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.
I completely agree. This is a drastic and questionable business move, clearly designed to extract profit from users who can afford a not‑so‑cheap monthly subscription for cloud features that many of us neither need nor want (and not to mention the difficulties this creates for small and medium‑sized businesses, which clearly are not the target of this strategy…). And for simple or occasional batch runs, the cost is impossible to justify.
Local batch execution was a fundamental feature — basic, yes, but absolutely crucial — especially for personal use, home setups, or sensitive data that cannot be pushed to the cloud. Removing it entirely feels like a slap in the face to long‑time community members who have supported KNIME from the early days. I’ve been using it for over a decade, long before it became widely known.
In the end, the American business model always wins. This decision certainly opens the door for competitors, especially for more straightforward and versatile solutions that also leverage AI. Time to look for alternatives.
Hi.
I agree with you, but have you tried nodepit batch solution?
Br.
Two things:
First a maybe stupid question: what exactly is Nodepit? (a company, what’s it’s relation to KNIME, …)
Second: I am currently running version 5.11 (on Linux) and batchexecute still works for me. I mean to say, it seems you can upgrade and still preserve it. It would be great if someone who knows more about KNIMEs internal workings could make some ‘dos and don’t s’ kind of document on how to not lose batchexecute functionality (like backup certain directories, files. etc.)
Probably it won’t be officially supported but if it works, it works.
Best regards,
Daniel
Yes, already installed it, thanks =)
@LauAnt Well said and I completely agree. Your situation exactly describes mine where Cloud execution is just not a possibility. I’m happy you found the NodePit Batch, I did the same and it works very well.
Longer term I’m also looking to move away from KNIME, probably to Fabric, so instead of becoming a KNIME paying customer they will simply lose my business to a larger, more capable company.
@Marc_Goossens I think to not lose KNIME batch functionality you need to prevent KNIME from updating by disabling the software sites in the settings. Any other method seems very risky to me.
As for NodePit, I met with the two founders and had a good conversation about KNIME and NodePit. They came over as extremely smart and knowledgeable and I have no doubts about putting my faith in their software. Of course they cannot predict the future and KNIME could theoretically sabotage their business model but for now it’s your best bet if you want local execution.
Thanks Bob. I will definitely have a look at NodePit.
Disabling the KNIME update sites would ‘secure’ batch update, but you wouldn’t get any other updates either (at least from KNIME), so that would be only a very temporary solution…
Yes missing updates is an issue but if you don’t do this at some point KNIME AP will update and it will no longer be compatible with your ‘saved’ version of the batch executor since it will not be updated in sync.
I don’t like the option either but I think it’s NodePit or no updates since KNIME made this decision.
I can only echo the general consensus and describe this change as nothing short of a step backward from the original intent and purpose of this admittedly highly practical application.
I personally use more than a dozen workflows including batch functionality and am now faced with an unexpected mess. The fact that I recommended this tool so strongly is giving me a really bad feeling right now.
I’ve been watching this thread since @ScottF announced the termination of batch execution support. Read this press release for a more detailed explanation of Knime’s positioning:
I don’t know the structure of Invus’ financing of Knime, but no venture or long term capital investment fund treats its investments as charitable contributions. They expect a credible business plan which addresses an identifiable profitable market.
A few observations about the Knime “Community”:
- The vast majority of users use the free version of Knime and therefore contribute nothing financially to Knime development. I’m in this group. We’re freeloaders.
- You’re not a member of the community if your participation is limited to help requests every year or two. True community members are willing to volunteer their time to review and comment on posts and most importantly, help others. Currently, of the thousands of Knime users there’s a group of approximately 25 who provide practically all of the community support.
All of you threatening to go elsewhere should do a reality check. There are many platforms out there and some of them are better then Knime for specific, fairly narrow tasks. I invite anyone to identify a FREE platform which has the breadth of capabilities of Knime.
A few personal notes - I’ve used Knime since around KAP 2.x. I’ve been frustrated with bugs, lack of features I would like, but never forgotten that I had access to a powerful platform.
I wouldn’t necessarily agree with the freeloader label even if someone’s not an active solution contributor - the organic marketing KNIME benefits from is the primary channel for large deployments / consulting gigs which I presume has been their main revenue chunk to date. That’s how e.g canonical makes money.
I do agree it’s important to help though and I try my best whenever I can! Although this often requires a rather advanced knowledge of the platform. I’d like to see some stats but I would assume a lot of knime users are beginners
I also wouldn’t say there aren’t many viable alternatives. I am starting to think it’s probably best to do what most orgs/ people are doing and just simply code. For instance, VS code has a huge plugin ecosystem to make data workflows feel just as structured and visually appealing. Marimo is a great reproducible notebook solution. Coding is where most innovation happens in data, there’s no vendor restrictions and the learning curve is not steep at all, especially for someone who knows common data wrangling /ml patterns. I would even argue it’s easier and more transferable to learn and write projects in SQL /python : even basic use of variables /looping will suffice + maybe a few other user friendly python libraries. It may be a much better time investment vs learning KNIME at an advanced level (I’ve done both but just a personal opinion). This point is even more valid with AI assisted coding these days.
@Add94 Thanks for the reply. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t think companies like Conformal are like Knime. Their business models are different. Conformal makes money with products which sit on top of openware software like Ubuntu. Knime makes money selling proprietary software installations. I agree that probably the majority of Knime users are either inexperienced or have fairly narrow experience. Having said that, there are thousands of Knime KAP users. If they would bother, a large minority could provide support for the community as the “price” for using the software. I think your comment on Knime alternatives misses the point. You’re comparing apples and oranges. Of course hard coding is always a theoretical alternative. However, people are attracted to Knime precisely because they can accomplish a lot without coding, but still have the flexibilty to employ Python/R scripts.
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