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SAS Data Management vs dbt comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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

dbt
Ranking in Data Integration
17th
Ranking in Data Quality
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Data Management
Ranking in Data Integration
30th
Ranking in Data Quality
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 1.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Data Management is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
dbt1.7%
SAS Data Management1.2%
Other97.1%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Principal Data Engineer at Integrant, Inc.
Data teams have streamlined code-driven pipelines and now collaborate faster on shared models
We are still experimenting with testing, but not that much. We are not using some features yet. We are trying to introduce them because we are coming from a background of SSIS. The team used to work with SSIS, Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services. We are still adapting one feature at a time. Currently, we are working with the SQL modules and with the Jinja templating. We are experimenting with testing, but I would say towards the end of this year, we are planning to explore more of the documentation and the data lineage options as well. I would say the benefits are coming from GUI-based tools like SSIS. We have more control on the codebase. We can create something of a system where we can use macros and templating, speeding up the development cycle. We are now trying to introduce a little testing, and also we are using some sort of a CI/CD cycle, so continuous integration and continuous deployment. I do not believe that these kinds of features are that common as a package as a whole package. dbt excels in that area. I used to have a couple of notes about the performance, but lately I have discovered something called dbt Fusion, which, according to dbt Labs, they proclaim is much faster during the parsing of dbt models. However, I would love to see even more of an out-of-the-box solution regarding the testing. They are treating the testing in a good way so far, but I would love to see even more improvement because the whole data testing field is not very mature. It is not the same as software testing; for example, you have test suites, test tools, and profilers, but for data testing, it is not yet that advanced. I would love for dbt to take the lead on that.
FK
Data Scientist & Scrum Master at Volvo Group
Has supported centralized data access and improved governance through unified administration
The best features I appreciate about SAS Data Management tool are that it's easy to create the flows and schedule data, and the tables are not too big, making it easy to control the ETL process, including user access which is also easy to manage in SAS. The data integration tools with SAS Data Management were quite good because they allowed me to do all lineage, to manage and see all the variables, find the libraries where the data is, and understand the data in just one tool. Offering another development environment combining code and predefined objects, where I could just drag and drop to achieve what I needed, although some objects were not too good, but some were effective. The metadata management feature of SAS Data Management helps a lot; creating your data marts or data lake with good naming conventions, library conventions, and so on is very important because it allows easy queries to find the whole structure, though I think metadata governance also depends on first definitions, not only on the tool. SAS Data Management is very good for data governance; for me, it was the best tool I worked with in data management, although I don't have too much experience with others, and it truly helped a lot.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a developer point of view, I find the ease of development and the code to be the most useful capabilities of dbt."
"The product is developer-friendly."
"I would say the best feature or the most desirable feature for dbt is the ability to write everything in code."
"There is operational efficiency achieved, and data quality and governance have also been achieved with modular SQL and version controlling, which reduced duplication of data and data errors."
"Since we migrated from SSIS to dbt model architecture, it takes around four hours only to complete a full refresh, and the client is now happy because our downtime was drastically reduced when we perform a complete refresh of the data."
"dbt has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to create our data pipelines much faster, going from ingestion of data to creating a data product in weeks instead of months, and we can do it in-house with the skillset we already have."
"I am impressed with the tool's ability to customize."
"If you compare it to SQL, the memory and development times are very quick."
"Their software pricing offers the best value for money on the market."
"National Quality Knoledge Base Matching features QPI (Quality Performance Indicator) analysis approach"
"The ROI can be very high in terms of improving the reliability and accuracy of data used in forecasting and marketing models (ex: customer data, sales data)."
"I find the solution to be very stable."
"The product offers very good flexibility."
"The tool is reliable, quick, and powerful."
 

Cons

"dbt can be improved as I find the co-pilot in dbt is not very good, and my team has tried using it but opted to move off it and use other co-pilots such as GitHub."
"Dbt is not as stable as preferred, as it has had a few outages in the current year itself, so improvement should be made in the outages section as it is not stable."
"If I needed to name a few areas for improvement, I would mention the migration of code to Git and GitHub, which sometimes fails and can be confusing for developers during handover."
"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
"Since dbt has a license cost, if a company is small and does not have much budget, they can explore other tools because there are other tools that provide the same functionality at a lower cost."
"Every upgrade is a little bit of a risk for us because we do not know if the workarounds that we developed will be available for the next version."
"We implemented it a while ago, and we are trying to improve the data delivery performance. We are looking into how to get faster and automated reporting. We would need better designs and workflows."
"We find we often have to go back and re-train users when there are changes made to the solution because the changes are not intuitive."
"Native SAP integration or more efficient SAP is needed."
"One problem is accessing the data using a solution other than SAS. The SAS data, which we create in the SAS, cannot be accessed by other tools. We can't open those data in other applications. So we need to have that application in place."
"Very little needs to improve but perhaps a nicer graphic interface and remaining competetive in the growing field of data analytics."
"There is significant room for improvement, especially with regard to using a hybrid approach that involves both CAS and persistent storage."
"The pricing of the solution needs to be improved. They need to work to make it more affordable."
"With SAS Data Management, you have to purchase an external driver, configure all of the tables for all of the data that you will extract from Salesforce. It's not a straightforward process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
"The licensing model for vCenter is a perpetual license with yearly payments."
"While it is even free for personal use on the cloud, it can be expensive for desktop installations and enterprise use."
"The solution is expensive."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for dbt?
The course content that dbt provides is free and excellent for anyone starting out.
What needs improvement with dbt?
We are still experimenting with testing, but not that much. We are not using some features yet. We are trying to introduce them because we are coming from a background of SSIS. The team used to wor...
What is your primary use case for dbt?
I am working with one of our enterprise customers, managing their newly established cloud warehouse. They are using Snowflake and we are using dbt to manage all the transformation and views and tab...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Data Management?
From my experience, SAS Data Management is an expensive tool.
What needs improvement with SAS Data Management?
There is significant room for improvement, especially with regard to using a hybrid approach that involves both CAS and persistent storage.
What is your primary use case for SAS Data Management?
The main idea for using SAS Data Management was to bring all data inside SAS. I brought the finance area and the sales area in the company that I have worked, along with some market planning data, ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAS Data Management Platform, Data Management Platform, DataFlux
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Data Management, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, Absa, Aegon, Allianz Global Corporate & SpecialtyAusgrid, Bank of Queensland, Bell, BMC Software, Canada Post, Ceska pojistovna, Chantecler, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Cr_dito y Cauci‹n, Delaware State Police, Deutsche Lufthansa, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, DSM, Enerjisa, ERGO Insurance Group, Florida Department of Corrections, Generali Hellas, Gitanjali Group, Gloucestershire Constabulary, GS Home Shopping, HealthPartners, IAG New Zealand, iJET, Invacare, Livzon Pharmaceutical Group, Los Angeles County, Miami Herald Media Company, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Nippon Paper, North Carolina Office of Information Technology Services, Orlando Magic, OTP Group, PITT OHIO, Plano Independent School District, RWE Poland, Spanish Air Force, Stockholm County Council, Telus, The Travel Corporation, Transitions Optical, Triad Analytic Solutions, UNIQA, US Census Bureau, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, West Midlands Police, XS Inc., Zenith Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Data Management vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.