IBM SPSS Modeler vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared IBM and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #4 in DM , with an average rating of 6.8, and holds a 17.6% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 21.4% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

IBM SPSS Modeler

Read 39 IBM SPSS Modeler reviews

999 Views
817 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

20,047 Views
16,081 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM SPSS Modeler

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM SPSS Modeler and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, Weka, IBM and others in Data Mining.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Mining Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Data Mining

April 2025

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Helped 850,760 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Mining (4th), Data Science Platforms (13th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM SPSS Modeler is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 17.6%, up 16.3% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.4% mindshare, down 22.2% since last year.

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo

Application Architect at Canada Border Services Agency

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.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It makes pretty good use of memory. There are algorithms take a long time to run in R, and somehow they run more efficiently in Modeler."

"We have full control of the data handling process."

"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."

"It is very scalable for non-technical people."

"Stability is good."

"The ease of use in the user interface is the best part of it. The ability to customize some of my streams with R and Python has been very useful to me, I've automated a few things with that."

"We use analytics with the visual modeling capability to leverage productivity improvements."

"The quality is very good."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pros

"PowerBI – Self-service BI."

"The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them."

"We encourage end users to use Power BI because it's quite easy for them to interact with the menus and the navigation bar. Even for ordinary users, they can create their own dashboard using Power BI."

"There is a lot of help and documentation on the Internet, so no special training is needed to use the source code."

"Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision."

"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."

"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."

"Microsoft BI was very helpful for me because I had a huge variety of connections. It is very convenient to build reports, even if somebody has no experience using BI tools or data visualizations. Additionally, the performance is very good when generating reports."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them."

"Initial setup of the software was complex, because of our own problems within the government."

"I think mapping for geographic data would also be a really great thing to be able to use."

"It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms."

"The biggest issue with the visual modeling capability is that we can't extract the SQL code under the hood."

"I can say the solution is outdated."

"Expensive to deploy solutions. You need to buy an extra deployment unit."

"It is not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI."

More IBM SPSS Modeler cons

"Visualization systems are still relatively young."

"I would like for there to be some type of user manual that shows steps on how to navigate the solution."

"The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas."

"The handling of the workspaces can be made more granular for user access rights. It can be managed a little bit better in terms of the connection to Active Directory so that we have more granular access rights. I am not sure if this is really possible or if we can solve it differently, but we need a lot of workspaces, and we are not sure how we can deal with it from the access rights perspective."

"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."

"The accounting data needs improvement."

"The solution is somewhat costly in comparison with MSBI tools."

"This solution's performance when handling big data could be improved. Right now, if you're handling big data, the application becomes slow and the performance is very low."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."

"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."

"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."

"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."

"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."

"It is an expensive product."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pricing and cost advice

"The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive."

"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."

"Power BI premium is really expensive for our market. A lot of small and medium companies would like to purchase it, but they can't afford it."

"Power BI is subscription-based, and you have three options. The Pro edition, which is the standard one, is about $9 per user. The Premium edition, which provides AI and cloud capabilities but at a limited size, is for small to medium enterprises. It is about $20 per user. For large enterprises, such as manufacturing facilities, there is an option for the capacity. The capacity subscription is about $4,000 per capacity level. They also have an option for the on-premises version, but it is not common to see someone going for the on-premises version. The on-premises version requires a specific license that is attached to SQL Server. I believe it is about $17,000, but I'm not sure about it."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."

"I very much recommend the free trial mode."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Educational Organization

11%

University

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

39%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Modeler?

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

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Altair RapidMiner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 8% of the time

Alteryx vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 5% of the time

SAS Enterprise Miner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

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Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Modeler

May 2025

Download IBM SPSS Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

IBM SPSS Modeler is an extensive predictive analytics platform that is designed to bring predictive intelligence to decisions made by individuals, groups, systems and the enterprise. By providing a range of advanced algorithms and techniques that include text analytics, entity analytics, decision management and optimization, SPSS Modeler can help you consistently make the right decisions from the desktop or within operational systems.

Buy
https://www.ibm.com/products/spss-modeler/pricing

Sign up for the trial
https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-19947

IBM

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

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

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Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, Weka, IBM and others in Data Mining. Updated: April 2025.

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