Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Watson Explorer vs KNIME Business Hub comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 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
9th
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 December 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Explorer is 2.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME Business Hub is 15.8%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
KNIME Business Hub15.8%
IBM Watson Explorer2.4%
Other81.8%
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
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…
DG
BI Analyst at a photography company with 11-50 employees
Enables fast project development with efficient workflow modifications and promising features while offering modularity and reusability
KNIME is simple and allows for fast project development due to its reusability. I appreciate the ability to make improvements or modifications in existing workflows. Although I have not yet used the forecasting and customer profiling features, I find them promising. Another effective feature is the ability to use GET request objects to retrieve data from websites or APIs. This makes iterative steps easy to manage. It is more elastic and modern compared to SAP Data Services, allowing node creation and regrouping components or steps for reuse in different projects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"KNIME is fast and the visualization provides a lot of clarity. It clarifies your thinking because you can see what's going on with your data."
"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."
"We can deploy the solution in a cluster as well."
"The solution is good for teaching, since there is no need to code."
"Easy to use, stable, and powerful."
"I've tried to utilize KNIME to the fullest extent possible to replace Excel."
"The most valuable feature is the data wrangling, which is what I mainly use it for."
"It's very convenient to write your own algorithms in KNIME. You can write it in Java script or Python transcript."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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"
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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"
"The graphic features of KNIME need improvement"
"In my environment, I need to access a lot of servers with different characteristics and access methods. Some of my servers have to be accessed using proxy which is not supported by KNIME, so I still need to create the middleware to supply the source of my KNIME configurations."
"From the point of view of the interface, they can do a little bit better."
"It could input more data acquisitions from other sources and it is difficult to combine with Python."
"If they had a more structured training model it would be very helpful."
"We do not have much documentation in Portuguese."
"Sometimes, we needed more space to handle larger operations, especially since our machines had limited space and memory due to Kubernetes clusters."
"KNIME doesn't handle large datasets or a high number of records well."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"At this time, I am using the free version of Knime."
"I use the tool's free version."
"KNIME Business Hub is expensive for small companies."
"KNIME is a cost-effective solution because it’s free of cost."
"KNIME is a cheap product. I currently use KNIME's open-source version."
"This is an open-source solution that is free to use."
"There is a Community Edition and paid versions available."
"The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Performing Arts
13%
Healthcare Company
9%
University
9%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.