Altair RapidMiner vs Starburst Galaxy comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Altair and Starburst are both solutions in the Data Science Platforms category. Altair is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.5, while Starburst is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.5. Altair holds a 3.1% mindshare in Data Science Platforms, compared to Starburst’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Altair users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Starburst users who would recommend it.

Altair RapidMiner

Read 26 Altair RapidMiner reviews

6,131 Views
4,966 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Starburst Galaxy

Read 12 Starburst Galaxy reviews

2,101 Views
1,639 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Altair RapidMiner

Starburst Galaxy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Altair RapidMiner and Starburst Galaxy are leading products in data analytics and management. Altair RapidMiner offers more competitive pricing and support, but Starburst Galaxy shines in features, providing advanced capabilities for willing investors.

Features: Altair RapidMiner includes comprehensive data preparation, machine learning capabilities, and vast support for predictive models. Starburst Galaxy excels in robust data querying, security features, and seamless integration with diverse data sources, making it ideal for complex data environments.

Room for Improvement: Altair RapidMiner could enhance its generative AI capabilities and user interface intuitiveness. Improvements in automation for complex datasets would also be beneficial. Starburst Galaxy might focus on simplifying its deployment model and expanding its user community support. Enhancing cost-effectiveness for smaller businesses is another potential improvement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Altair RapidMiner allows straightforward deployment backed by effective customer service, fostering strong client satisfaction. Starburst Galaxy, while offering a more complex deployment due to its enterprise-grade functionalities, provides efficient customer assistance tailored for intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: Altair RapidMiner offers lower setup costs and a good ROI, thanks to its pricing structure suited to a broad range of projects. Starburst Galaxy entails higher upfront costs but promises significant ROI through extensive features and integration options, appealing to enterprise-level analytics needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy

September 2026

Download the complete report

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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

Altair RapidMiner

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

11th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Predictive Analytics (6th)

Starburst Galaxy

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

7th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

2.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Streaming Analytics (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Altair RapidMiner is 3.1%, down from 7.4% 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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Starburst Galaxy	1.5%
Altair RapidMiner	3.1%
Other	95.4%

Data Science Platforms

Featured Reviews

Satesh P

Solution Architect at Hitachi Digital Services

Visual workflows have empowered teams to build and deploy reliable predictive maintenance models

The best features Altair RapidMiner offers in my experience are the visual workflow designer in AI Studio, which is the foundation of everything. Building complete machine learning pipelines, data ingestion, transformation, feature engineering, model training, validation, and deployment in a drag-and-drop visual environment without extensive coding is what makes this accessible to organizations that cannot staff a team of Python developers for every analytics project. That capability opens the door.Auto Model is the feature I lean on most when doing rapid prototyping with clients. It evaluates multiple algorithms automatically, surfaces the best-performing model for the data, and explains why. That dramatically compresses the experimentation phase. What would take a data scientist days of manual testing, Auto Model does in an hour.

Read full review

Pedromachado Ventura

Data Analyst at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Unified SQL layer has streamlined access to distributed historical data for analytics and reporting

One area that I think could be improved is the experience when performance issues occur. When a query is slow, it is not always immediately obvious to me whether the bottleneck comes from Starburst Galaxy itself, the underlying data source, the query design, or the reporting tool. Better visibility into query performance and easier diagnostics for non-administrators would be useful. Another potential improvement would be enhancing the experience with BI tools to make it more seamless. I work a lot with Power BI, and when you are working with larger data sets, performance can sometimes depend on several different layers. Having more visibility into what is happening between the BI tool, Starburst Galaxy, and the underlying source would be helpful. I also think onboarding could be a little more accessible for analysts. There is good technical documentation, but sometimes I just need to understand the best way to approach a common use case without diving too deep into the platform architecture. The main improvement would be troubleshooting. I have not used the AI capabilities extensively, so I cannot give a detailed assessment. I am not sure if my organization has the full capabilities of Starburst Galaxy, but I think adding AI on top of the data layer is interesting, especially if it can help users discover data, understand data sets, and interact with them more naturally. For governance and security, one of the strengths of Starburst Galaxy is that you can centralize access to data while still controlling what different users are allowed to see. Role-based access, fine-grained permissions, and data masking are important because giving people easier access to data should not mean giving everyone access to everything. I think that is even more important than any AI capabilities that are introduced. If you do introduce AI, I think it should respect exactly the same data permissions and governance rules as the user that is accessing the data.

