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Databricks 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

Databricks
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (4th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (5th), Streaming Analytics (1st)
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 Databricks is 7.6%, down from 16.5% 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 (%)
Databricks7.6%
IBM SPSS Modeler3.1%
Other89.3%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

SimonRobinson - PeerSpot reviewer
Governance And Engagement Lead
Improved data governance has enabled sensitive data tracking but cost management still needs work
I believe we could improve Databricks integration with cloud service providers. The impact of our current integration has not been particularly good, and it's becoming very expensive for us. The inefficiencies in our implementation, such as not shutting down warehouses when they're not in use or reserving the right number of credits, have led to increased costs. We made several beginner mistakes, such as not taking advantage of incremental loading and running overly complicated queries all the time. We should be using ETL tools to help us instead of doing it directly in Databricks. We need more experienced professionals to manage Databricks effectively, as it's not as forgiving as other platforms such as Snowflake. I think introducing customer repositories would facilitate easier implementation with Databricks.
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

"The features of Databricks have impacted my organization positively, as it has done so very efficiently since we switched from several platforms to using this one."
"Before I used Databricks it took me a long time to do some functions and now with Databricks I can do them much quicker."
"The main features of the solution are efficiency."
"I like cloud scalability and data access for any type of user."
"Databricks is also user-friendly, providing customizable codes and models that allow people to experiment quickly."
"Of the available feature set, I like the Imageflow feature a lot."
"We have the ability to scale, collaborate and do machine learning."
"In the manufacturing industry, Databricks can be beneficial to use because of machine learning. It is useful for tasks, such as product analysis or predictive maintenance."
"SPSS Modeler is a friendly interface for a beginner user."
"I would recommend SPSS to someone who has just started trying to run a lot of modeling, it's a good starting point."
"It's a very good and reasonably priced solution."
"Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful."
"I would say it has saved us a lot of time, about 20 or 30% of our time."
"We have been able to do some predictive modeling with it"
"It’s definitely scalable, it’s all on the same platform, it’s well integrated. I think the integration is important in terms of scalablility because essentially, having the entire suite helps a lot to scale it"
"We use analytics with the visual modeling capability to leverage productivity improvements."
 

Cons

"The product cannot be integrated with a popular coding IDE."
"CI/CD needs additional leverage and support."
"Databricks would benefit from enhanced metrics and tighter integration with Azure's diagnostics."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes."
"The solution could be improved by integrating it with data packets."
"Pricing is one of the things that could be improved. Also, there could be improvement in the visual analytics space there and on the machine learning functions."
"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."
"I can say the solution is outdated."
"Dimension reduction is very important, especially if you are working with millions of recordings and thousands of variables."
"Requires more development."
"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."
"The product does not have a search function for tags."
"It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms."
"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."
"The platform that you can deploy it on needs improvement because I think it is Windows only. I do not think it can run off a Red Hat, like the server products. I am pretty sure it is Windows and AIX only."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."
"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."
"The solution is affordable."
"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."
"Licensing on site I would counsel against, as on-site hardware issues tend to really delay and slow down delivery."
"My smallest project is around a hundred euros, and my most expensive is just under a thousand euros a week. That is based on terabytes of data processed each month."
"I rate the price of Databricks as eight out of ten."
"We have only incurred the cost of our AWS cloud services. This is because during this period, Databricks provided us with an extended evaluation period, and we have not spent much money yet. We are just starting to incur costs this month, I will know more later on the full cost perspective."
"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."
"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."
"This tool, being an IBM product, is pretty expensive."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
SPSS Modeler
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
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 Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.