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You could argue that pretty much all analytics are meant to be predictive. Isn’t the point of analyzing past performance, on some level, to project future performance? (I guess you could just be nostalgic for the metrics underlying your favorite past fiscal quarter.)

As a dedicated tool class, however, predictive analytics software helps analysts of all kinds see what past data says about the future. While tools like these can’t tell you what will happen, they can tell you what massive amounts of data suggest is likely to happen.

So whether you’re in marketing, UX, risk management, manufacturing, or any other industry that the future matters to, predictive analytics tools like the ones I break down below should help you get the data-driven insights you need to make better decisions.

The best predictive analytics software

What makes the best predictive analytics software?

If you’re just looking for data management, reporting, visualization, or analytics tools, there are hundreds—if not thousands—of apps to choose from. Some of these solutions may include some forecasting capabilities, utilities that help analysts apply their own algorithms or AI processes, or tools for developing machine learning (ML) models to then use to perform predictive analytics.

For the purposes of this piece, I’m excluding all those tools. I’m defining predictive analytics software as platforms that have:

• Predictive focus: The focus of the software should be on performing predictive analytics for the user, not just giving the user tools to perform their own predictive analyses.

• Standalone utility: It should be accessible on its own without a subscription to a broader software product like a CRM or an ERP.

• Integrated ML and AI: Machine learning and AI should be primary features for enhancing predictive models, not just formatting data or automating workflows. It should also be able to apply native predictive models.

• Diversified data sourcing: The software should be able to draw data from a range of sources rather than one singular platform or proprietary repository.

Note: I’m also choosing to exclude media marketing mix (MMM) software from this list. Even though MMMs definitely meet the criteria, their use cases are a little too narrow.

Due to the richness and complexity of this software, I wasn’t able to personally test every app. So in addition to testing the apps I could, to improve the diversity and depth of my research, I also relied on product descriptions, third-party reviews, demos, and exchanges with marketing and data science professionals.

The best predictive analytics software at a glance

Best open source predictive analytics software

Prophet (Web)

Prophet pros:

Prophet cons:

• May strain resources for large data sets or complex forecasts

• Lacks advanced forecasting capabilities

• No multivariate forecasting capabilities

Admittedly, Prophet isn’t exactly a predictive analytics platform—it’s actually an open source Python procedure for automatic forecasting. But who’s counting?

A product of Facebook’s Core Data Science team, Prophet lives up to its name by forecasting time series data that’s easily broken down daily, weekly, and yearly with strong seasonal effects spanning multiple seasons of historical data. According to Aksinia Chumachenko, team lead product analyst for Simpals, “Prophet stands out due to its automated seasonal pattern detection, flexibility in handling holidays and events, robustness to missing data and outliers, and ease of use with minimal parameter tuning.” Aksinia also pointed out that it readily integrates with popular data analysis ecosystems.

Available for Python 3.7 and later, Prophet is a simple solution that’s readily available and easy to deploy. As an automatic forecasting procedure, it gives analysts an efficient, scalable way to help their organizations set goals and allocate resources more effectively.

As an open source option, Prophet isn’t the perfect predictive analytics solution for every user. Aksinia noted that it can be pretty demanding on systems when data scale and complexity increase, and it lacks advanced forecasting capabilities. But for those with simple forecasting needs, it could be a great (read: free) option.

Prophet pricing: Free

Best predictive analytics software for user decisions

Scios (Web)

Scios pros:

• Creates digital environments for predictive user decisions

• Slick, user-friendly interface

• Combines granular data from various sources with macroeconomic data

Scios cons:

You could manually finagle your data to show you some potential numerical outcomes to map a narrative onto—or you could use Scios.

What makes Scios unique is that it’s not a predictive analytics solution so much as it is a decision intelligence solution. Designed to show users what people would do in a hypothetical scenario, it creates digital “twins” of markets, populates them with virtual consumers, and runs input scenarios. 

