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IBM SPSS Modeler vs Weka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (12th)
Weka
Ranking in Data Mining
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Anomaly Detection Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 18.9%, up from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Weka is 8.8%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler18.9%
Weka8.8%
Other72.3%
Data Mining
 

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.
AwaisAnwar - PeerSpot reviewer
Treasury Management in Finance Department at National University of Pakistan
Open source, good for basic data mining use cases except for the visualization results
I haven't found it particularly useful. It lacks state-of-the-art algorithms and impressive outcomes. While it might offer insights for basic warehouse tasks, it falls short of deeper understanding and results. Moreover, a new user interface would be great, especially for beginners. Something that guides them through the available tools and helps them achieve their goals. I haven't seen anything like that myself, though maybe it's there and I missed it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM was chosen because of usability. It's point and click, whereas the other out-of-the box-solution, or open-source solutions, require full-on programming and a much higher skill level."
"It has provided us a lot of small wins that we could bring to our leadership and it has given them confidence with what we were doing in regards to analytics."
"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."
"Some basic form of feature engineering for classification models really quickens the model development process."
"We have a local representative who specializes in SPSS. He will help us do the PoC."
"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."
"Automation is great and this product is very organized."
"​It works fine. I have not had any stability issues; it is always up.​"
"Working with complicated algorithms in huge datasets is really easy in Weka."
"The path of machine learning in classification and clustering is useful. The GUI can get you results. No programming is needed. No need to write down your script first or send to your model or input your data."
"I mainly use this solution for the regression tree, and for its association rules. I run these two methodologies for Weka."
"It is a stable product."
"Weka eliminates the need for coding, allowing you to easily set parameters and complete the majority of the machine learning task with just a few clicks."
"The interface is very good, and the algorithms are the very best."
"Weka's best features are its user-friendly graphic interface interpretation of data sets and the ease of analyzing data."
"In Weka, anyone can access the program without being a programmer, which is a good feature since the entry cost is very low."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would not rate the technical support very well. The technicians have accents. When you do find someone, it is very hard to get somebody able to answer the technical questions."
"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."
"It would be helpful if SPSS supported open-source features, for example, embedding R or Python scripts in SPSS Modeler."
"There are issues, we try to mitigate them. There are always issues."
"The time series should be improved."
"It is very good, but slow. The slowness may be because we have not finalized all the background information in SPSS."
"I would like better integration into the Weather Company solution. I have raised a couple of concerns about this integration and having more time series capabilities."
"If you have one missing value in your dataset and this missing value belongs to a specific attribute and the attribute is a numeric attribute and there is only one missing data, whenever you import this data, the problem is that Weka cannot understand that this is a numeric field. It converts everything into a string, and there is no way to convert the string into numerical math. It's really very complicated."
"While it might offer insights for basic warehouse tasks, it falls short of deeper understanding and results."
"I believe is there are a few newer algorithms that are not present in the Weka libraries. Whereas, for example, if I want to have a solution that involves deep learning, so I don't think that Weka has that capability. So in that case I have to use Python for ... predict any algorithms based on deep learning."
"If there are a lot more lines of code, then we should use another language."
"Weka is a little complicated and not necessarily suited for users who aren't skilled and experienced in data science."
"The product is good, but I would like it to work with big data. I know it has a Spark integration they could use to do analysis in clusters, but it's not so clear how to use it."
"The filter section lacks some specific transformation tools. If you want to change a variable from a numeric variable to a categorical variable, you don't have a feature that can enable you to change a variable from a numeric variable to a categorical variable."
"In terms of scalability, I think Weka is not prepared to handle a large number of users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"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."
"$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 got us a good amount of money with quick and efficient modeling."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"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."
"Currently, I am using an open-source version so I don't know much about the price of this solution."
"The solution is free and open-source."
"We use the free version now. My faculty is very small."
"As far as I know, Weka is a freeware tool, and I am not aware if they have an online solution or if it is a commercial product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Educational Organization
17%
University
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
No data available
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. Weka and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.