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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 (16th)
SAS Analytics
Ranking in Data Mining
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Mining category, the mindshare of IBM SPSS Modeler is 20.6%, up from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Analytics is 6.7%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Mining Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM SPSS Modeler20.6%
SAS Analytics6.7%
Other72.7%
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

"Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms."
"It gives you a GUI interface, which is a lot more user-friendly and easier to use compared to writing R scripts or Python."
"It is just a lot faster. So you do not have to write a bunch of code, you can throw that stuff on there pretty quickly and do prototyping quickly."
"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."
"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.​"
"Automation is great and this product is very organized."
"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."
"All of the data analytics features in SAS Analytics are valuable to us since we're using them daily across our entire analytics team."
"I use SAS daily to analyze data, produce reports, and other outputs."
"It has facilitated timely analysis results with quality work and meaningful output."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to handle large data sets."
"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 use it to replicate our entire financial system to verify/duplicate calculations."
"I like that it is quickly embedding interactive reports and dashboards into a website, Outlook Mail, or even a mobile app."
"It's very easy to use once you learn it."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would not rate the technical support very well. The technicians have accents. When you do find someone, it is very hard to get somebody able to answer the technical questions."
"I can say the solution is outdated."
"Neural networks are quite simple, and now neural networks are evolving to these architecture related to deep learning, etc. They didn't incorporate this in IBM SPSS Modeler."
"​Initial setup of the software was complex, because of our own problems within the government."
"It would be good if IBM added help resources to the interface."
"Dimension reduction should be classified separately."
"I think mapping for geographic data would also be a really great thing to be able to use."
"This solution should be made more user-friendly."
"​Support at universities used to be limited, but I hear this is changing.​"
"One of the things that can be simplified is self-service analytics, especially for a citizen developer or a citizen data scientist."
"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."
"The installation could also be easier, and the price could be better."
"The graphing and visualization features could be enhanced, in my opinion. I would especially stress improving the visualization capabilities."
"The natural language querying and automated preparation of dashboards should be improved."
"The training for SAS Business Intelligence is often difficult to arrange. It is often cancelled due to not enough people being enrolled."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"$5,000 annually."
"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 a huge increase to time savings."
"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."
"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."
"This tool, being an IBM product, is pretty expensive."
"Our licensing covers the usage for around 50 data analysts."
"It is relatively expensive. It is not an easy software to afford."
"​Setup costs were quite reasonable."
"Licensing was rather straightforward."
"SAS is very expensive."
"Prices were comparable with alternative solutions."
"​The cost for SAS Business Intelligence can prove to be a little prohibitive.​"
"I think that the cost-benefit ratio is okay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
11%
Government
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing 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 Enterprise9
 

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?
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 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?
SAS Analytics could improve in areas such as handling stress tests and workloads, as well as predicting financial movements, specifically profit and loss movements.
What is your primary use case for SAS Analytics?
I use SAS Analytics ( /products/sas-analytics-reviews ) in my work to analyze data, such as selecting credits for traditional securitization. Recently, I used SAS Analytics ( /products/sas-analytic...
 

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: September 2025.
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