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Darwin vs IBM SPSS Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

Darwin
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Darwin is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 3.1%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler3.1%
Darwin1.5%
Other95.4%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

AC
Founder at Helio Summit
Empowers SMEs to build solutions and interface them with the existing business systems, products and workflows.
There's always room for improvement in the UI and continuing to evolve it to do everything that the rest of AI can do. Because it's so much better than traditional methods, we don't get a ton of complaints of, "Oh, we wish we could do that." Most people are happy to see that they can build models that quickly, and that it can be done by the people who actually understand the problem, i.e. SMEs, rather than having to rely on data scientists. There's a small learning curve, but it's shorter for an SME in a given industry to learn Darwin than it takes for data scientists to learn industry-specific problems. The industry I work in deals with tons and tons of data and a lot of it lends itself to Darwin-created solutions. Initially, there were some limitations around the size of the datasets, the number of rows and number of columns. That was probably the biggest challenge. But we've seen the Darwin product, over time, slowly remove those limitations. We're happy with the progress they've made.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Even people who are not fully technical can use it with a little guidance or something."
"In terms of streamlining a lot of the low-level data science work, it does a few things there."
"The solution helps with the automatic assessment of the quality of datasets, such as missing data points or incorrect data types."
"Darwin is really useful for people who don't necessarily do a lot of data science."
"I find it quite simple to use. Once you are trained on the model, you can use it anyway you want."
"Our main goal is to transform data into knowledge and Darwin is definitely helping us to do that faster."
"The thing that I find most valuable is the ability to clean the data."
"Darwin is the perfect tool to solve this issue; what the machine-learning industry needs at this point to expand exponentially in the oil and gas market."
"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."
"New algorithms are added into every version of Modeler, e.g., SMOTE, random forest, etc. The Derive node is used for the syntax code to derive the data."
"I would say it has saved us a lot of time, about 20 or 30% of our time."
"IBM SPSS Modeler is the easiest solution."
"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."
"I also use SAS, but SPSS is easier than SAS, and I enjoy it."
"It will scale up to anything we need."
"The customer loves it at first glance because it is so easy to handle, and you get a solution pretty soon."
 

Cons

"Because so much is done under the hood of Darwin, it is hard to trust how it gets the answers it gets."
"The analyze function takes a lot of time."
"There's always room for improvement in the UI and continuing to evolve it to do everything that the rest of AI can do."
"There are issues around the ethics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. You need to have a lot of transparency regarding what is going on under the hood in order to trust it. Because so much is done under the hood of Darwin, it is hard to trust how it gets the answers it gets."
"Darwin is stable, but it just doesn't provide the functionality that an analyst would need."
"The Read Me's and the tutorials need to be greatly improved to get customers to understand how things work. It might be helpful to have some sample data sets for people to play around with, as well as some tutorial videos. It was very hard to find information on this in the time crunch that we had, to see how it worked and then make it work, while interfacing with folks at SparkCognition."
"We have used Darwin as a complement to other tools like R and SPSS to get the accuracy we want."
"Something they are working on, which is great, is to have an API that can access data directly from the source. Currently, we have to create a specific dataset for each model."
"The time series should be improved."
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"Unstructured data is not appropriate for SPSS Modeler."
"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."
"Requires more development."
"The standard package (personal) is not supported for database connection."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe our cost is $1,000 per month."
"The license cost is not cheap, especially not for markets like Mexico. But sometimes, you do have to make these leap of faith for some tools to see if they can get you the disruption that you are aiming for. The investment has paid off for us very well."
"In just six months, we calculated six million pesos that we have prevented in revenue from going away with another customer because of this solution. Thanks to Darwin, we didn't lose those six million pesos."
"As far as I understand, my company is not paying anything to use the product."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"It is an expensive product."
"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 users use the server with ten licenses, it runs faster. But if forty users use the same appliance, everything slows down. People then think it's not easy to do things and prefer using remote tools like Python to extract data from the database. It's not about being expensive or cheap, but about people's knowledge and experience in how to do the work."
"$5,000 annually."
"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."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SPSS Modeler
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hunt Oil, Hitachi High-Tech Solutions
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Darwin vs. IBM SPSS Modeler and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.