Based on behavioral economics, Scios provides AI-powered insights in a slick dashboard that’s easy to navigate. Using diverse data sources, the platform injects real (or as real as data-modeled AI can get) human motivations into its virtual markets that make decisions and progress through journeys with data-driven probability. This lets you do things like find out which kinds of features your market is interested in, test update concepts, and gauge adoption likelihood. 

Rather than showing you data narratives, Scios allows you to run scenarios to test for specific outcomes of interest. It’s a little like playing God in a way that’s almost not at all creepy; it can be hugely valuable for establishing trustworthy projections and identifying possible problems in your product. With over 300 user prediction models, there’s enough granularity to align virtual consumer actions with your unique data needs. 

Obviously, Scios doesn’t specialize in creating the kinds of forecast trend reporting that many of the other tools on this list do, so it’s not for everyone. But if you’re really interested in analyzing hypothetical user behavior, Scios is for you.

Scios pricing: By request

Best predictive analytics software for automated forecasting

SAS Viya (Web, iOS, Android)

SAS Viya pros:

SAS Viya cons:

SAS is truly one of the forebears of data management software, so it’s hard not to include one of their products on this list. Admittedly more of a general data visualization platform, SAS Viya also has powerful automated forecasting features.

SAS Viya is almost more of a data automation engine than anything else, which makes its forecasting utility pretty compelling. The platform allows you to generate automated forecasts and visualizations based on your data, essentially hands-free. Since you don’t have to spend resources developing and tweaking forecasting models, you can save a SAS-load of time and reduce potential human bias. You can even tailor modeling techniques to individual data segments to stay flexible as you scale your data across time series.

While this automated forecasting is designed to be as automatic as possible, it’s also not completely rigid. You can feed it any known events like holidays or seasonalities to help shape the forecasts to your industry. Or, you can get your hands dirty and apply your own industry knowledge to manually override outcomes.

Does SAS Viya have the prettiest dashboard? No. Is it the easiest software to learn and deploy? Also no. Is it incredibly fast and responsive? Still no. But those nos are because this is complex, powerful software. It may take a while to onboard effectively, but once it’s up and running, it can pay for itself in insights and time savings. 

SAS Viya pricing: By usage

Best predictive analytics tool for people analytics

One Model (Web)

One Model pros:

One Model cons:

HR teams may struggle to retrofit most predictive analytics platforms into their people analytics processes—except for One Model, a dedicated people analytics tool.

Traditional employee management software can be great assets for overseeing practical elements of HR processes and collecting data points, but they have their limitations when it comes to managing that data. One Model allows teams to connect HRIS systems and turn that people data into actionable insights.

Since One Model is an analytics tool tailored specifically to the people analytics space, it has richer data features than just about any other HR tool and more utility for HR use cases than just about any other predictive analytics tool. Packed with plug-and-play analytics and predictive modeling, it automatically ingests data from wherever you house your HR data. 

Since it’s such a niche tool, I found One Model to be surprisingly flexible. One Model’s data visualizations are sharp, and you can create new data views on the fly to present data the way you want to see it. You can even manipulate metrics manually (say that five times fast), integrate with other preferred business intelligence platforms, and export findings to internal repositories. 

At the core of One Model is One AI, its proprietary end-to-end AI platform. For HR teams without their own suite of data scientists, One AI can pick optimal predictive models on its own, apply those models, and integrate outcomes into storyboards, so they’re instantly actionable. If there’s ever any question about a storyboard, you can easily trace any forecast to its core data point. It also has built-in bias detection and removal capabilities for both training and prediction data, which can really help keep models accurate and equitable. And if you’ve got your own models, you can use those, too.

One Model is such a user-friendly, adaptable tool that I almost wish it was a more generalized predictive analytics product. But for those who need predictive people analytics, this should be a go-to solution.

One Model pricing: By request

Best predictive analytics software for generative AI

SAP Analytics Cloud (Web, iOS, Android)

SAP Analytics Cloud pros:

SAP Analytics Cloud cons:

I almost didn’t include this tool because it’s a more general analytics platform, combining BI, analytics augmentation, and enterprise planning capabilities. But SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) has such strong predictive features that it’d be a shame not to mention it.

