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IBM SPSS Modeler vs SAS Analytics 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

IBM SPSS Modeler
Ranking in Data Mining
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (13th)
SAS Analytics
Ranking in Data Mining
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 17.3%, up from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Analytics is 6.1%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining
 

Featured Reviews

PeterHuo - PeerSpot reviewer
Good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database. When streams become larger, performance bottlenecks may occur in the IBM SPSS Modeler server or the database. Sometimes the server crashes and needs to be restarted to release memory on both sides. I'm not sure exactly where the problem is caused, as I focus on stream design rather than server issues. The problem could be on the IBM SPSS Modeler server and database.
AltanAtabarut - PeerSpot reviewer
Good interactive reports and dashboards but expensive to run
You need to constantly jump from data prep to visualization, then back to data for fixing quality, enriching, and visualizing again. Then you start modeling and need to switch back and forth again. Eventually, you have to democratize the results so that anyone can look and interactively question the underlying insights. For all of these purposes - data to BI or data to AI to BI - it is never a linear one way relationship; it's rather a closed loop for continuous analysis monitoring and sharing. If used this way, SAS Visual analytics can enable continuous improvement and innovation in a corporation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have full control of the data handling process."
"The ease of use in the user interface is the best part of it. The ability to customize some of my streams with R and Python has been very useful to me, I've automated a few things with that."
"We are using it either for workforce deployment or to improve our operations."
"We have been able to do some predictive modeling with it"
"We have integration where you can write third-party apps. This sort of feature opens it up to being able to do anything you want."
"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."
"​It works fine. I have not had any stability issues; it is always up.​"
"In the solution, I like the virtualization of data flow since it shows what goes where, which is mostly the strength of the tool."
"It has improved the level of efficacy and validity of our reports."
"SAS Business Intelligence is well-suited for our large corporation. We have demand for scalable and reliable insights into information which is housed in our large systems."
"I like that it is quickly embedding interactive reports and dashboards into a website, Outlook Mail, or even a mobile app."
"All of the data analytics features in SAS Analytics are valuable to us since we're using them daily across our entire analytics team."
"They have provided virtually everything we have needed to accomplish our task, as well as continuously improving our accuracy."
"It is able to connect to all major platforms, and all the smaller platforms that I have come across."
"It's very easy to use once you learn it."
"I use it to replicate our entire financial system to verify/duplicate calculations."
 

Cons

"Requires more development."
"Expensive to deploy solutions. You need to buy an extra deployment unit."
"It is very good, but slow. The slowness may be because we have not finalized all the background information in SPSS. It still needs some tweaking."
"The platform's cloud version needs improvements."
"Time Series or forecasting needs to be easier. It is a very important feature, and it should be made easier and more automated to use. For instance, for logistic regression, binary or multinomial is used automatically based on the type of the target variable. I wish they can make Time Series easier to use in a similar way."
"The challenge for the very technical data scientists: It is constraining for them.​"
"We would like to see better visualizations and easier integration with Cognos Analytics for reporting."
"Regarding visual modeling, it is not the biggest strength of the product, although from what I hear in the latest release it's going to be a lot stronger. That, to me, has always been the biggest flaw in using this. It's very difficult to get good visualization."
"The natural language querying and automated preparation of dashboards should be improved."
"I would like to see their interface to R added to either Base SAS or SAS Analytics."
"They could enhance the AI capabilities of the product."
"One of the things that can be simplified is self-service analytics, especially for a citizen developer or a citizen data scientist."
"The training for SAS Business Intelligence is often difficult to arrange. It is often cancelled due to not enough people being enrolled."
"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."
"​Support at universities used to be limited, but I hear this is changing.​"
"The graphing and visualization features could be enhanced, in my opinion. I would especially stress improving the visualization capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"I am using the free version of IBM SPSS Modeler, it is the educational edition version."
"It is a huge increase to time savings."
"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."
"Its price is okay for a company, but for personal use, it is considered somewhat expensive."
"$5,000 annually."
"I think that the cost-benefit ratio is okay."
"Our licensing covers the usage for around 50 data analysts."
"​Setup costs were quite reasonable."
"​The cost for SAS Business Intelligence can prove to be a little prohibitive.​"
"Licensing was rather straightforward."
"It is relatively expensive. It is not an easy software to afford."
"I rate the product’s pricing a one out of ten."
"Prices were comparable with alternative solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
12%
University
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Modeler?
Compared to other tools, the product works much easier to analyze data without coding.
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?
There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performanc...
What do you like most about SAS Analytics?
I like that it is quickly embedding interactive reports and dashboards into a website, Outlook Mail, or even a mobile app.
What needs improvement with SAS Analytics?
The natural language querying and automated preparation of dashboards should be improved. The cost and accessibility should be improved. For a $900 USD/user/annual license you have to set up a $12,...
What is your primary use case for SAS Analytics?
This is an application I use for data prep, data exploration, BI reporting, and some basic automated analytics.
 

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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.