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

"What I like about RapidMiner is its all-in-one nature, which allows me to prepare, extract, transform, and load data within the same tool."

"The data science, collaboration, and IDN are very, very strong."

"The documentation for this solution is very good, where each operator is explained with how to use it."

"The GUI capabilities of the solution are excellent. Their Auto ML model provides for even non-coder data scientists to deploy a model."

"This solution is a great tool for users that are experimenting and is an alternative to doing the coding and everything themselves."

"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it is code free. It is similar to playing with Lego pieces and executing after you are finished to see the results. Additionally, it is easy to use and has interesting utilities when preparing the data. It has a utility to automatically launch a series of models and show the comparisons. When finished with the comparisons you can select the best one, and deploy it automatically."

"We value the collaboration and governance features because it's a comprehensive platform that covers everything from data extraction to modeling operations in the ML language. RapidMiner is competitive in the ML space."

"One of the most valuable features is the built-in data tuning feature. Once the model is built, we often struggle to increase its accuracy, but RapidMiner allows us to fine-tune variables. For Example, when working on a project, we can adjust the number of nodes or the depth of trees to see how accuracy changes. This flexibility lets us achieve higher accuracy compared to traditional automated machine-learning models"

More Altair RapidMiner pros

"I use Starburst as a cost-efficient hosted option for Trino for data integration and ad-hoc analysis across a broad range of data sources."

"Starburst Galaxy has significantly improved our data architecture flexibility and performance management by solving cross-database query challenges and enabling us to utilize iceberg tables externally across our entire data ecosystem."

"I am now able to answer questions in a couple of minutes that would otherwise take hours or days of time for my data engineering teams."

"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 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 is becoming a cornerstone of our data platform, empowering us to make smarter and faster decisions across the organization."

"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."

More Starburst Galaxy pros

Cons

"RapidMiner loads very slowly, which is something that should be improved."

"RapidMiner isn't cheap. It's a complete solution, but it's costly."

"RapidMiner can improve deep learning by enhancing the features."

"In the Mexican or Latin American market, it's kind of pricey."

"In terms of the UI and SaaS, the user interface with KNIME is more appealing than RapidMiner."

"I would appreciate improvements in automation and customization options to further streamline processes."

"The biggest problem, not from a platform process, but from an avoidance process, is when you work in a heavily regulated BFSI environment, like banking and finance."

"About twenty-five percent of my problems involve image processing, and I found RapidMiner lacking in this domain. While we work on OCR and similar tasks, RapidMiner hasn't been as engaged in that field as other models. Some other models also support email processing, but RapidMiner doesn't offer this feature."

More Altair RapidMiner cons

"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 Starburst to leverage AI to improve usability. Data lakes are complicated and difficult for users to explore."

"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."

"As a hosted option, I wish I had more control over the cluster configuration, specifically regarding some of the more advanced options."

"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."

"I would like to see better alerting integrations for failures and errors in scheduled tasks and maintenance jobs."

"There is still room for improved usability and diagnostics, especially for users who are not platform specialists."

More Starburst Galaxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Although we don't pay licensing fees because it is being used within the university, my understanding is that the cost is between $5,000 and $10,000 USD per year."

"The client only has to pay the licensing costs. There are not any maintenance or hidden costs in addition to the license."

"For the university, the cost of the solution is free for the students and teachers."

"I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment."

"I used an educational license for this solution, which is available free of charge."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RapidMiner?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that the licensing model is based on Altair Units, which is their shared token-based system across their product portfolio and is flexibl...

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What needs improvement with RapidMiner?

Altair RapidMiner can be improved by enhancing the newer GenAI features, which are interesting but honestly still quite early, and the documentation does not yet match the ambition of what they are...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for RapidMiner?

