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IBM SPSS Modeler vs SAS Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 21, 2025

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

IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Mining
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (12th)
SAS Analytics
Ranking in Data Mining
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 16.0%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Analytics is 8.0%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler16.0%
SAS Analytics8.0%
Other76.0%
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

RB
Business Owner at SASS GmbH
Support and flexibility enable effective project initiation and meet customer needs but deployment requires enhancement
The customer comes to you and says they want to deploy it and make a production out of this, which is very difficult and expensive with IBM SPSS Modeler. With MATLAB, there is no problem. I have a solution, and then I convert my MATLAB solution to C programming language. This I can deploy, and I can check it, and it is MISRA compatible. It is very easy to deploy it, to go from MATLAB to C or C++, which is actually needed in the car industry. In the car industry, they want to have it in the hardware. You cannot put MATLAB or IBM SPSS Modeler in the hardware of a car, but with C, there is no problem with a microcontroller. They can shoot it into the microcontroller, and I can check it with Polyspace, and it is MISRA compatible, which is an industrial standard. There is nothing similar in IBM SPSS Modeler. I made solutions with IBM SPSS Modeler, and then the customer said they wanted to make a production out of it, and it was not possible. I stopped with IBM SPSS Modeler 18. It is now 18.6 from what I know at the moment. I do not believe that there is a possibility to design a graphic user interface with it. It is itself a graphic user interface, where you put all sorts of little icons into the display.
SC
Student at Rochester Institute of Technology
Data management has become faster and clearer but integration and large data handling still need work
SAS Analytics needs to improve for entry-level people in my college because buying licenses is somewhat costly for small businesses. SAS Analytics is also somewhat complex for students who are entering the data field. Additionally, SAS Analytics is not good at integration with other environments, so it should improve on that, and some syntaxes are not good. SAS Analytics has an older architecture in some areas, so it should enhance the UX side and performance in some aspects. SAS Analytics documentation should improve to be clearer for students who are currently using or trying to use SAS Analytics, so the documentation should be simplified. Customer service is pretty good as of now, as they respond in two to four hours on business days, but faster response times may solve many problems and attract more users. I rate SAS Analytics seven or eight out of ten. SAS Analytics should improve in massive data handling, as I mentioned earlier. SAS Analytics struggles when it handles massive data, and it should also get top-tier support. The support should improve from two to four hours down to one hour or even thirty minutes. SAS Analytics should also offer more low-code options for those who do not know how to code or to save more time, and they should consider reducing their pricing. Currently, SAS Analytics has limited flexibility and very limited integration, so improvements in those areas are necessary. SAS Analytics student version does not handle long or lengthy data well right now, so it should improve on that point. As I have mentioned, it struggles with larger data sets, but for current small or medium data sets, it is very good. Customer support should improve to fifteen to thirty minutes or immediate live agents during business hours. The two to four hours wait can sometimes take more than one day, and that does not make sense. We have to stop all our work until they reply if we encounter critical problems, so they should improve for certain.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a very good and reasonably priced solution."
"Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful."
"It's very easy to use. The drag and drop feature makes it very easy when you are building and testing the streams. That's very useful."
"The benefits are that this product makes us a more efficient sales staff, reducing the inefficiencies in the buying patterns of our customers by calling them when we know they're ready to order, instead of waiting for them to call us."
"It is pretty scalable."
"We are primarily interested in the supply chain data analytics, focusing mainly on procurement, because we believe that there is a lot of value in spend analytics in understanding and identifying opportunities, reducing prices, improving negotiations, and better understanding the categories."
"The customer loves it at first glance because it is so easy to handle, and you get a solution pretty soon."
"It's a very organized product. It's easy to use."
"It's a very good tool for typical data analytics and reporting, data management."
"The most valuable aspect of SAS Analytics is the ability to automate work using macros without heavily relying on technology teams, allowing me to create functions that operate independently and streamline workflows efficiently."
"This solution has helped us materially grow multiple business categories."
"We have noticed at least a thirty to forty percent saving in time and a thirty to forty percent increase in the efficiency of our work."
"SAS Analytics is a very versatile and comfortable tool and it is powerful because I can work with data from many millions of records, big data with SAS Analytics in a short time versus other software."
"It's very easy to use once you learn it."
"They have provided virtually everything we have needed to accomplish our task, as well as continuously improving our accuracy."
"It has improved the level of efficacy and validity of our reports, and this has also extended to the area of customer service and relations."
 