SAC is a built-in data utility offering for other SAP Cloud products, but it can also link to existing solutions and non-SAP sources to import and replicate siloed data or augment non-replicated live data. Once integrated, SAP makes it incredibly easy to visualize analytics with drag-and-drop dashboards you can build in minutes. 

While none of the above is necessarily unique, what makes SAP stand out is how well it integrates generative AI into its offering with Joule, the platform’s AI companion bot. For example, while creating reporting dashboards, you can ask Joule to come up with code to apply advanced features like timeline toggling, then drop the code into the dashboard editor and make it happen. 

You can also ask it questions like you would any other AI chatbot to get human-language insights into your data, alter data models, generate visualizations, and get tips. Taking this into predictive use cases, you can also use Joule to run simulations, automate forecasts, and even generate business plans based on findings.

Between Joule and SAC’s highly intuitive interface, the software makes it easy to manually run and automate predictive forecasts. You can choose between linear regression or triple exponential smoothing to help make allowances for complexities like seasonality. Graphs readily visualize historical data, trend projections, forecasts according to the period you preset, and confidence intervals, which you can click to drill further into.

SAC doesn’t necessarily do things other tools on this list can’t in terms of raw utility, but if you’re after the simplicity of integrated AI, SAC and the Joule copilot are meant for you. (Yes, that’s a very out-of-place Jewel reference.)

SAP Analytics Cloud pricing: $396/user/year

Best predictive analytics tool for interactive forecasting

Qlik (Web, Android)

Qlik pros:

Qlik cons:

I can’t decide if I love Qlik’s name or hate it, but one thing I have decided is that it’s a handy predictive analytics solution.

Aside from its propensity toward arguably overly clever spelling quirks (Staige 👀), Qlik is a slick data integration platform with useful predictive analytics features. Designed to bring no-code machine learning modeling and automation to relatively non-technical users, Qlik is designed to make analytical processes as simple as possible. 

That extends to its automated ML (aptly titled AutoML) application, which can nearly instantly find algorithms to apply optimal ML models to your unique data sets. You can then tinker with these models, test them, score them, and rank them so you can prioritize the ones that work best. Qlik is also serious about transparency, so you can funnel down through every data level to find the core of its predictions with SHAP values that tell the full story.

All those features make Qlik a good predictive analytics product, but what makes it really shine is the interactivity of its reporting dashboards. By loading your predictive analytics into Qlik Sense® (oddly spelled the way you’d expect it to be, which I didn’t expect), you can make predictive apps that bring that data to life. From there, Qlik can calculate data live as you interact with charts, graphs, maps, and other visualizations, helping you explore and report on your data more fully.

Qlik has secured a comfortable place in the niche of self-service users. It’s convenient for data exploration and handy for analytics automation, but advanced users might find that it’s got its hiccups with data load speeds and occasional programming roadblocks. And while pricing isn’t transparent, the word on the Reddit streets is that it’s one of the lower-priced options out there, so for growing enterprises with complex data processing needs, it may not be the best option.

Qlik pricing: By request

Which is the best predictive analytics software for you?

I may not be able to recommend the best predictive analytics software option for every user, but what I’ve at least tried to do here is highlight some standout use cases that could help you figure out which is worth looking into. 

It’s worth noting that this is by no means an exhaustive list of good (or even great) predictive analytics tools. I had to exclude quite a few just to stick to pretty defined criteria, and others may not have cracked the list because their top features were edged out by another option. 

While you whittle down your picks, remember that automating analytics tools helps you get more accurate results faster than ever—and Zapier can help. Its no-code automation connects thousands of apps, so you can do more with your data.

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I have no trouble admitting that I’m a productivity nerd. In my past life as a freelancer, I spent an unhealthy amount of time experimenting with what felt like every project management app on the market. And in my humble opinion, Asana and ClickUp are two of the best.

