About SAP HANA
SAP HANA is an in-memory database and data platform from SAP. It keeps data in memory to run transactional and analytical workloads on the same system, and it is the database underneath many SAP applications.
SAP offers HANA both as software that organizations run on their own infrastructure and as a managed cloud service, SAP HANA Cloud, within its data and analytics portfolio. It is a commercial product sold by SAP, with licensing and pricing handled through the vendor and its partners.
Key features
- In-memory database engine
- Transactional and analytical workloads together
- Database platform for SAP applications
- Available on premises and as a cloud service
Good fit for
- →Running SAP business applications
- →Real-time analytics on operational data
- Tags
- in-memory-database
- sap
- database
- analytics
- enterprise
- oltp
- olap
SAP HANA: questions and answers
- What is SAP HANA used for?
- SAP HANA is an in-memory database and data platform from SAP that handles transactional and analytical workloads on the same data. It is a good fit for running SAP business applications and real-time analytics on operational data.
- How much does SAP HANA cost?
- SAP HANA doesn't publish fixed prices; pricing is quoted on request.
- Is SAP HANA open source?
- No. SAP HANA is proprietary (closed-source) software. Open-source alternatives to SAP HANA include OceanBase, MySQL and TiDB.
- Can I self-host SAP HANA?
- Yes. Although SAP HANA is closed source, it can be self-hosted on your own servers, and the vendor also offers a hosted version.
- What are some alternatives to SAP HANA?
- SAP HANA competes with Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server and IBM Db2. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source SAP HANA alternatives.
Open-source alternatives to SAP HANA
See all
OceanBase
Databases
OceanBase is the unified distributed database for the AI era — open-source, multi-model, o
Apache-2.0vs Oracle Database★ 10k
MySQL
Databases
MySQL Server, the world's most popular open source database, and MySQL Cluster, a real-tim
OSSvs Oracle Database★ 12k
TiDB
Databases
TiDB is built for agentic workloads that grow unpredictably, with ACID guarantees and nati
Apache-2.0vs Amazon Aurora★ 41k
PostgreSQL
Databases
Mirror of the official PostgreSQL GIT repository. Note that this is just a *mirror* - we d
OSSvs Oracle Database★ 22k
MariaDB
Databases
MariaDB server is a community developed fork of MySQL server. Started by core members of t
GPL-2.0vs Oracle Database★ 8.3k
ClickHouse
Databases
ClickHouse is a fast open-source column-oriented database management system that allows ge
Apache-2.0vs Snowflake★ 50k
SaaS alternatives to SAP HANA
See all
Oracle Database
Databases
Oracle relational database for enterprise transactional and analytical workloads
SaaS
Microsoft SQL Server
Databases
Microsoft relational database server with free Express and Developer editions
SaaS
IBM Db2
Databases
Enterprise relational database with SQL, AI-assisted queries and cloud deployment options
SaaS
Teradata
Databases
Cloud data analytics platform and data warehouse for large-scale enterprise workloads
SaaS
Exasol
Databases
In-memory analytics database for fast SQL queries on large datasets
SaaS
Snowflake
Databases
Cloud data platform for warehousing, data sharing and analytics
SaaS
