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

IBM Watson Explorer vs KNIME 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 Watson Explorer
Ranking in Data Mining
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KNIME
Ranking in Data Mining
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM Watson Explorer is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KNIME is 25.3%, down from 27.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

it_user840897 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ingests, retrieves information from a range of sources; enables dissecting questions in context and answering them
WEX is more a platform, I believe, than it is the application. I could talk about what I'm looking for in the application. We've done visualizations and we can do basic analysis with the system as it stands. Where we're looking to take it is implementing it into workflows, so the workers on the line can actually understand the risks that they're exposing themselves to and then address them on the fly. So that's fantastic. And then the final one is, it's not prediction, but maybe anticipation. So when people are put at risk, we'll be implementing solutions shortly that will help people anticipate the risks and the dangers they're exposing themselves to so they can control them.
Shyam_Sridhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Good for data analysis to model prediction and application but data load limitations
KNIME is very easy to handle and use. Anyone can use it, and it's easy to learn. You don't need a specific class. They're very good at model prediction. It has got everything. From data analysis to model prediction and application, it's very good. I only use the free community edition, not the enterprise one. I feel KNIME is really good. I haven't tried any other tool or platform yet, but KNIME is pretty good. The workflow is great. You drag and drop, and then you have the data explorer and charts that give results. The execution is also good – it's easy to identify where your model has gone wrong. It shows you the exact point of error within the workflow, so you don't have to execute the entire workflow to find it. For example, if your workflow has ten steps and the error is in the sixth step, it will show you the error at that step. You don't have to worry about the first five steps. The Data Explorer is very good, and the charts are great too. The accuracy charts for different models, like decision tree, K3, Naive Bayes, are all very good. KNIME is great at reporting, whether it's structured or unstructured data. These are all very good features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's a coding-less opportunity to use AI. This is the major value for me."
"The hardest part is keeping a tidy workspace because of the many nodes involved. When teaching, it would be helpful if there was more emphasis on how to group nodes effectively. For example, turning frequently used nodes into a single component can simplify things."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"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."
"It's a huge tool with machine learning features as well."
"It also has very good fundamental machine learning. It has decision trees, linear regression, and neural nets. It has a lot of text mining facilities as well. It's fairly fully-featured."
"I was able to apply basic algorithms through just dragging and dropping."
"Usability, and organising workflows in very neat manner. Controlling workflow through variables is something amazing."
 

Cons

"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"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"
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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"
"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."
"Though I can use KNIME in a 64-bit platform in the lab, it's missing some features. For example, from my laptop, I can use the image reader feature of KNIME. However, in the lab, the image reader node is missing."
"It could be easier to use."
"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."
"KNIME could improve when it comes to large data markets."
"There should be better documentation and the steps should be easier."
"They should look at other vendors like Alteryx that are more user friendly and modern."
"I would like it to have data visualitation capabilities. Today I'm still creating my own data visualtions tools to present my reports."
"​The data visualization part is the area most in need of improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"KNIME desktop is free, which is great for analytics teams. Server is well priced, depending on how much support is required."
"The price for Knime is okay."
"KNIME offers a free version"
"We're using the free academic license just locally. I went for KNIME because they have a free academic license."
"The price of KNIME is quite reasonable and the designer tool can be used free of charge."
"The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
"There is no cost for using KNIME because it is an open-source solution, but you have to pay if you need a server."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Mining solutions are best for your needs.
841,205 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Educational Organization
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
For graphics, the interface is a little confusing. So, this is a point that could be improved.
 

Comparisons

 

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 and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
841,205 professionals have used our research since 2012.