Databricks vs IBM SPSS Modeler comparison

Databricks and IBM are both solutions in the Data Science Platforms category. Databricks is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while IBM is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.5. Databricks holds a 13.9% mindshare in Data Science Platforms, compared to IBM’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Databricks

Read 91 Databricks reviews

20,775 Views
8,933 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM SPSS Modeler

Read 40 IBM SPSS Modeler reviews

2,258 Views
1,558 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Databricks

IBM SPSS Modeler

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

IBM SPSS Modeler and Databricks are data analytics competitors. Databricks has the upper hand due to its scalability and real-time processing for large-scale operations.

Features: IBM SPSS Modeler offers robust statistical tools, intuitive flowchart modeling, and effective predictive analytics. Databricks provides strong integration with big data technologies, advanced machine learning workflows, and collaboration through its notebook interface.

Room for Improvement: IBM SPSS Modeler could enhance its cloud capabilities and collaboration features. It may also benefit from more advanced machine learning tools. Databricks can improve by simplifying its initial adaptation to cloud environments, optimizing cost for smaller operations, and streamlining complex workflows for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM SPSS Modeler is straightforward to deploy on-premise with minimal cloud infrastructure and offers attentive customer service. Databricks supports quick, cloud-native deployments with strong team collaboration but may require additional training for cloud acclimation.

Pricing and ROI: IBM SPSS Modeler generally presents lower initial setup costs with good ROI for small and mid-sized statistical analyses. Databricks, while involving higher upfront investment, often yields a higher long-term ROI through its scalability and big data capabilities, justifying the initial expense for extensive data operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler

September 2025

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Helped 869,952 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

Databricks

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Streaming Analytics (1st)

IBM SPSS Modeler

Ranking in Data Science Platforms

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Mining (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Science Platforms category, the mindshare of Databricks is 13.9%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 3.5%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Science Platforms Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Databricks	13.9%
IBM SPSS Modeler	3.5%
Other	82.6%

Data Science Platforms

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7

Data Engineer at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow

Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.

Read full review

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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having one solution for everything, from data engineering to machine learning, is beneficial since everything comes under one hood."

"Databricks is a unified solution that we can use for streaming. It is supporting open source languages, which are cloud-agnostic. When I do database coding if any other tool has a similar language pack to Excel or SQL, I can use the same knowledge, limiting the need to learn new things. It supports a lot of Python libraries where I can use some very easily."

"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."

"There are good features for turning off clusters."

"Databricks makes it really easy to use a number of technologies to do data analysis. In terms of languages, we can use Scala, Python, and SQL. Databricks enables you to run very large queries, at a massive scale, within really good timeframes."

"The setup was straightforward."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the hardware and the resources it quickly provides without much hassle."

"It offers AI functionalities that assist with code management and machine learning processes."

More Databricks pros

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

"Very good data aggregation."

"I was familiar with using IBM SPSS Modeler separately in the private sector before that. It's a good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data."

"Our go live process has been slightly enhanced compared to the previous programmatic process. There is now a faster time to production from the business end."

"It handles large data better than the previous system that we were using, which was basically Excel and Access. We serve upwards of 300,000 parts over a 150 regions and we need to crunch a lot of numbers."

"We had an IBM Guardium service contract where we used one of their resources to help us develop our prototype. It was a good experience, but they were helpful and responsive."

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

"The quality is very good."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pros

Cons

"I'm not the guy that I'm working with Databricks on a daily basis. I'm on the management team. However, my team tells me there are limitations with streaming events. The connectors work with a small set of platforms. For example, we can work with Kafka, but if we want to move to an event-driven solution from AWS, we cannot do it. We cannot connect to all the streaming analytics platforms, so we are limited in choosing the best one."

"Databricks requires writing code in Python or SQL, so if you're a good programmer then you can use Databricks."

"Costs can quickly add up if you don't plan for it."

"The initial setup of Databricks could be complex."

"The stability of the clusters or the instances of Databricks would be better if it was a much more stable environment. We've had issues with crashes."

"Instead of relying on a massive instance, the solution should offer micro partition levels. They're working on it, however, they need to implement it to help the solution run more effectively."

"It's not easy to use, and they need a better UI."

"Databricks doesn't offer the use of Python scripts by itself and is not connected to GitHub repositories or anything similar. This is something that is missing. if they could integrate with Git tools it would be an advantage."

More Databricks cons

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

"I would like see more programming languages added, like MATLAB. That would be better."

"Customer support is hard to contact."

"If IBM could add some of the popular models into the SPSS for further analysis, like popular regression models, I think that would be a helpful improvement."

"C&DS will not meet our scalability needs."

"I can say the solution is outdated."

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

"It's not as user friendly as it could be."

More IBM SPSS Modeler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I do not exactly know the costs, but one of our clients pays between $100 USD and $200 USD monthly."

"The basic version of this solution is now open-source, so there are no license costs involved. However, there is a charge for any advanced functionality and this can be quite expensive."

"The licensing costs of Databricks depend on how many licenses we need, depending on which Databricks provides a lot of discounts."

"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."

"We're charged on what the data throughput is and also what the compute time is."

"Whenever we want to find the actual costing, we have to send an email to Databricks, so having the information available on the internet would be helpful."

"Databricks are not costly when compared with other solutions' prices."

"The solution is based on a licensing model."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"It is an expensive product."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."

"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."

More IBM SPSS Modeler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

11%

Educational Organization

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	56

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	32

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?

Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...

See all answers

How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?

We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?

Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...

See all answers

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?

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 ...

See all answers

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Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

October 2025

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Modeler

October 2025

Download IBM SPSS Modeler product report

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

SPSS Modeler

Overview

Databricks offers a scalable, versatile platform that integrates seamlessly with Spark and multiple languages, supporting data engineering, machine learning, and analytics in a unified environment.

Databricks stands out for its scalability, ease of use, and powerful integration with Spark, multiple languages, and leading cloud services like Azure and AWS. It provides tools such as the Notebook for collaboration, Delta Lake for efficient data management, and Unity Catalog for data governance. While enhancing data engineering and machine learning workflows, it faces challenges in visualization and third-party integration, with pricing and user interface navigation being common concerns. Despite needing improvements in connectivity and documentation, it remains popular for tasks like real-time processing and data pipeline management.

What features make Databricks unique?

Notebook: Enables collaborative work among team members.
Delta Lake: Optimizes data management operations.
Unity Catalog: Provides governance over data assets.
Cloud Integration: Seamlessly connects with major cloud platforms.

What benefits can users expect from Databricks?

Versatility: Supports diverse applications in data science and engineering.
Performance: Delivers efficient handling of large-scale analytics tasks.
Collaboration: Enhances teamwork in data projects.
Unified Environment: Centralizes machine learning and analytics activities.

In the tech industry, Databricks empowers teams to perform comprehensive data analytics, enabling them to conduct extensive ETL operations, run predictive modeling, and prepare data for SparkML. In retail, it supports real-time data processing and batch streaming, aiding in better decision-making. Enterprises across sectors leverage its capabilities for creating secure APIs and managing data lakes effectively.

Databricks

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

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https://www.ibm.com/account/reg/us-en/signup?formid=urx-19947

IBM

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

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

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler

September 2025

Free Report: Databricks vs. IBM SPSS Modeler

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