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SAS Viya Platform vs dbt 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

dbt
Ranking in Data Integration
9th
Ranking in Data Quality
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Viya Platform
Ranking in Data Integration
46th
Ranking in Data Quality
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (30th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of dbt is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Viya Platform is 0.3%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
dbt1.4%
SAS Viya Platform0.3%
Other98.3%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Harshwardhan Gullapalli - PeerSpot reviewer
AI Engineer at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Data pipelines have improved financial accuracy and now build transparent audit-ready reports
As for something I wish we had, dbt's native support for Python transformations came later, and we did some complex financial classification calculations that felt clunky in pure SQL. We ended up writing Python in our n8n workflows and then fed the results back into dbt, which created a bit of a split-brain situation. If we would have had dbt Python models earlier, we could have kept that logic unified. Managing multiple reporting standards was our biggest operational pain point with dbt. We were running UAE corporate tax compliance and IFRS disclosure workflows simultaneously for different clients, and dbt does not have a native concept of multi-tenant or multi-standard project organization. Everything lives in one flat structure, so we had to build more conventions: separate schema folders for IFRS models versus UACT models, custom macros to tag models by compliance regime, and environment variables to control which set of transformations run for which client.
KK
Assistant Manager Data Analytics (WFM) at Johari Digital Healthcare Limited
Modern analytics has transformed large data into faster insights and streamlined reporting
There are some areas of improvement I would mention regarding SAS Viya Platform. New users may find it complex initially, as its learning curve can be steep. Understanding CAS and different components is very challenging for a new user. The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives. There are also some limitations in Visual Analytics. While it is easy to use, it could be more flexible compared to Power BI or Tableau. These are the main improvement areas where SAS Viya Platform should focus. I would add some additional pointers about needed improvements in SAS Viya Platform. Regarding customer support, it is good, but the response time for complex issues can sometimes be slower than expected. The documentation and learning resources are not very beginner-friendly, making it challenging for beginners to navigate. Regarding integration, it could be smoother with Databricks, Snowflake, and Power BI, but it is more complex than it should be. Since updates are automatic, users are sometimes not fully aware of changes or new features that are being updated, as compared to Power BI, which publishes updates on its website. SAS Viya Platform should work on these aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is developer-friendly."
"It is very convenient because at the end, I have the opportunity to orchestrate all my transformations in just one single place, rather than having them spread out."
"I would say the best feature or the most desirable feature for dbt is the ability to write everything in code."
"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."
"From a developer point of view, I find the ease of development and the code to be the most useful capabilities of dbt."
"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."
"Overall, I find dbt to be optimized compared to other tools."
"Eliminating the need for separate visualization tools has greatly affected my team's workflow because it is just one integrated tool, one integrated platform."
"Since starting to work with SAS Viya Platform, the positive impact we have seen includes improvements in distributing data sets for better analytics and machine learning."
"Using SAS Viya Platform, I saw approximately a thirty to forty percent reduction in data processing time due to CAS in-memory computing, and I also reduced manual reporting efforts by approximately forty to fifty percent through automation and self-service dashboards, which definitely saved resources for my organization."
 

Cons

"The initial setup of dbt is somewhat complex."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Managing multiple reporting standards was our biggest operational pain point with dbt."
"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."
"If you compare the cost of those packages with dbt alone, it is more expensive to use dbt alone."
"I think SAS Viya Platform could be improved as it is a little bit limited; for instance, you have to purchase specific features such as charts and quality control, so it is not a full analytics product."
"I would advise others looking into using SAS Viya Platform to go ahead if their budget allows."
"The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is affordable."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
38%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for dbt?
I mentioned the cost as one of the advantages, specifically the license cost.
What needs improvement with dbt?
With AI, everything is advancing so fast, so I would say that the most important thing is to try to integrate with more platforms. As of now, dbt has a strong integration with AWS and with Snowflak...
What is your primary use case for dbt?
I am currently working with dbt and use dbt's modular SQL models.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Viya Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SAS Viya Platform was smooth. I did not have any hiccups, and I do not have a say on the pricing.
What needs improvement with SAS Viya Platform?
There are some areas of improvement I would mention regarding SAS Viya Platform. New users may find it complex initially, as its learning curve can be steep. Understanding CAS and different compone...
What is your primary use case for SAS Viya Platform?
My main use cases are data analytics, reporting, and data transformation. It helps in handling large data sets efficiently using CAS, which is an in-memory processing engine. My primary use case is...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about SAS Viya Platform vs. dbt and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.