Best Predictive Analytics Software of 2026

The term predictive analytics has gained increased attention as a business intelligence (BI) tool, particularly as BI itself has grown in popularity. Predictive analytics software uses mathematical models and algorithms to analyze an organization’s data and provide users with a forecast of future outcomes and events. There are many vendors on the market today that sell predictive analytics tools, so we put together this buyer’s guide to help you better understand the options available. In this guide, we’ll review:

What Is Predictive Analytics Software?

Common Features of Predictive Analytics Software

What Type of Buyer are You?

Market Trends to Understand

What Is Predictive Analytics Software?

While traditional BI software usually examines past and present trends within a company, predictive analytics solutions look to the future to help decision makers plan ahead. These systems extract and code a company’s historical information to determine patterns. Armed with these patterns, predictive models are then created and used to forecast possible trends and outcomes.

This is not an exact science, and forecasts do contain a margin of error. But the key advantage of predictive analytics software is that it can highlight upcoming opportunities and potentials for risk to improve the quality of decision-making around those events.

_Predictive analytics visualization from SAP

There are four types of analytics users should know about, which can aid a business in different ways:

Common Features of Predictive Analytics Software

Predictive analytics software features can vary greatly from vendor to vendor—as can how basic or advanced they are—but there are a few features found in many systems:

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Before evaluating predictive analytics software, it’s important to determine what you plan to use it for. Some of the most common uses of these systems are found in the following industries:

Banking and financial. Predictive analytics software has been a mainstay of the banking and financial industries, namely to predict credit scores and help with fraud prevention, and continues to find broad application there today. Financial advisors are also finding predictive analytics useful in helping forecast market behavior.

Retail. By providing a forward-looking analysis of customer behavior, predictive analytics can be used in retail to optimize marketing, pricing and product distribution along with sales forecasts and site selection.

Healthcare. Predictive analytics is finding wide use in the healthcare industry, particularly as a means to improve patient care, help with disease prevention and improve hospital management and administration.

Market Trends to Understand

As you begin to evaluate predictive analytics software, there are a few important trends to be aware of:

Greater ease-of-use. As traditional BI systems become more user-friendly for business professionals and others lacking IT experience, predictive analytics is closely following suit. Visualizing predictive data has become highly valuable to organizations, and vendors are creating software that allows decision-makers to more easily grasp and act on the insights they provide with everything from charts and bar graphs to heat maps and scatter plots.

Movement to the cloud. As more predictive analytics systems are being offered in the cloud, per-use and subscription-based opportunities are growing. This may be an attractive option for businesses that lack the in-house staff needed to set up and decipher complex statistical modeling or the funds to host an on-premise system.

Increased adoption beyond financial services. While the banking, financial services and insurance industries continue to hold the largest market share for predictive analytics, the growth in customer data being compiled by retailers and manufacturing companies has fueled an increase in more industry-specific software as well. This is evident in the healthcare industry, for example, where predictive analytics systems specifically designed for use in this market are becoming increasingly available.

Overall market growth. The rapid growth in the amount of data gathered by companies combined with technological advances in how it’s able to be processed is fueling a significant expansion in the predictive analytics market. This growth will continue to be a driving factor in the increase of predictive analytics products made available to consumers, along with an increase in the functionality breadth of these products.