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IBM SPSS Modeler vs Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio 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

IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (3rd)
Microsoft Azure Machine Lea...
Ranking in Data Science Platforms
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
AI Development Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 3.5%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio is 4.9%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Science Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio4.9%
IBM SPSS Modeler3.5%
Other91.6%
Data Science Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo - PeerSpot reviewer
Good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database. When streams become larger, performance bottlenecks may occur in the IBM SPSS Modeler server or the database. Sometimes the server crashes and needs to be restarted to release memory on both sides. I'm not sure exactly where the problem is caused, as I focus on stream design rather than server issues. The problem could be on the IBM SPSS Modeler server and database.
Takayuki Umehara - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined workflows with drag and drop convenience but needs enhancements in AI
I use Machine Learning Studio for system reselling and integration Machine Learning Studio is easy to use, with a significant feature being the drag and drop interface that enhances workflow without any complaints. It provides a return on investment and cost savings, proving beneficial for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Very good data aggregation."
"It is very scalable for non-technical people."
"We have a local representative who specializes in SPSS. He will help us do the PoC."
"It is pretty scalable."
"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."
"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. 90 to 95 percent of the use cases, you don't have to fine-tune anything. If you want to do something deeper, for example, create a better neural network, then you have to go into the features and try to fine-tune them. However, the default selection which is made by the tool, it's very practical and works well."
"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."
"Our go live process has been slightly enhanced compared to the previous programmatic process. There is now a faster time to production from the business end."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the ability to use all of the cognitive services, prebuilt from Azure."
"The solution is integrated with our Microsoft Azure tenant, and we don't have to go anywhere else outside the tenant."
"Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio offers a hands-on experience with lots of flexibility."
"The solution is really scalable."
"The notebook feature allows you to write inquiries and create dashboards. These dashboards can integrate with multiple databases, such as Excel, HANA, or SQL Server."
"The solution's most beneficial feature is its integration with Azure."
"The platform as a service provides user-friendly instruments, making the experience easy."
"Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio has positively impacted my organization by reducing our project delivery times and increasing the pace at which we work, allowing us to focus on other more important tasks."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if SPSS supported open-source features, for example, embedding R or Python scripts in SPSS Modeler."
"Customer support is hard to contact."
"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."
"It's not as user friendly as it could be."
"Time Series or forecasting needs to be easier. It is a very important feature, and it should be made easier and more automated to use. For instance, for logistic regression, binary or multinomial is used automatically based on the type of the target variable. I wish they can make Time Series easier to use in a similar way."
"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."
"Expensive to deploy solutions. You need to buy an extra deployment unit."
"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."
"This solution could be improved if they could integrate the data pipeline scheduling part for their interface."
"Using the solution requires some specific learning which can take some time."
"In future releases, I would like to see better integration with Power BI within Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio."
"As for the areas for improvement in Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio, I've provided feedback to Microsoft. My company is a Gold Partner of Microsoft, so I provided my feedback in another forum. Right now, it is the number of algorithms available in the designer that has to be improved, though I'm sure Microsoft does it regularly. When you take a use case approach, Microsoft has done that in a lot of places, but not on the Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio designer. When I say use case basis, I meant recommending a product or recommending similar products, so if Microsoft can list out use cases and give me a template, it will save me a lot of time and a lot of work because I don't have to scratch my head on which algorithm is better, and I can go with what's recommended by Microsoft. I'm sure that isn't a big task for the Microsoft team who must have seen thousands of use cases already, so out of that experience if the team can come up with a standard template, I'm sure it'll help a lot of organizations cut down on the development time, as well as going with the best industry-standard algorithms rather than experimenting with mine. What I'd like to see in the next version of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio, apart from the use case template, is the improvement of the availability of libraries. Microsoft should also upgrade the Python versions because the old version of Python is still supported and it takes time for Microsoft to upgrade the support for Python. The pace of upgrading Python versions of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and making those libraries available should be sped up or increased."
"The initial setup of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio was rigorous for someone new like me, but mastering it made things simpler."
"The data processor can pose a bit of a challenge, but the real complexity is determined by the skill of the implementation team."
"Performance is very poor."
"Stability-wise, you may face certain problems when you fail to refresh the data in the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"$5,000 annually."
"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."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"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 a huge increase to time savings."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"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."
"To use MLS is fairly cheap. Even the paid account is something like $20/month, unless you are provisioning large numbers of VMs for a Hadoop cluster. The main MS makes money with this solution is forcing the user to deploy their model on REST API, and being charged each time the API is accessed. There are several pricing tiers for the API. If you do not use the API, then value of MLS is to create rapid experiments ($20/month). The resulting model is not exportable to use, thus you’ll have to recreate the algorithms in either R or Python, which is what I did. MLS results gave me a direction to work with, the actual work is mostly done in R and Python outside of MLS."
"The product's pricing is reasonable."
"I rate the product price as a nine on a scale of one to ten, where ten means it is very expensive."
"The solution operates on a pay-per-use model."
"The platform's price is low."
"In terms of pricing, for any cloud solution, you should know the tricks of the trade and how to use it, otherwise, you'll end up paying a lot of money irrespective of the cloud provider, so at least for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio pricing versus AWS, I would rate it three out of five, with one being the most expensive, and five being the cheapest. It could be cheaper, but you also have to be careful when choosing the plans, for example, consider the architecture and a lot of other factors before choosing your plan, if you don't want to end up paying more. If your cloud provider has an optimizer that seems to be available in every provider, that would keep alerting you in terms of resources not being used as much, then that would help you with budgeting."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"When we got our first models and were ready for the user acceptance testing, our licensing fees were between €2,500 ($2,750 USD) and €3,000 ($3,300 USD) monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Educational Organization
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
 

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 Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise30
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Modeler?
Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding.
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 ...
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 ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio?
The learning curve is very low. Operationalizing the model is also very easy within the Azure ecosystem.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio?
The pricing for Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio is reasonable since it's pay as you go, meaning it won't cost excessively unless specific resources are used.
 

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
Azure Machine Learning, MS Azure Machine Learning Studio
 

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
Walgreens Boots Alliance, Schneider Electric, BP
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.