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Alteryx vs SAS Enterprise Guide comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Ranking in Data Preparation Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (5th)
SAS Enterprise Guide
Ranking in Data Preparation Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Preparation Tools category, the mindshare of Alteryx is 26.8%, down from 34.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Enterprise Guide is 16.4%, down from 26.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Preparation Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
Karunakar Kankata - PeerSpot reviewer
A predictive data analytics that lacks support for advanced modeling techniques
I find it challenging when I need to use certain functions and predictive modeling techniques in SAS. The procedures and data steps for database analysis take longer, and I've noticed that the current version we are using, lacks support for advanced modeling techniques. We've requested support for these advanced algorithms, but it seems there have been challenges in implementing them. As a result, we are facing difficulties in developing advanced models. Another issue we've encountered is that the community support for SAS is relatively limited compared to open-source environments.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The analytics are easy​."
"The connectors are a very good feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is data preparation."
"The GUI is simple and it integrates with Python."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The three data signs and data engineering are great features."
"Data processing is most valuable. It is one of the fastest data blockers out there in the market, which is a fascinating thing about Alteryx."
"The most valuable feature of Alteryx is the intelligence suite."
"Areas where SAS EG does a better job than regular SAS are in the realm of importing and exporting data. For instance, exporting a SAS data set in Unix to an Excel spreadsheet on a PC is a simple task compared to doing the same task with Base SAS."
"The solution is user-friendly, the resource for the query builder is very useful, and the ability to explore the data is a benefit."
"It is also compatible with other softwares, such as Excel."
"We do not bother any longer with some programs did not run, hence having to rerun them again."
"This solution allows for simplified working with large datasets."
"The query builder feature is the most valuable."
"Enterprise Guide is much better at generating reports than many solutions. We often use it to generate reports, and people interpret them how they like. They often probably use Excel spreadsheets or something like that after they get our data."
"Filter and sort query builder is valuable. The ability to do advanced SAS programming is also a useful feature because we can do anything by using Enterprise Guide. It has a lot of functionalities. We can build ETL processes. There are clients who are using SAS Enterprise Guide to build ETL processes. They have a SAS-based program that is scheduled to run at a certain frequency to produce some reports for the business. It is a very useful tool for ETL unit tests and functional tests. You can also do data science projects in SAS Enterprise Guide by using different statistics. During my MBA, we used SAS Enterprise Guide for our statistic course. To query the data, there are many solutions such as SQL, but these tools are only a part of the integration. They are only useful for querying the data and require knowledge of SQL, so they are not suitable for business users. SAS Enterprise Guide can be very easily used by business users to filter and sort the data and build queries. It is not necessary to have coding skills to use SAS Enterprise Guide. For this reason, it is attractive for businesses."
 

Cons

"It would be great if Alteryx could take third party tools and incorporate them."
"Alteryx could be improved in the area of analytics and central governance."
"The technical support could have a little bit of improvement."
"Alteryx can improve the model management and deployment processing of large workloads."
"I'd like to see more artificial intelligence business tools or features in Alteryx."
"There is currently no cloud solution and this would be valuable for many clients."
"In the database, it should be more functional and connect to more big data, especially using IPI."
"The solution just lacks in terms of data visualization. That is why we use Tableau and Qlik in our organization. They help to pick up the slack. If data visualization was added, Alteryx would be a very good tool, and much more complete."
"I would like to see integration with schedulers when run from hosting environments such as Citrix."
"I had difficulty with the diagrammatic flow chart style representation of projects. When projects got too large and complex (which was basically every project, except the most trivial). There just wasn't enough real estate to display the flow chart and dependencies without a lot of scrolling, even when a flow was down to minimum tasks. My recourse was making the flow less "atomic". E.g., rather than use the various subset, etc., tasks as program nodes to display the details, I would write chunks of code that did a few things and use them as SAS program nodes."
"It would be very useful if EG could be enhanced to automatically file and clear the project log to ensure non-stop running of the project."
"They should provide more information for the errors or logs. Currently, it gives you just the error message without explaining anything."
"Sentiment analytics would be a great feature to add into EG."
"There needs to be a community of SAS Enterprise Guide users for assistance. For example, as they do for Python or SQL."
"I would like it to give more information rather than just a forever loop that forces you to shut down the system. Give you more error messages without stopping the entire project, or even the entire application. That it displays more error messages rather than terminating the application."
"The stability is not very reliable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license price of the solution is expensive."
"The desktop platform costs $5,000 per year. It's very costly."
"The solution has a more costly license than other tools in the market."
"It is an expensive solution."
"We have a yearly cost that we pay for the licensing. We do not pay any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"Alteryx isn't extortionately expensive, but it's not cheap either."
"We use the free version of the solution. There are enterprise licenses available. It cost approximately $5,000 annually. It is an expensive solution and there are additional features that cost more money."
"Its price should be lower. The key thing that we see is that talking about ROI is an important element at the time of purchase. Cost becomes a factor in every discussion. Justifying the ROI for these kinds of workflows is always a challenge, and the only way to counter the challenge is by addressing the pricing."
"In general, SAS has high prices, which is a reason why some clients don't use SAS solutions. The licensing is on a yearly basis."
"It is very expensive. We have a basic license, and there are many features that are not available with the basic version."
"It is expensive. We get a different price based on our corporate rate. So, I'm not sure what the general cost is because we got a special rate for it."
"I did look at the prices a few years ago, and I believe it was approximately $1,000 for a yearly subscription at that time."
"The pricing and associated costs are substantial."
"Management liked it a lot because the license per seat was cheaper than a traditional SAS environment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Government
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me directly if you want to know more.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, R integrations if your team requires this. It can handle over 2 billion rows of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say the following: - An excellent desktop tool for Data Prep and analytics. - Featu...
What do you like most about SAS Enterprise Guide?
It streamlines our workflow involving multiple steps, from data extraction to modeling, and it is aimed at improving various aspects of banking operations, including customer retention and risk man...
What needs improvement with SAS Enterprise Guide?
I find it challenging when I need to use certain functions and predictive modeling techniques in SAS. The procedures and data steps for database analysis take longer, and I've noticed that the curr...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
Canary Islands Statistics Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx vs. SAS Enterprise Guide and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.