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SAP Data Services 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
SAP Data Services
Ranking in Data Integration
14th
Ranking in Data Quality
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 SAP Data Services is 1.5%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Data Services1.5%
dbt1.7%
Other96.8%
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.
Ramesh Pampana - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, SAP Practice at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has consistently provided impressive data handling capabilities and robust security features
Some of the most valuable features of SAP Data Services include data extraction where SAP is the best in that perspective, but when it comes to analytics or the reporting tool, I prefer to connect with Microsoft Power BI, which is a fantastic tool. Typically, from an end-user perspective, SAP has a huge amount of data, in terms of terabytes of data, but when you analyze that, the best form of visualization is always through Microsoft Power BI. SAP Data Services provides a best-in-class return on investment, as SAP's vision and forecast are absolutely amazing. They are ahead of technology, building an ecosystem that meets the standards of the fast-changing digital economy. SAP is indeed good at all this now, with so many components such as SAP Signavio, SAP EINS, SAP Work Zone, SAP ALM, Cloud ALM, SAP public cloud, SAP private cloud, and BTP, all of which are essential to meet the latest cutting-edge technologies.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"From a developer point of view, I find the ease of development and the code to be the most useful capabilities of dbt."
"I would say the best feature or the most desirable feature for dbt is the ability to write everything in code."
"The product is developer-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"SAP Data Services has been around for a while and still performs its job well; it remains a fast data-moving tool, faster than most new ones."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"The HANA database, which is very fast, is a valuable feature."
"Doing De-Deduplication of data for Data Cleansing is much easier and has been revolutionised with Data Services, especially used in conjunction with SAP Information Stewards."
"The basic functionality is quite good as is the basic logic and data information."
"The feature of SAP Data Services has enhanced our company's business processes because we are able to run around 800 jobs in areas like data extraction and transaction objects."
"I have worked with Data Services for a long time, and currently, I find the dashboarding and reporting part to be the most valuable function."
"Technical support from SAP is awesome. If we have an issue, they give a good solution."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution must add more Python-based implementations."
"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."
"They could make it easier to work with web services."
"The solution should improve connectivity with more source systems and target systems."
"Source code control is another headache. When your source code base gets too large, managing the source code becomes cumbersome."
"In the future, Data Services should offer a cloud version."
"The migration of the solution between different environments is quite complex."
"Integration with other products could be improved."
"There are a lot of version improvements in the years and makes it hard to sync up with older versions of the same tool."
"It has inadequate data analysis and data profiling, which has increased testing and user acceptance duration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
"At the entry level, if you're using it only for data integration, it is a little bit cheap. However, for large organizations it can be expensive. There are additional costs apart from the license."
"The product’s on-premise version is expensive for a medium-sized company."
"The license price is expensive but medium to large-scale companies, should be able to afford it. Other solutions, such as Talend are easier to afford for smaller companies. Depending on the sources of the data where you are receiving your data you could be paying for more than one license."
"The price of SAP Data Services is a little high when compared to other solutions. Due to the pricing and capabilities, many clients are switching to other solutions."
"Speaking about prices, Oracle and SAP are market leaders. So, the prices are more."
"I rate the product price as one or two on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"Pricing is good, there is no problem."
"The enterprise version of SAP Data Services is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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 Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise36
 

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...
How do you evaluate the ratio of price to quality for SAP Data Services?
I believe the license for the product is fair, even though some competitors offer similar services at lower prices. The difference between the Edge edition and the next one up is significant in pr...
Would you recommend SAP Data Services to complete beginners?
I think after some preparation, a beginner will be able to use SAP Data Services, however, if you are completely unprepared, you may have some issues. I think that in particular you will need a mo...
How has SAP Data Services helped your organization?
SAP Data Services has helped our whole staff understand the data across various sources and systems within the company. Not everyone who works at my organization is an IT expert - most just have av...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
EMC Corporation, LivePerson, Eldorado, Mozzart, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, Hilti Group, Nissha Printing Company Ltd., Asian Paints, Aareal Bank Group, Migros Group
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Data Services vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.