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AWS Glue vs SAS Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

AWS Glue
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Integration (1st)
SAS Access
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (59th)
 

Featured Reviews

NS
Principal Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution improves ETL performance but faces challenges with version upgrades
For ETL, I feel the performance is excellent. If I create jobs in a standard way, the performance is great, and maintenance is also seamless. It is serverless, so I do not need to worry about other integrations. It runs on a serverless VM. Glue services from AWS are regularly upgraded with new properties and functions. We use PySpark and other frameworks, which help customize our ETL process in a standard way. During our process, we utilized the typical SQL ITIL process standard in Glue-oriented ETL services, which helped us improve performance and time. AWS running time, mostly during the morning, saved us time compared to the old ETL method. There are many email notifications once a job is successful or fails, and we get notifications using SES or AWS's Simple Notification Service. Glue is integrated with both email alerts, and we are responsible for managing the full data journey from end to end.
Robert Heck - PeerSpot reviewer
Co Owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH
The solution is stable, scalable, and flexible
I rate the solution eight out of ten. The number of people required to maintain the solution is dependent on the other applications running. The solution in itself does not require a lot of maintenance. The solution is flexible and I recommend it when you have more complex applications with special requirements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best thing about AWS Glue is its scalability and how easy it is to process a large amount of data."
"AWS Glue's best features are scalability and cloud-based features."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Glue is that it provides a GUI format with a drag-and-drop feature."
"The two features I find most valuable in AWS Glue are its user interface and ease of use."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"I like that it's flexible, powerful, and allows you to write your own queries and scripts to get the needed transformations."
"We are seeing a very good return on our investment."
"The AWS Glue Data Catalog provides metadata management and schema discovery. AWS Glue simplifies data transformation with automatic schema detection, incremental data updates, and integration with other AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is you have native access to the external databases."
"The SAS/ACCESS ability to connect creates an elegant simplicity."
"The most valuable part of SAS/ACCESS is what it is made for: connecting to remote systems that are not part of your physical SAS environment."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ease of access to the data in those databases."
 

Cons

"The solution’s technical support could be improved."
"The monitoring is not that good."
"The solution needs to expand its 30-minute query or runtime."
"With AWS Glue, you pay more, but if you want to process the data, with speed and performance, you need the correct EC2 instances."
"The drawbacks associated with the product stem from the fact that, based on the data volume, it can become very costly."
"The technical support for this solution could be improved. In future, we would like to connect more services like Athena or Kinesis to help control more loads of data."
"In terms of improvement, the performance of AWS Glue could be faster."
"The product is expensive for data streaming. This area needs improvement."
"The primary way that this product can be improved is by adjusting their pricing model."
"The solution can provide access to the newer databases that come out sooner."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
"The pricing model needs to be reconsidered and adjusted."
"I can't really recall any missing feature or general improvement that is needed. We don't really add too many new kinds of databases and therefore our needs are already met."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a bit higher than other solutions like Athena and EC2. If the pricing becomes more scaled or flexible, it will be good because you have to pay 44 cents just for one DPU for an hour. If you increase DPUs to 5 or 10, the pricing gets multiplied. There are also some time limits like 0 to 10 minutes or 10 to 20 minutes. If the pricing is according to the minutes, it would be better because you have to limit your job to 10 minutes or 20 minutes."
"It is an expensive product. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"It is not expensive. AWS Glue works on the serverless architecture. We get charged for the time the server is up. For our use case, we have to use it once in a day, and it is not expensive for us."
"I would rate the solution a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, with ten being very expensive. Specifically, I rate its pricing a six out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is based on DPUs so it is a good idea to optimize use or it can get expensive."
"AWS Glue follows a pay-as-you-go model, wherein the cost of the data you use will be counted as a monthly bill."
"I rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"AWS Glue is quite costly, especially for small organizations."
"The pricing model is complex and is based on modular packages as well as the size of the applicable environment."
"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise34
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How do you select the right cloud ETL tool?
AWS Glue and Azure Data factory for ELT best performance cloud services.
How does Talend Open Studio compare with AWS Glue?
We reviewed AWS Glue before choosing Talend Open Studio. AWS Glue is the managed ETL (extract, transform, and load) from Amazon Web Services. AWS Glue enables AWS users to create and manage jobs in...
What are the most common use cases for AWS Glue?
AWS Glue's main use case is for allowing users to discover, prepare, move, and integrate data from multiple sources. The product lets you use this data for analytics, application development, or ma...
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Also Known As

No data available
SAS/Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Los Angeles County, West Midlands Police, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Canada Post, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Informatica, Palantir and others in Cloud Data Integration. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.