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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

"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."
"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 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."
"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 product is open-source and therefore free to use."
"The product is very easy to understand even for non-analytical stakeholders. Sometimes we provide them with KNIME workflows and teach them how to run it on their own machine."
"One of the greatest advantages of KNIME is that it can be used by those without any coding experience. those with no coding background can use it."
"The most useful features are the readily available extensions that speed up the work."
"It allows for a user-friendly approach where you can simply drag and drop elements to create your model, which is a convenient and effective idea."
"This open-source product can compete with category leaders in ELT software."
"We leverage KNIME flexibility in order to query data from our database and manipulate them for any ad-hoc business case, before presenting results to stakeholders."
"It is possible to configure the system to effectively manage memory and space requirements."
 

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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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"
"KNIME could improve when it comes to large data markets."
"They could add more detailed examples of the functionality of every node, how it works and how we can use it, to make things easier at the beginning."
"The overall user experience feels unpolished. In particular: Data field type conversion is a real hassle, and date fields are a hassle; documentation is pretty poor; user community is average at best."
"The license is quite expensive for us."
"They should look at other vendors like Alteryx that are more user friendly and modern."
"I would prefer to have more connectivity."
"One area that could be improved is increasing awareness and adoption of KNIME among organizations. Despite its capabilities, it is not as well-known as other tools. The advertising and marketing efforts to reach out to companies and universities have not been very successful."
"Data visualization needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"It is expensive to procure the license."
"I use the open-source version."
"The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
"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 free of cost. It is GNU licensed."
"KNIME is an open-source tool, so it's free to use."
"KNIME desktop is free, which is great for analytics teams. Server is well priced, depending on how much support is required."
"KNIME is free as a stand-alone desktop-based platform but if you want to get a KNIME server then you can find the cost on their website."
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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
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
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

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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.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.