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IBM SPSS Modeler vs Weka comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (13th)
Weka
Ranking in Data Mining
2nd
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Anomaly Detection Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 17.3%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Weka is 20.3%, down from 20.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AwaisAnwar - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Stability is good."
"It is just a lot faster. So you do not have to write a bunch of code, you can throw that stuff on there pretty quickly and do prototyping quickly."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"You take two quarters and compare them and this tool is ideal because it gives you a lot of visibility on the before and after."
"It's a very organized product. It's easy to use."
"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."
"There are many options where you can fill all of the data pre-processing options that you can implement when you're importing the data. You can also normalize the data and standardize it in an easier way."
"Weka's best features are its user-friendly graphic interface interpretation of data sets and the ease of analyzing data."
"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."
"I mainly use this solution for the regression tree, and for its association rules. I run these two methodologies for Weka."
"The interface is very good, and the algorithms are the very best."
"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."
"It is a stable product."
"In Weka, anyone can access the program without being a programmer, which is a good feature since the entry cost is very low."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms."
"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."
"Time Series or forecasting needs to be easier. It is a very important feature, and it should be made easier and more automated to use. For instance, for logistic regression, binary or multinomial is used automatically based on the type of the target variable. I wish they can make Time Series easier to use in a similar way."
"We have run into a few problems doing some entity matching/analytics."
"​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.​"
"I can say the solution is outdated."
"Customer support is hard to contact."
"It is not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI."
"The visualization of Weka is subpar and could improve. Machine learning and visualization do not work well together. For example, we want to know how we can we delete empty cells or how can we fill in the empty cells without cleaning the data system and putting it together."
"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."
"A few people said it became slow after a while."
"If there are a lot more lines of code, then we should use another language."
"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."
"Weka is a little complicated and not necessarily suited for users who aren't skilled and experienced in data science."
"Not particularly user friendly."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"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."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"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."
"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."
"Currently, I am using an open-source version so I don't know much about the price of this solution."
"We use the free version now. My faculty is very small."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
12%
University
9%
Government
8%
University
19%
Educational Organization
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Modeler?
Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding.
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?
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 performanc...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Weka?
Weka is free and open-source software. That is why I used it over KNIME.
What needs improvement with Weka?
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...
 

Comparisons

 

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 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.