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Databricks vs IBM SPSS Modeler comparison

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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
95
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (3rd), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (3rd), Streaming Analytics (1st)
IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 6.5%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 3.0%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Databricks6.5%
IBM SPSS Modeler3.0%
Other90.5%
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

"Databricks has a Unified Catalog that assists with secured access and governance."
"In the current capacity as an Architect and the end user of Databricks I would say I do have confidence that Databricks can provide a wealth of functionalities to start with."
"What I like about Databricks is that it's one of the most popular platforms that give access to folks who are trying not just to do exploratory work on the data but also go ahead and build advanced modeling and machine learning on top of that."
"The solution offers a free community version."
"One of the features provides nice interactive clusters, or compute instances that you don't really need to manage often."
"It has allowed our data engineers, data scientists, and analysts to collaborate and work on the same platform."
"Databricks has a scalable Spark cluster creation process, and the creators of Databricks are also the creators of Spark, and they are the industry leaders in terms of performance."
"Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed."
"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."
"Our go live process has been slightly enhanced compared to the previous programmatic process, and there is now a faster time to production from the business end."
"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."
"A lot of jobs that are stuck in Excel due to the huge numbers of rows are tackled pretty quickly."
"Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful."
"To date, working with IBM SPSS Modeler has been very good, our installers and trainers have been excellent."
"The most valuable features of the IBM SPSS Modeler are visual programming, you don't have to write any code, and it is easy to use."
"Projecting models, forecasting, being able to incorporate things that we could only imagine, and coming into new, faster learning capabilities from it."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we experience issues connecting our database to Databricks. There are no direct connectors — they are very limited."
"There was a time when my monthly cost was around ten thousand dollars, which was quite high."
"Can be improved by including drag-and-drop features."
"I think the automatic categorization of variables needs to be improved; the current functionality is not always efficiently identifying the features of the data that is collected."
"There could be more support for automated machine learning in the database. I would like to see more ways to do analysis so that the reporting is more understandable."
"The integration features could be more interesting, more involved."
"If I want to create a Databricks account, I need to have a prior cloud account such as an AWS account or an Azure account. Only then can I create a Databricks account on the cloud. However, if they can make it so that I can still try Databricks even if I don't have a cloud account on AWS and Azure, it would be great. That is, it would be nice if it were possible to create a pseudo account and be provided with a free trial. It is very essential to creating a workforce on Databricks. For example, students or corporate staff can then explore and learn Databricks."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"Dimension reduction is very important, especially if you are working with millions of recordings and thousands of variables."
"The forecasting could be a bit easier."
"The time series should be improved."
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"This tool has a lot of bugs."
"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."
"Requires more development."
"The scalability was kind of limited by our ability to get other people licenses, and that was usually more of a financial constraint."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."
"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."
"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."
"The solution uses a pay-per-use model with an annual subscription fee or package. Typically this solution is used on a cloud platform, such as Azure or AWS, but more people are choosing Azure because the price is more reasonable."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."
"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."
"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."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"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."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise60
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 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...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM SPSS Modeler?
You should put MATLAB into your database. According to Gartner, from what I have seen last year, there was a Gartner four quadrants perspective, and MATLAB was in a very good position. I remember a...
 

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: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.