Minitab

Statistical software for quality engineering, and the tool Six Sigma training is written around

As of 30 August 2026, Minitab starts at $2394/year. Minitab covers control charts, capability studies, hypothesis tests and design of experiments for quality and process work. Softwr lists it under Machine Learning. Minitab is launched in 1972, available on macOS, Windows, Web.

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Overview

What Minitab does

Minitab is statistical software from Minitab LLC, sold as a per named user subscription that includes a Windows desktop application and a browser version sharing the same licence. Its centre of gravity is quality and process improvement: control charts, process capability, measurement systems analysis and gage repeatability studies, hypothesis testing, regression, design of experiments and reliability analysis. A separately licensed Predictive Analytics module adds tree-based methods including CART and random forests, from technology the company acquired with Salford Systems. Workspace, Engage and Model Ops are further products sold separately. What distinguishes it is not the statistics, which are ordinary and well understood, but that it is the tool the training was written for. Six Sigma green belt and black belt curricula, internal quality procedures and documents shown to auditors routinely reference Minitab by name and sometimes by menu path, which means the organisation's process documentation depends on the software rather than the other way round. That is the most durable form of lock-in in this category, because replacing the tool means rewriting the procedures and retraining the people who follow them. It is bought by manufacturing quality departments, medical device and pharmaceutical operations groups and anyone running a formal improvement programme, and it needs no specialist to operate, which is much of its appeal. The trade-off is that it is an analysis application rather than a platform. There is no pipeline, no meaningful API to build on and no deployment path within the statistical product. Work is recorded as a project file with a session history rather than as a script anyone can review in a pull request, so when an engineer leaves, what they did survives as output rather than as code.

What people use it for

Six Sigma and process improvement projects where the training materials and internal procedures already assume Minitab
Producing capability and gage studies as evidence for a customer audit or a regulatory submission
Design of experiments on a production process, run by an engineer who will not be writing code
Quality departments that need credible statistics without hiring a statistician or a data scientist

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Minitab.

Licensing is a per named user subscription, so an organisation where fifty engineers each need it twice a quarter pays fifty full seats for people who open it eight times a year.
Analyses are recorded as a project file and a session log rather than as code, so reviewing what somebody did means reading output instead of reading a script, and reproducing it a year later depends on the same version still being installed.
The machine learning capability is a separately licensed module with a fixed set of tree-based methods, so it is neither included in the base price nor competitive with what a Python user has for nothing.
There is no deployment path in the statistical product, so putting a model into a running process means buying Minitab Model Ops as another product or reimplementing the model somewhere else entirely.
Data handling is worksheet-shaped and held in memory, so anything past a few million rows means preparing the extract in another tool first, and joins and reshaping are clumsy compared with SQL or pandas.

Cross-shopped

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Pricing

What Minitab costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Solution Center Core

$2,394 /yr

Marked as Most Popular
Best for quality professionals
Minitab Dashboards
Data Center
Statistical Software
AI-Powered Interpretation

Solution Center Analytics

$2,593.5 /yr

Best for analytics professionals
Includes predictive analytics capabilities
Minitab Dashboards
Data Center
Statistical Software
AI-Powered Interpretation

Solution Center Copilot

$2,793 /yr

All-in-one platform for operational excellence
Includes AI-powered insights
Minitab Dashboards
Data Center
Statistical Software
AI-Powered Interpretation

Capabilities

Features

Control charts
Variables and attributes charts with the tests for special causes used in process monitoring
Process capability analysis
Capability indices and distribution fitting for normal and non-normal processes
Measurement systems analysis
Gage repeatability and reproducibility studies, bias and linearity assessment
Design of experiments
Factorial, response surface, mixture and Taguchi designs with analysis and optimisation
Classical statistics
Hypothesis tests, ANOVA, regression, time series and reliability and survival methods
Assistant
A guided interface that selects the appropriate test and interprets the output for non-statisticians
Predictive Analytics module
Separately licensed tree-based methods including CART, random forests and boosted trees
Desktop and browser access
A Windows application and a web version covered by the same named user subscription

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does Minitab run on macOS?

The installed desktop application is Windows. Mac users work through the browser version, which is included with the subscription but is not identical in every feature.

Is it machine learning software?

Not primarily. It is a statistics package for quality and process work. Predictive modelling exists in a separate Predictive Analytics module and is limited to tree-based methods.

Can I buy a perpetual licence?

The current offer is subscription based. Older perpetual licences exist in the field but are not the way the product is sold now.

What is the difference between Minitab and Minitab Workspace or Engage?

Minitab Statistical Software does the analysis. Workspace and Engage are separate products for process mapping, project management and improvement programme governance, and are licensed separately.

Can I automate it?

Only to a limited degree. There is a command language and integration options, but it is designed to be driven by a person through menus, not scheduled in a pipeline.

Behind it

Who makes Minitab

Company: Minitab
Based in: State College, Pennsylvania

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Minitab, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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