What does a SAS license cost?

Nobody outside your own negotiation can tell you. SAS does not publish a list price, the estimates you will find online disagree with each other several times over, and this page is not going to add another guess to the pile. Here is what is actually knowable, including the free routes that do exist.

The short answer

SAS is commercial software and needs a paid licence. SAS does not publish a list price, so the only figure that means anything is the quote you get from them directly. What goes into that quote is not public, which is why the third-party estimates disagree with each other several times over — treat them as noise rather than research. What we can tell you is our own side: starting on Jenner is free, because every new organization begins with trial credits and no card is required, and running your existing SAS programs on it needs no SAS licence at any layer.

Why this page does not print a figure

We could repeat what the aggregator sites say. We are not going to. Those estimates contradict each other, none of them cites a source you can check, and a number written here would be stale within a year on a page that will still be ranking. If you need a real figure, ask SAS for a quote covering what you actually want to buy — that is the only one that binds anyone.

The free and low-cost routes, and where each one stops

Four routes are worth knowing before you price a licence: SAS OnDemand for Academics, the withdrawn SAS University Edition, Altair SLC, and Jenner itself. Three of them are not us, and each has a boundary that matters more than its price. Here is where each one stops.

SAS OnDemand for Academics

Free, browser-based, and real SAS. Who may use it, and on what conditions, are SAS's terms to state rather than ours — read their current terms before you build anything on it. For a student or a researcher it is often exactly the right answer.

SAS University Edition, withdrawn

Withdrawn in 2021, which is why the install guides you can still find lead nowhere. It ran locally: your own machine, your own disk, no connection required. What SAS points people to instead runs in a browser, so what was lost is local execution rather than the software.

Altair SLC, formerly WPS

Another commercial engine that runs SAS-language programs without a SAS licence, with a longer track record than ours. What it costs is a question for them — we are not going to guess on a competitor's behalf. Siemens now sells it as Rapidminer SLC, so search both names.

Jenner

Our side, and the part we can be precise about. Starting is free and takes no card: every new organization begins with trial credits. Running your existing SAS programs needs no SAS licence at any layer, because Jenner is a clean-room implementation of the language rather than a wrapper around SAS software.

What we can be precise about is our own pricing

Ours is published in full on one page: workspace time billed by the hour, credit packs for buying hours in advance, desktop plans, and a free download that needs no key. Every new organization starts with trial credits and no card is required to start. On Windows and Linux a licence is perpetual — there is no date on which it stops — with support and updates for a year from the date of purchase. The Mac app works differently: it is a Mac App Store subscription.

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Frequently Asked Questions

SAS does not publish a list price, so there is no public figure to quote and we are not going to invent one. The number that matters is the quote SAS gives you for what you actually want to buy. Estimates circulate second-hand and disagree with each other several times over, which tells you how much weight any single one of them deserves.

Same answer, for the same reason: what SAS charges, and how it counts what you are buying, is between you and them and is not published. Anyone handing you a per-user figure second-hand is reciting a guess that nobody can check. Ask SAS for a quote that covers your own situation.

That is a licensing term, and we do not restate another vendor's licensing terms here — the version in your own contract is the one that counts, and a summary on a marketing page would age badly and quietly. SAS is the source for how theirs works. What we can tell you is how ours works: a Jenner licence for Windows or Linux is perpetual, there is no date on which it stops, and support and updates run for a year from the date of purchase. The Mac app is a Mac App Store subscription, so that one does renew.

We do not know, and neither does any site that tells you it does. Nothing is published in any country we can see, so a regional figure repeated online has the same problem as a global one: no source you can check. The useful move is to contact the SAS office for your country and ask them directly.

There is a free route, and it has a boundary worth knowing before you build anything on it. SAS OnDemand for Academics is free and runs in a browser. Who may use it, and on what conditions, are SAS's terms to state rather than ours, so read their current terms before you rely on it for work. If you are a student or a researcher, it is real SAS and it may well be the right answer for you.

Yes, and SAS publishes them plainly: every user gets 5 GB of personal data storage, and SAS Studio cannot upload a file larger than 1 GB. Those are the two that bite first on real data. The bigger boundary is not a limit you run into while working but the question of who is eligible, and that one is in SAS's terms rather than ours to restate.

SAS University Edition was withdrawn in 2021, which is why the install guides you can still find lead nowhere. It mattered because it ran locally: your own machine, your own disk, and no connection required. What SAS points people to instead runs in a browser, so the thing that was actually lost is local execution rather than the software itself. If that is what you are looking for, it is the gap the Jenner Mac app and command line fill.

Altair SLC, formerly WPS, is the other commercial engine that runs SAS-language programs without a SAS licence, and it has been doing it far longer than we have. For an estate where someone else's edge case has already been hit and fixed, that track record is worth real money. What it costs is a question for them. Siemens now sells it as Rapidminer SLC, so it is worth searching under both names.

No. Jenner is a clean-room implementation of the SAS language and does not embed, wrap, or call SAS software, so there is nothing to license at any layer. Your programs run against our engine, and there is no licence server for a scheduled job to fail against at two in the morning.

Starting is free and takes no card: every new organization begins with trial credits, valid for a limited number of days. After that, workspace time is billed by the hour, with credit packs for buying hours in advance, and on Windows and Linux a licence is sold per machine, while the Mac app is a Mac App Store subscription — all of it published on our pricing page rather than quoted on request. Credits belong to the organization rather than to a seat, so several people can use them at the same time.

How a renewal works is between you, whoever administers your installation, and SAS, and we deliberately do not restate their terms. What we can offer is the view from outside: if the reason to renew is a body of programs that still has to run, that is the decision this page is really about, and it is cheaper to evaluate the alternatives before the date than after it. Moving programs somewhere else takes longer than a renewal does.

That one belongs in SAS's own documentation and with whoever administers your installation — the mechanics differ by product and version, and steps copied onto a marketing page go stale without anyone noticing. Jenner's equivalent is smaller: the free download needs no key at all, and a paid Windows or Linux licence installs one key per machine, while the Mac app comes from the Mac App Store as a subscription, documented alongside the plans on our pricing page.

Price your own situation, not an estimate

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