Minitab 17 and Minitab Express: A Comparison of Software Features

Since the release of Minitab Express in 2014, we’ve often received questions in technical support about the differences between Express and Minitab 17.  In this post, I’ll attempt to provide a comparison between these two Minitab products.

Minitab 17 is an all-in-one graphical and statistical analysis package that includes basic analysis tools such as hypothesis testing, regression, and ANOVA. Additionally, Minitab 17 includes more advanced features such as reliability analysis, multivariate tools, design of experiments (DOE), and quality tools such as gage R&R and capability analysis. A full list of features that are included Minitab 17 is available on this page. 

Minitab Express is a more basic all-in-one software package for graphical and statistical analysis, designed for students and professors teaching introductory statistics courses. Minitab Express includes statistical analysis options such as hypothesis testing, regression, and ANOVA, but does not include many of the other advanced features that are available in Minitab 17. A full list of the features that are included in Minitab Express is available here.

One main difference between the two packages is that Minitab 17 is a Windows-only application (however, Minitab 17 can be installed on Mac OS X using one of the options described here). System requirements for Minitab 17 are available here. 

Minitab Express is available for both Window and Mac OS X. The system requirements for Minitab Express are available here.

While the menu options for both versions of the software are located at the top and the worksheet/data window are below, there are several differences in the interface. The first screen shot below is for Minitab 17, while the next two screen shots are for Minitab Express:

Minitab 17:

Minitab Express for Windows:

In addition to cosmetic differences in appearance, the table below compares the features that are available in both versions:

Feature

Minitab 17

(Windows)

Minitab Express

(Windows & Mac OS X)

Assistant menu

Graphs

Probability distributions

Summary statistics

Hypothesis tests

One-Way ANOVA

Two-Way ANOVA

ANOVA with > 2 factors

Linear regression

Logistic regression

Nonlinear regression

Design of experiments

Control charts

Gage R&R

Capability analysis

Reliability

Multivariate

Time series

Nonparametric tests

Equivalence tests

Power and sample size

Although many of the same features are available in both packages, Minitab 17 has many graph editing options that are not available in Minitab Express. For many of the tests that are available in both packages, Minitab 17 allows more control over the results and has more options that Minitab Express. You can see a more detailed comparison here. 

I hope this post is useful in evaluating the two versions of Minitab.  For any questions about either software package, we are more than happy to help here in technical support.