I recommend experimenting with different cluster sizes to determine what works best for your particular use case.
What needs improvement with Starburst Galaxy?
Starburst Galaxy can be improved by discovering unstructured data and building in streaming ingestion because we are currently using Kafka for that purpose. We rely on third-party tools for ingesti...
What is your primary use case for Starburst Galaxy?
My main use case for Starburst Galaxy is querying petabytes of data across vast data sources, and I use a federated query engine to join data sources from different databases and then join them usi...
 

Also Known As

SPSS Statistics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

LDB Group, RightShip, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Capgemini Consulting, TEAC Corporation, Ironside, nViso SA, Razorsight, Si.mobil, University Hospitals of Leicester, CROOZ Inc., GFS Fundraising Solutions, Nedbank Ltd., IDS-TILDA
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Statistics vs. Starburst Galaxy and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.