Cons

"I can say the solution is outdated."
"We would like to see better visualizations and easier integration with Cognos Analytics for reporting."
"Easier coding language that is more flexible with other platforms."
"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."
"Requires more development."
"C&DS will not meet our scalability needs."
"The time series should be improved."
"Weak documentation and user guide."
"SAS Analytics could improve in areas such as handling stress tests and workloads, as well as predicting financial movements, specifically profit and loss movements."
"​Support at universities used to be limited, but I hear this is changing.​"
"The natural language querying and automated preparation of dashboards should be improved."
"SAS Analytics struggles when it handles massive data, and it should also get top-tier support."
"The training for SAS Business Intelligence is often difficult to arrange. It is often cancelled due to not enough people being enrolled."
"It is relatively expensive."
"The graphing and visualization features could be enhanced, in my opinion. I would especially stress improving the visualization capabilities."
"Once a SAS figure is produced one would like to modify things, such as titles, legends, and incorporate risk sets as a footer on the plots."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you are close to end of quarter, IBM and its partners can get you 60% to 70% discounts, so literally wait for the last day of the quarter for the best prices. You may feel like you are getting robbed if you can't receive a good discount."
"The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten users use the server with ten licenses, it runs faster. But if forty users use the same appliance, everything slows down. People then think it's not easy to do things and prefer using remote tools like Python to extract data from the database. It's not about being expensive or cheap, but about people's knowledge and experience in how to do the work."
"$5,000 annually."
"If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"The scalability was kind of limited by our ability to get other people licenses, and that was usually more of a financial constraint. It's expensive, but it's a good tool."
"Having in mind all four tools from Garner’s top quadrant, the pricing of this tool is competitive and it reflects the quality that it offers."
"It is an expensive product."
"​The cost for SAS Business Intelligence can prove to be a little prohibitive.​"
"SAS is very expensive."
"It is relatively expensive. It is not an easy software to afford."
"I think that the cost-benefit ratio is okay."
"Our licensing covers the usage for around 50 data analysts."
"​Setup costs were quite reasonable."
"I rate the product’s pricing a one out of ten."
"Licensing was rather straightforward."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Construction Company
7%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
University
13%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise32
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Modeler?
The government has funds and a budget, it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. In Canada, they have a yearly budget. They used to encourage people to use the modeler for development. If ten us...
What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Modeler?
The customer comes to you and says they want to deploy it and make a production out of this, which is very difficult and expensive with IBM SPSS Modeler. With MATLAB, there is no problem. I have a ...
What is your primary use case for IBM SPSS Modeler?
I have been using IBM SPSS Modeler for a long time. I am using IBM SPSS Modeler mainly for ETL. Sometimes I use it to compare the results of the modeling as compared to MATLAB. MATLAB is the main t...
What needs improvement with SAS Analytics?
With SAS Analytics, I find that the graphs are very poor, and since I use Power BI, I think SAS Analytics needs to enhance the visualization options to do better visualizations. Many other software...
What is your primary use case for SAS Analytics?
I work with SAS Analytics solutions, specifically with SAS Data Mining, because I extract information from the core system of the bank via ODBC connections and use SAS Base on the servers. I am the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Analytics?
As a student, I do not pay anything for pricing; my college gives me credentials, and SAS Analytics is free for students, so the licensing is also free. Thus, SAS Analytics for students is very good.
 

Also Known As

SPSS Modeler
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Reisebªro Idealtours GmbH, MedeAnalytics, Afni, Israel Electric Corporation, Nedbank Ltd., DigitalGlobe, Vodafone Hungary, Aegon Hungary, Bureau Veritas, Brammer Group, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, InSites Consulting, Fortis Turkey
Aegon, Alberta Parks, Amway China, Axel Springer, Bank of America, Belgium Special Tax, CAP Index, CareSource, CBE Group, Cemig, Center for Responsible Lending, CESCE, Ceska sporitelna, Chantecler, Chico's, Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, CIGNA Thailand, City of Wiesbaden, Germany, Confused.com, Creditreform, Des Moines Area Community College, Deutsche Lufthansa, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, DIRECTV, Dow Chemical Company, Dow Chemical Company, Dun & Bradstreet, EDF Energy, Electrabel GDF SUEZ, ERGO Insurance Group, Erste Bank Croatia, Farmers Mutual Group, Finnair, Florida Department of Corrections, Geneia, Generali Hellas, Genting Malaysia Berhad, Grameenphone, Grandi Salumifici Italiani, HealthPartners, Highmark, Hong Kong Efficiency Unit, HP, Hyundai Securities, Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family ServicesInc Research, ING-DiBa, Institut Pertanian Bogor, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), IOM, Kelley Blue Book, Lenovo, Lillebaelt Hospital, Los Angeles County, Maspex Wadowice Group, National Bank of Greece, New Zealand Ministry of Health, New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, Nippon Paper, NMIMS, North Carolina Department of Transportation, North Carolina Office of Information Technology Services, Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC), Oberweis Dairy, ODEC, Ohio Mutual Insurance Group, Oklahoma State University, OneBeacon, Orange Business Services, Orange County Child Support Services, Organic, Orlando Magic, OTP Bank, Plano Independent School District, Project Odyssey, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, RSA Canada, SCAD, Scotiabank, Singapore National Library Board, Sobeys Inc., SRA International, Staples, Statistics Estonia, Swisscom, SymphonyIRI Group, Telecom Italia, Telef‹nica O2, Town of Cary, Transitions Optical, TrueCar, Turkcell Superonline, UniCredit Bank Serbia, University of Alabama, University of Missouri, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM SPSS Modeler vs. SAS Analytics and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.