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IBM SPSS Modeler vs KNIME Business Hub comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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 Modeler
Ranking in Data Mining
3rd
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KNIME Business Hub
Ranking in Data Mining
1st
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 13.3%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME Business Hub is 11.4%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
KNIME Business Hub11.4%
IBM SPSS Modeler13.3%
Other75.3%
Data Mining
 

Q&A Highlights

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
Dec 30, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

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.
FE
Data Analyst at Politecnico di Milano
Automation has transformed payroll reporting and empowers nontechnical teams to run data workflows
KNIME Business Hub could be improved by increasing integration between KNIME and other tools, such as where companies store data and data visualization tools, making it easier to integrate with these tools and faster to create dashboard updates and quick data extraction through KNIME. An ETL process must communicate with both data sources and the data visualization layer. The integration needs to be more robust, and the nodes that act as connectors to these sources and tools need to be more robust, as the flow often broke when the problem was just a connection issue. This should be improved and perhaps expanded. Another problem was that KNIME could not integrate with all tools. Expanding the possibilities of creating reports and connecting to data visualization tools, especially on the data visualization side, would be useful. The output of an ETL process or ETL flow is visualization through a dashboard or report, so more downstream integration in the process would be needed. Regarding improvements needed in KNIME Business Hub, there may be a hierarchy of users and certain applications created. On the security side of accessing company data, I do not know whether this is already sufficiently considered by KNIME or not. I hope so, because certain data are sensitive and need to be handled with care. The fact that KNIME is enabled to access such data means you also need to ensure that authorizations and data processing policies are respected. Because some company data are sensitive, the fact that KNIME reads them also requires guaranteeing that a policy is respected on the other side. I hope this has already been considered by KNIME Business Hub; I am not aware, but if it has not, this could be an aspect to consider: privacy and the protection of company data when they are read by a system that is not company-owned but still must read them with all proper requirements and safeguards.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are creating models and putting them into production much faster than we would if we had just gone with a strict, code-based solution, like R or Python."
"I think it is the point and drag features that are the most valuable. You can simply click at the windows, and then pull up the functions."
"To date, working with IBM SPSS Modeler has been very good, our installers and trainers have been excellent."
"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."
"We have integration where you can write third-party apps. This sort of feature opens it up to being able to do anything you want."
"The visual modeling capability is one of its attractive features."
"I think the code modeling features are the most valuable and without the need to write a code back with many different possibilities to choose from. And the second one is linked to the activity of the data preparation."
"We have full control of the data handling process."
"It's a very powerful and simple tool to use."
"The technical support is excellent, fast, accurate, and friendly."
"For organizations with a small team of data analysts or data scientists, it is a very easy tool to become familiar with predictive modeling, and makes it possible to hand over projects to colleagues without the need to extensively document them."
"The solution allows one to do many things, including data preparation, and I was able to apply basic algorithms through just dragging and dropping, in contrast to Python and other solutions, which involve much coding."
"I've tried to utilize KNIME to the fullest extent possible to replace Excel."
"The solution allows for sharing model designs and model operations with other data analysts."
"The data analytics capabilities in KNIME are excellent; it's not just a statistical ETL tool, as we can go deeper and do various types of tasks beyond straight analytics."
"It is a complete data science platform and especially good at scaling up data preparation and wrapping."
 

Cons

"This tool has a lot of bugs."
"​Initial setup of the software was complex, because of our own problems within the government."
"There are issues, we try to mitigate them. There are always issues."
"When I used it in the office, back in the day, we did have some stability issues. Sometimes it just randomly crashed and we couldn't get good feedback. But when I use it for my own stuff now I don't have any problems."
"The platform's cloud version needs improvements."
"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."
"Dimension reduction should be classified separately."
"The forecasting could be a bit easier."
"KNIME can improve by adding more automation tools in the query, similar to UiPath or Blue Prism. It would make the data collection and cleanup duties more versatile."
"The most difficult part of the solution revolves around its areas concerning machine learning and deep learning."
"The main issue with KNIME is that it sometimes uses too much CPU and RAM when working with large amounts of data."
"The predefined workflows could use a bit of improvement."
"Both RapidMiner and KNIME should be made easier to use in the field of deep learning."
"Sometimes, we needed more space to handle larger operations, especially since our machines had limited space and memory due to Kubernetes clusters."
"KNIME is not good at visualization."
"I would like to see better web scraping because every time I tried, it was not up to par, although you can use Python script."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"$5,000 annually."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"It got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"It is an expensive product."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"There is no cost for using KNIME because it is an open-source solution, but you have to pay if you need a server."
"We're using the free academic license just locally. I went for KNIME because they have a free academic license."
"KNIME is a cheap product. I currently use KNIME's open-source version."
"It is free of cost. It is GNU licensed."
"The price of KNIME is quite reasonable and the designer tool can be used free of charge."
"KNIME is an open-source tool, so it's free to use."
"KNIME desktop is free, which is great for analytics teams. Server is well priced, depending on how much support is required."
"KNIME offers a free version"
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Answers from the Community

EzzAbdelfattah - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Professor Of Statistics at a university with 10,001+ employees
Dec 30, 2019
Dec 30, 2019
The main difference lies in the community that has KNIME because the additional modules serve a multitude of different jobs from image processing, management of ssh file systems to chemical molecule calculations.
2 out of 4 answers
ZW
Robotics Club President at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Dec 27, 2019
KNIME. It free, open-source, and you can plug in Java, Python, R, and Matlab. The community is awesome.
Dec 28, 2019
The main difference lies in the community that has KNIME because the additional modules serve a multitude of different jobs from image processing, management of ssh file systems to chemical molecule calculations.
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with KNIME?
KNIME Business Hub could be improved by increasing integration between KNIME and other tools, such as where companies store data and data visualization tools, making it easier to integrate with the...
What is your primary use case for KNIME?
I used KNIME Business Hub in my previous role for approximately six months, from April to September 2025. The primary use case for KNIME Business Hub was creating an ETL flow for the HR team that g...
What advice do you have for others considering KNIME?
Regarding concrete examples of metrics or results obtained with KNIME Business Hub, we definitely saved a lot in terms of time and productivity. The work was also much more fluid and activities wer...
 

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
KNIME Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Infocom Corporation, Dymatrix Consulting Group, Soluzione Informatiche, MMI Agency, Estanislao Training and Solutions, Vialis AG
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. KNIME Business Hub and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.