Hi, KNIME is great and I understand the change if this helps KNIME to keep improving. I work from Chile, and in December 2026, the application of the new personal data law will begin, which has many restrictions regarding working with data online. In this new scenario, we think it is impossible for our boss to pay for KNIME Hub/Cloud executions, but the idea of a specific paid batch function to run locally sounds better and might be easier to sell to my university. Even, could be not a function but a menu app to managed de crons and the activity in general. Currently, for many of our data processing workflows (especially during the early stages of design) KNIME is far superior for rapid automation prototyping. However, without batch processing capabilities, we would be forced to migrate to solutions like Dagster before know if knime automation strategy help us.
Just to add after may last comment the fantastic @danielesser has added the –nosave flag (exposed in NodePit Batch as –no-save) over the weekend so Batch 1.1.0 now support this.
Hello,
In the light of the December communication and the company’s stance towards Open Source, this communication comes as a surprise. I sincerely hope that the announcement has been made in the context of ordinary circumstances.
Even though I have never used batch mode, I have always appreciated the fact that it was available as a way to ensure that KNIME could be used locally in automation scenarios, which is a highly IT-relevant scenario.
I also encourage KNIME to introduce a paid plan to enable officially supported local batch execution. Absent any such plan, I am afraid that I will no longer be able to recommend KNIME for professional usage.
Kind regards,
Geo
the reasonable solution to salvaging this would be the introduction of a local scheduling mechanism similar to the Batch scheduler linked above.
but, Knime Coorperation will never introduce a local-first on-device scheduler, while also offering the Knime Hub. Simply put it would cannibalize their own product (Knime Hub). Especially, if implemented properly with credentials and environment management.
The earliest change to this path entered could be expected if Knime(s)
- financial interest change
- realizes that low-code application are more and more getting replaced by code applications with support of AI
- is being challenged by an open-source fork with accelerated development.
That’s a lot of user reputation and trust been destroyed by one announcement, on top of a lot of discontent on the forum at the poor implementation of the new UI, seen by many as a huge waste of effort
I usually don’t write comments like this, but I have to say that this announcement leaves me genuinely astonished, especially considering the open-source spirit that has always been at the heart of KNIME.
I understand the business rationale behind this decision, but from the perspective of a small professional firm this is a very problematic message.
I work with tax declarations in Italy. This means dealing with personal data, health expenses, family information, income data and other highly sensitive documents. For this kind of work, cloud execution is not simply a matter of convenience or scalability: in many cases, keeping the workflow local is a necessity.
Automation is essential for small professional firms like ours. We need to automate repetitive work precisely because we are not large companies with 50+ employees and dedicated IT departments. But we also need to do it in a way that allows us to maintain control over data, infrastructure and compliance.
Batch execution was one of the key reasons why KNIME made sense in this context: it allowed local, controlled, scheduled automation without forcing everything into a cloud-based model.
By discontinuing Batch execution and pointing users toward KNIME Pro or enterprise-level solutions, you are effectively telling small firms like ours that the local automation path is no longer part of KNIME’s future. And the costs of enterprise solutions are simply not sustainable for small professional firms like ours.
I appreciate that KNIME has to make strategic choices, but this decision leaves users with real privacy, compliance, economic and operational constraints in a very difficult position. For our kind of work, “move to the cloud” is not always an acceptable answer.
At this point, the only realistic solution for firms like ours may simply be to move elsewhere.