But while they might look similar at first glance, they’re definitely not interchangeable. The right tool for your needs comes down to what you value more: streamlined simplicity or feature-rich customizability.

I’ve already spent countless hours exploring and using these apps for my own business. But to update this article, I really dug in and thoroughly tested both platforms to see how they stack up.

Asana vs. ClickUp at a glance

The summary: 

• Asana is better if you want traditional project management with an easy learning curve and plenty of native integration options. 

• ClickUp is better if you want one customizable tool for doing all your work in one place. It’s also better for teams that don’t want to pay as much for more advanced features.

Here’s a quick comparison table for ClickUp vs. Asana, but keep reading to learn more about my experiences using each app.

ClickUp is more robust—but with a steeper learning curve

Asana is pretty solidly in the project management app category. ClickUp, on the other hand, has positioned itself as a customizable WorkOS.

But…what even is that? Basically, ClickUp wants to be “one app to replace them all”: a central workspace for collaboration and project management, so users don’t need to constantly bounce between apps and browser tabs. Going beyond simple project management, ClickUp is a work management tool: a project management tool, shared inbox, to-do list, internal knowledge base, whiteboard, chat app, and OKR tracker all in one. And then some.

When it comes to standard project management, both Asana and ClickUp offer the typical views to display your projects: list, board, timeline (Gantt), and calendar views. Here’s what a board looks like in Asana.

Other than the color scheme (and even that’s not all that different), ClickUp’s board view is pretty similar. 

But ClickUp goes well beyond the standard options. In ClickUp, you can embed views from other apps like Airtable and Miro, and even make changes to them within ClickUp. (Note that some of these embedded views, like Google Calendar, only allow you to track changes and not make modifications within ClickUp.)

There are also other unique features, like a documentation area, chat option, mind maps, and a digital whiteboard. While these aren’t traditional “views”—they don’t convert your tasks into a mind map or anything—it’s really nice to have these options built in.

The whiteboard feature even lets you quick-add embeds from Figma, YouTube, and Google Workspace, which makes it easy to create dynamic vision boards in a few minutes.

Within ClickUp, you have almost endless customization options. You can easily create custom dashboards to track anything from tasks to timesheets to custom embeds from around the web. ClickUp also contains multiple hierarchy levels, starting with Spaces for different teams or categories of work. Then, within each Space, you have the option to create individual Lists of tasks or items—or you can organize those Lists into separate Folders.

ClickUp also recently introduced ClickUp Brain, which is the platform’s native AI assistant that writes for you and answers questions about the content in your workspace. Asana also offers a basic AI assistant feature that summarizes tasks and suggests subtasks, but ClickUp’s is a bit more expansive.

Of course, if you’re using a project management app for the first time, or you’re just looking for something more traditional and easier to navigate, ClickUp’s options could be overwhelming. Personally, I find the Lists and Folders to be a little redundant. I experienced almost immediate decision fatigue when I was trying to set up my ClickUp workspace for the first time. (For instance, should each client get their own List within a Folder, or should I put all my client work into a single List?) But for larger teams that need complex data hierarchies, I can definitely see the value.

Asana’s views and features are more than enough for true project management, even at a large organization, so it can be the better choice if you want to go the more traditional route.

Asana is easier to set up and more intuitive to use

The simplicity of Asana’s features is echoed in its usability: clear navigation and labels, along with a contrasting color palette, make it pretty easy to find your way around. ClickUp, on the other hand, uses some obscure labels (“LineUp” and “Trending,” for example), and all the options can make it hard to find what you’re looking for.

Asana’s side navigation menu is simple, with several icons and labels to take you to wherever you need to go, whether that’s your tasks, reporting, or anything else. And if you get lost, it’s easy to find your way back to the home screen, where you’ll find your priorities, recent projects, and collaborators. Asana’s HQ is set up pretty nicely, with a customizable background and widgets that you can arrange to your liking.