My main use case for Altair RapidMiner is predictive quality analysis on the manufacturing site, as Wagner Spraytech manufactures spray finishing equipment and we generate a significant amount of o...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Dremio vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Talend Cloud vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 6% of the time

Dataiku vs Starburst Galaxy

Compared 5% of the time

More Starburst Galaxy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner

September 2026

Download Altair RapidMiner product report

Buyer's Guide

Starburst Galaxy

August 2026

Download Starburst Galaxy product report

Overview

Altair RapidMiner is a GUI-driven, code-free data science tool ideal for users seeking efficiency and user-friendliness, featuring automated data cleaning and versatile model support for diverse tasks.

Altair RapidMiner offers an accessible platform with drag-and-drop functionality, supporting multiple file formats to streamline data science workflows. It enables quick prototyping and integrates with APIs, Python, and R, enhancing user flexibility. Comprehensive documentation and tutorials support learning, while features like model fine-tuning and predictive analytics cater to advanced analysis. Enhancements in automation and deep learning, alongside improvements in data service integration and metadata handling, remain a focus for development.

What are the key features of Altair RapidMiner?

Code-Free Interface: Simplifies data science with GUI support.
Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Streamlines process setup.
Automated Data Cleaning: Saves time in data preparation.
Machine Learning Algorithms: Supports a wide range for various tasks.
API & Python/R Integration: Enhances flexibility for data projects.
Tutorials & Documentation: Provides robust learning resources.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Efficiency: Reduces time spent on data processing.
Flexibility: Offers adaptable integration options.
Scalability: Suited for both educational and business environments.
Usability: User-friendly interface encourages wider adoption.
Predictive Capabilities: Empowers advanced business analytics.

Industries such as telecom and finance utilize Altair RapidMiner for tasks like data preparation and forecasting. Universities employ it for education and research projects, while businesses apply it to areas such as financial crime management and market analysis. It assists companies in predicting customer behavior and analyzing pharmaceutical data, allowing seamless integration with other systems.

Altair

Starburst Galaxy offers rapid query speeds and robust cluster management, enhancing data engineering efficiency while supporting AWS integrations and cross-database functionality. Users benefit from its advanced data integration and federated querying capabilities.

Starburst Galaxy stands out with a compute-focused architecture that excels in facilitating seamless data integration. Technological innovations like autoscaling clusters and automated metadata management optimize operations in multi-tenant environments. With a keen emphasis on compatibility, the platform provides support for AWS Glue and enables federated querying across S3, Snowflake, and Redshift. This adaptability ensures comprehensive ETL processes and enhances analytics through querying SQL Server, Google Sheets, and blob stores. While noted for its robust capabilities, users seek improvements in cluster startup times, Tableau and AI support, and desire infrastructure-as-code enhancements.

What are Starburst Galaxy's key features?

Rapid Query Speeds: Enhances data processing with quick responses.
Cluster Autoscaling: Optimizes resource allocation for varying workloads.
Federated Querying: Cross-database functionality for seamless integration.
Compute-Focused Architecture: Ensures efficiency and scalability.
Automated Metadata Management: Streamlines data handling processes.
AWS Integration: Broad compatibility with AWS services.

What benefits should users evaluate in reviews?

Data Engineering Efficiency: Reduces operating expenses and improves productivity.
Cost Reduction: Highlights lower storage costs with efficient data handling.
Seamless Integration: Enables robust data integration across various platforms.
Cluster Management: Supports diverse workloads with advanced management tools.

In industries focusing on large-scale data efforts, Starburst Galaxy plays an essential role in connecting data sources like Amazon S3 and RDS, streamlining tasks in data engineering and ad-hoc analysis across complex environments. Teams leverage its cross-database querying to boost AWS analytics, with features tailored for sectors needing agile data solutions, from ETL pipelines to secure data federation.

Starburst

Sample Customers

PayPal, Deloitte, eBay, Cisco, Miele, Volkswagen

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Altair RapidMiner vs. Starburst Galaxy

September 2026

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