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IBM Watson Explorer vs KNIME Business Hub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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 Watson Explorer
Ranking in Data Mining
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KNIME Business Hub
Ranking in Data Mining
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Explorer is 2.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME Business Hub is 22.1%, down from 27.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
KNIME Business Hub22.1%
IBM Watson Explorer2.1%
Other75.8%
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a drag-and-drop interface and AI capabilities
It's difficult to pinpoint one single feature because KNIME has so many. For starters, it's very easy to learn. You can get started with just a one-hour video. The drag-and-drop interface makes it user-friendly. For example, if you want to read an Excel file, drag the "read Excel file" node from the repository, configure it by specifying the file location, and run it. This gives you a table with all your data. Next, you can clean the data by handling missing values, selecting specific columns you want to analyze, and then proceeding with your analysis, such as regression or correlation. KNIME has over 4,500 nodes available for download. In addition, KNIME offers various extensions. For instance, the text processing extension allows you to process text data efficiently. It's more powerful than other tools like NVivo and Palantir. KNIME also has AI capabilities. If you're unsure about the next step, the AI assistant can suggest the most frequently used nodes based on your previous work. Another valuable feature is the integration with Python. If you need to perform a task that requires Python, you can simply add a Python node, write the necessary code,

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."
"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key. Watson is all based on a set of AI and deep learning, machine-learning capabilities, and it is looking behind the scenes at some relationships that you likely would not have spotted on your own. It's pulling things together, categorizing some things, that are not something that you might have seen on your own."
"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."
"KNIME is more intuitive and easier to use, which is the principal advantage."
"The hardest part is keeping a tidy workspace because of the many nodes involved. When teaching, it would be helpful if there was more emphasis on how to group nodes effectively. For example, turning frequently used nodes into a single component can simplify things."
"KNIME is easy to learn."
"It offers a node-based data integration and processing system connected through a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface. This makes it an excellent choice for data analytics and engineering tasks."
"Key features include: very easy-to-use visual interface; Help functions and clear explanations of the functionalities and the used algorithms; Data Wrangling and data manipulation functionalities are certainly sufficient, as well as the looping possibilities which help you to automate parts of the analysis."
"We have been able to appreciate the considerable reduction in prototyping time."
"The ETL which helps me to collect, reformat, and load the data from multiple sources into one destination, a storage database."
"The visual workflow tools for custom and complex tasks always beat raw coding languages with the agility, speed to deliver, and ease of subsequent changes."
 

Cons

"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."
"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."
"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"
"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary"
"The solution is expensive."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."
"The predefined workflows could use a bit of improvement."
"I would prefer to have more connectivity."
"The visualization functionalities are not good (cannot be compared to, for instance, the possibilities in R)."
"There are some parameters that I would like to have at a bigger scale. The upper limit of one node that tries to find spots or areas in photos was too small for us. It would need to be bigger."
"Though I can use KNIME in a 64-bit platform in the lab, it's missing some features. For example, from my laptop, I can use the image reader feature of KNIME. However, in the lab, the image reader node is missing."
"KNIME could improve when it comes to large data markets."
"There are a lot of tools in the product and it would help if they were grouped into classes where you can select a function, rather than a specific tool."
"Compared to the other data tools on the market, the user interface can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The price of KNIME is quite reasonable and the designer tool can be used free of charge."
"Scaling to the on-premises version requires a licensing fee per user that is a bit expensive in comparison to R, Python, and SAS."
"It is expensive to procure the license."
"I use the open-source version."
"KNIME Business Hub is expensive for small companies."
"With KNIME, you can use the desktop version free of charge as much as you like. I've yet to hit its limits. If I did, I'd have to go to the server version, and for that you have to pay. Fortunately, I don't have to at the moment."
"KNIME is a cost-effective solution because it’s free of cost."
"KNIME is an open-source tool, so it's free to use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Performing Arts
12%
University
10%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about KNIME?
Since KNIME is a no-code platform, it is easy to work with.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KNIME?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with KNIME?
I have seen the potential to interact with Python, which is currently a bit limited. I am interested in the newer version, 5.4, when it becomes available. The machine learning and profileration asp...
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
KNIME Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
Infocom Corporation, Dymatrix Consulting Group, Soluzione Informatiche, MMI Agency, Estanislao Training and Solutions, Vialis AG
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. KNIME Business Hub and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,021 professionals have used our research since 2012.