Within a project, there’s a simple Add task button, or you can click into any section and add a task directly into it.

From there, it’s easy to drag and drop tasks, so they’re in the right section and order. Once you’ve created a task, you can add subtasks, assignees, and a due date, each in a click. 

It’s also easy to color-code your tasks or events in the calendar view, so they stand out a bit more and are easier to parse. 

None of this is novel or surprising, but that’s the point: Asana does exactly what you expect it to, which makes it easy to navigate.

ClickUp’s interface, on the other hand, isn’t as intuitive. For starters, from a distance, ClickUp seems a little like a blank piece of paper. Everything kind of looks like it’s written in pencil, with fine fonts and a lot of light gray. I will say, though, that the home page has improved in recent months. It’s now a dashboard with customizable widgets, so you can choose which views work best for you. But again, that leaves a lot of upfront work to you as you set up your ideal workspace—and the default home dashboard can easily get too busy.

One thing ClickUp’s interface has going for it is the task tray in the top-right corner. No matter where you are in the app, you can create a new task or doc, add a note or reminder, create a video clip, or pull up your calendar. I also appreciate that you can sync your Google Calendar to ClickUp so that your upcoming events appear on your agenda alongside ClickUp tasks.

All the must-haves are there in ClickUp, but because of the design—and the overwhelming number of features—it’s a bit harder to find your way around. 

ClickUp has highly customizable automation options on the free plan, while Asana’s require a paid subscription 

Even if you’ve never automated anything before, it’s simple to get started with ClickUp’s pre-built automation templates. Then, once you’ve got the hang of it, you can create your own custom automations based on whatever trigger and condition you want. Automatically change assignees, priorities, or task statuses based on any sort of custom logic.

Both apps offer solid built-in automation, but with Asana, you can only access them on paid plans. The Premium plan (at $10.99/user/month) gives you access to a few pre-set rules, forms, and templates—but if you want to create your own automation workflows, you’ll need to pay $24.99/user/month for the top-tier Business plan. Depending on how many users you have, that can add up quickly.

ClickUp, on the other hand, offers its customizable automations for free (you get 100 automations/month on the free plan, and it bumps up to 1,000 for only $5/user/month).

ClickUp has a robust free plan, but it can be too complex for new users 

ClickUp’s free plan is incredibly generous. You can set unlimited tasks and register as many users as you want (Asana’s free plan is limited to 10 users), so even if you have a large team, you can get a complete picture of how ClickUp works without spending a dime. And unlike Asana, ClickUp has a whole host of complex features included in the free plan, including sprints, mind maps, dependencies, and embedded spreadsheets. You also have access to more view types, custom fields, and templates, not to mention the customizable automations I mentioned earlier.

But depending on your use case, you might not need or even want all that. The free plan on Asana is more than enough for a small team doing basic project management—and it’s easier to work with if that’s you.

Asana has more native integrations, but both Asana and ClickUp integrate with Zapier

Any project management app becomes more powerful when you can connect it to the other apps in your tech stack. Both Asana and ClickUp offer native integrations in their free plans. Asana natively integrates with an impressive list of over 200 apps, while ClickUp connects with closer to 50.

But because both Asana and ClickUp integrate with Zapier, you’ll be able to connect them with thousands of other tools too, so you can automatically add tasks to your project management app or set off workflows whenever you mark a task as complete. Learn more about how to automate Asana and how to automate ClickUp, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ClickUp or Asana: Which should you use? 

The right platform for you comes down to what you need and what will help you get your work done most efficiently. 

Choose Asana if: 

• You’re new to project management apps 

• You want a traditional project management tool

• You prefer simplicity and get frustrated by bloated apps

• You’re a small team (or don’t mind paying for more than 10 users)

Choose ClickUp if: 

ClickUp is one of the best Asana alternatives for people who want more from their project management software, but Asana is still the old reliable that many teams—including Zapier—use for their project management.

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This article was originally published in June 2022 by Holly Stanley. The most recent update was in April 2024.