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Altair Monarch vs SAS Enterprise Guide 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

Altair Monarch
Ranking in Data Preparation Tools
4th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 January 2026, in the Data Preparation Tools category, the mindshare of Altair Monarch is 7.1%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Enterprise Guide is 8.1%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Preparation Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAS Enterprise Guide8.1%
Altair Monarch7.1%
Other84.8%
Data Preparation Tools
 

Featured Reviews

LS
Account Manager at JegaSure
Transformed document processing has become foolproof with seamless data extraction
The primary use case of Altair Monarch was data extraction. I used it to process a lot of documents and data from Notepad and PDFs, converting those into structured data for basic analysis and reporting. It facilitated data preparation and data extraction effectively Altair Monarch is valuable…
reviewer2232579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Provides speedy server access for data analysis and modeling but lacks stability and needs to improve its visualization capabilities
Recently, we realized that SAS Enterprise Guide is not so stable and gives us some outputs which are not suitable, but it works well on rerunning the program. Sometimes it's quite hard to report its stability issues. Most of the time, its stability issues need to be reported with which our colleagues help. Another issue is that SAS Enterprise Guide gives us hardware output, but when we run a program that does not run correctly, we don't know what's wrong even though the output is good. When we try to report to technical support and they run the program, they cannot find anything from the log, but it is the same issue we find in the solution when we run it afterward. Sometimes we need to restart the computer, and it works, which is not so good. We set up quite a few programs to autorun, and sometimes the customer is not confident that the result would be good. It would be easier to use the solution if it had more functions. The solution needs to be more stable. The additional feature I want to see in the future would be visualization because, currently, the visualization from SAS is a bit like Python or similar ones in general.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monarch lets you quickly extract in your preferred format."
"Altair Monarch is valuable because it allows a one-time setup for data extraction, making the process extremely easy with just a few clicks to get the output."
"Takes advantage of our Enterprise SAS Grid."
"The query builder feature is the most valuable."
"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."
"We do not bother any longer with some programs did not run, hence having to rerun them again."
"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 management."
"SAS EG offers many excellent features, such as parallel execution on the same server, controlling output datasets in the process flow, and conditional processing."
"The data cleaning part is valuable. SAS is a very powerful tool to work with and connect with different sources. We have several tables, and we are looking up tables from one place to another place. We are connecting with different data sources. The data is not coming from one source. There are several sources of data, and we have information coming from different sources. There are some flat files, and there is some information from the data warehouse."
"This solution allows for simplified working with large datasets."
 

Cons

"I rate Altair Monarch seven out of 10 for affordability. Recently, the pricing model changed from end-user licensing to a concurrent licensing model."
"Recently, we realized that SAS Enterprise Guide is not so stable and gives us some outputs which are not suitable...Sometimes it's quite hard to report its stability issues."
"Machine learning is not utilized and that could enhance the product."
"Our data warehouse is built on the Netezza database. We have SAS BI, and we populate the Netezza database. When we have tables with, for example, a hundred million rows in Netezza, SAS Enterprise Guide doesn't work. It doesn't return any results. It works for around 30 to 40 million rows, but it is not working for anything more than that. This issue is only with the Netezza database. With Oracle, it is quite good. They can improve its performance with the Netezza database. There should be one unique tool that includes SAS Data Integration Studio and SAS Enterprise Guide for more integration capabilities. With SAS Enterprise Guide, it is not possible to create connections and libraries and build transformations that can be used for other projects. This tool should have all capabilities that SAS Enterprise Guide does not have. Such a tool would be perfect because it will be used by developers and business users at the same time. In addition to the integration capabilities, they should also provide more deployment capabilities. There should be an option to easily create SAS packages and export them from one environment to another. There could also be a possibility to connect with R and Python. Open-source tools are hot in the market nowadays, and it would be good to extend its capabilities."
"I see no reason for limiting the process to sequential all the time."
"Now that I have experience with Tableau, I think the visualization part of SAS EG could be more user friendly and easier to use. Tableau is very easy to use. It's just does a lot of work by itself, including color schemes. I think that could be incorporated easily into SAS EG, which would make it a much better product. Then you would not need Tableau."
"We don't use SAS Enterprise Guide that much here because we haven't explored some of the statistical modeling capabilities. However, I do not think SAS Enterprise Guide provides all the machine learning features that we want. Those would be separate products from SAS, such as SAS Buyers or any of the other solutions, which will give us the capabilities that we are looking for."
"I would like to see integration with schedulers when run from hosting environments such as Citrix."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing and associated costs are substantial."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Management liked it a lot because the license per seat was cheaper than a traditional SAS environment."
"It is very expensive. We have a basic license, and there are many features that are not available with the basic version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
10%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Altair Monarch?
I was not involved in pricing, but I did not encounter any issues with renewals, and the process was always smooth and straightforward.
What is your primary use case for Altair Monarch?
The primary use case of Altair Monarch ( /products/altair-monarch-reviews ) was data extraction. I used it to process a lot of documents and data from Notepad and PDFs, converting those into struct...
What advice do you have for others considering Altair Monarch?
The support team is diligent, following up thoroughly and setting up calls promptly when a ticket is raised. It is beneficial for any assistance needed. The overall rating for Altair Monarch is ten...
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Also Known As

Monarch Data Pump
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MasterCard
Canary Islands Statistics Institute
Find out what your peers are saying about Altair Monarch vs. SAS Enterprise Guide and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.