Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAP Data Services 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho Data Integration offers cost-effective, efficient ETL solutions with significant time savings, enhancing IT processes despite perceived obsolescence.
Sentiment score
6.2
SAP Data Services offers significant time and cost savings, enhancing productivity and aligning with digital trends for improved effectiveness.
I have seen a return on investment; my team was able to stay extremely small even though we had a lot of data integrations with many companies.
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I can testify to the return on investment with metrics regarding time saved; we have increased our efficiency by about 20 to 30 percent due to the swift migration processes facilitated by the tool.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
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.
Manager, SAP Practice at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
Pentaho's support is praised for knowledge and responsiveness, but response times vary, especially for the community edition.
Sentiment score
6.7
SAP Data Services support receives mixed reviews, with high marks for urgent issues but inconsistencies lead some users to seek alternatives.
24/7 assistance is available for the Enterprise Edition.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
take the time to understand our business requirements, offering appropriate recommendations.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Communication with the vendor is challenging
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
If you keep a high priority issue, such as a production impact, they certainly come and address it in no time.
Manager, SAP Practice at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The level three support is better because they know what they are doing.
SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho scales well for small to medium data, but may struggle with large datasets, fitting diverse organizational roles.
Sentiment score
7.4
SAP Data Services is highly scalable, efficiently manages data operations, supports various organizational sizes, and improves performance for enterprises.
It can be scaled well until you reach a point where you need to perform a lot of operations, and the issue arises when it runs out of memory to handle some data.
Data engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Pentaho Data Integration handles larger datasets better.
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' scalability is commendable, as it allows us to scale up according to our needs.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
If I were to rate it from one to 10, I would say it has a nine to 10 for scalability.
SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pentaho is generally stable and reliable, though occasional memory issues and bugs occur, especially in community editions.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Data Services is highly stable, user-friendly, with occasional hardware-related issues, and remains reliable with minimal glitches.
Performance issues arise due to reliance on a flowchart-based mechanism instead of scripts, which can lead to longer execution times.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I find that version 3.1 is the most stable version I have ever used.
Founder-CEO at Ubuntu Analytica
It's pretty stable, however, it struggles when dealing with smaller amounts of data.
Data Architecture and Engineering Specialist at coprocenva
I would rate the stability of SAP Data Services as very stable, a ten.
Data Services Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho needs improved logging, debugging, user interface, performance, environment management, cloud support, documentation, and user feedback integration.
SAP Data Services struggles with job handling, integration, user interface complexity, pricing, scalability, and support effectiveness.
We should also explore more effective partitioning for parallel processing and fine-tuning database connections to reduce load times and improve ETL speed.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics can be improved by working with different environments, specifically the possibility to change the variables, meaning I write my variables only once and can change them for different environments such as production or development.
Founder-CEO at Ubuntu Analytica
I also lack the option to use programming languages beyond Python and SQL, and a provision to incorporate Scala code in the scripting component would be beneficial.
Data architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Now, they are coming up with many pricing options, which is tricky; they offer one thing for free, but charge for nine others.
Manager, SAP Practice at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
SAP Data Services does handle integration with third-party systems.
Data Services Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The documentation is not up to the mark.
SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Pentaho Data Integration provides free and paid versions, with users valuing cost-effectiveness despite rising Enterprise Edition prices.
SAP Data Services pricing is competitive for enterprises but can be substantial for small businesses with variable licensing costs.
I use the community version of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics, and I do not need additional costs.
Project Manager at Laberit
The setup cost was minimal, and the pricing experience was pretty good.
Data engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho offers intuitive data integration with extensive customization, supporting rapid ETL development, big data, and minimal coding.
SAP Data Services provides scalable data migration and integration with advanced features, including ETL, data quality, and SAP connectivity.
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization because it meant we didn't have to write a lot of custom API back-end processing logic; it did the majority of that heavy lifting for us.
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It automates the data workflow, including extraction, cleansing, and loading into warehouses for BI reporting purposes, while also removing duplicates, validating data, and standardizing formats, enabling real-time decision-making.
Data Integration Developer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization because it is easier to use, and my knowledge about this work facilitates the translation from the source to my final system.
Project Manager at Laberit
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.
Manager, SAP Practice at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
SAP Data Services is mainly used for extraction of data, and it works with all databases.
SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
It remains a fast data-moving tool, faster than most new ones.
Data Services Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Data Services
Ranking in Data Integration
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Data Services is 1.5%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP Data Services1.5%
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.5%
Other97.0%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
reviewer2686500 - PeerSpot reviewer
SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integration has become more robust and seamless
SAP Data Services is mainly used for extraction of data, and it works with all databases. The flows and everything are configured effectively. One of the most valuable features is that it is integrated. Compared to the past, it is much more robust and easier to use. The only issue is that documentation is not up to the mark. The data quality management features support our business because we can fetch anything based on the requirements. Before, we used to have a tough time getting data, but now, with HANA and all these tools, it is seamless.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise36
 

Questions from the Community

Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
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

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
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 Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAP Data Services and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.