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IBM Watson Explorer vs Weka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
Weka
Ranking in Data Mining
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Anomaly Detection Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Explorer is 3.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Weka is 7.2%, down from 17.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Weka7.2%
IBM Watson Explorer3.5%
Other89.3%
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…
SC
Student at Rochester Institute of Technology
Data mining projects have become faster and visualization now guides our pattern discovery
Weka can be improved in some areas. As a one-year user, I can share my experiences. I have tried installing other packages into Weka using the inbuilt package manager or adding modern algorithms that I wish to apply to my data sets or data processing. I think Weka needs to improve in that and also in integrating Python into Weka, which would help users much more. I chose eight out of ten because we need improvements in Weka, such as installing inbuilt packages. Weka uses skips such as N+2 or N+4 and eight-node, which makes sense basically, but I think it should improve in the package attribute, such as configuring Python easily and adding modern algorithms into Weka more easily.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main use case is FAQ for the user; it works for almost 80% of the use case coverage."
"Previously we'd have a set of health and safety analysts who would be the key focal points for doing work to understand health and safety risks; so a very small number of people, but through WEX and through our Watson HSEQ solution, we've managed to get engagement across at least one-third of our workforce, so over 1,300 people, and a 25% reduction in health and safety incidents."
"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and being able to see hidden insights from within unstructured data."
"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."
"What impressed me more about Watson is that it is easy to use it, not for the technical people, but for business people."
"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."
"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."
"I really can't talk enough about the team."
"Using Weka has positively impacted my studies and projects because it has saved my time firstly."
"Working with complicated algorithms in huge datasets is really easy in Weka."
"With clustering, if it's a yes, it's a yes, if it's a no, it's a no. It gives you a 100% level of accuracy of a model that has been trained, and that is in most cases, usually misleading. Classification is highly valuable when done as opposed to clustering."
"I think Weka is definitely a good investment, that is why we still use it."
"Weka is a very easy to use Data Mining solution, great for learning and for doing small experiments before exploring the data deeper, with a large number and diversity of algorithms that make it an excellent solution for rapid testing."
"I like the machine algorithm for clustering systems. Weka has larger capabilities. There are multiple algorithms that can be used for clustering. It depends upon the user requirements. For clustering, I've used DBSCAN, whereas for supervised learning, I've used AVM and RFT."
"If they want their task done faster, and they do not have enough coding expertise, this is definitely an excellent solution to choose from."
"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."
 

Cons

"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 needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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"
"I think we'll get it to a 10, but I think at the moment it's got to be a good eight or nine out of 10 at least."
"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 or something of the like."
"Sometimes the service stops."
"Weka is a little complicated and not necessarily suited for users who aren't skilled and experienced in data science."
"Within the basic Weka tool, I don't see many tools that are available where we can analyze and visualize the data that well."
"In terms of scalability, I think Weka is not prepared to handle a large number of users."
"Scalability and performance are the main aspect of improvement in Weka, since it has the main Java limitations, regarding the JVM."
"While it might offer insights for basic warehouse tasks, it falls short of deeper understanding and results."
"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."
"For production, it's not the best option."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"We use the free version now. My faculty is very small."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Healthcare Company
12%
Performing Arts
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
19%
University
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction 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 Business11
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Weka?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Weka is that I think it's a fair price since we are using it academically, so it is completely free to download and use. The license is als...
What needs improvement with Weka?
Weka can be improved in some areas. As a one-year user, I can share my experiences. I have tried installing other packages into Weka using the inbuilt package manager or adding modern algorithms th...
What is your primary use case for Weka?
My main use case for Weka is data exploration and data processing and data mining. I can give a quick, specific example of how I've used Weka for data exploration or data processing: we have a subj...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. Weka and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.