Download the trial on a Friday. Spend the weekend running the "SAS Programming 1: Essentials" free e-learning course (often bundled with the trial). By Monday, you will be able to talk to senior data managers in their native language. That is worth the price of admission (which is currently $0).
During your free trial, you have access to everything —from machine learning algorithms to natural language processing. However, background jobs may be deprioritized in the queue. This means your model might take 10 minutes to run instead of 2. For learning and prototyping, this is irrelevant. For production, it is the only reminder that you are on a free tier. You should download the SAS free trial immediately if you fall into one of these three buckets: sas software free trial
But for the solo data scientist, the startup founder, or the student, there is a silent question that lingers: "Is SAS only for the Fortune 500, or can I get my hands on it right now?" Download the trial on a Friday
However, it suffers from an identity problem. New coders find it "old." Old coders find it "reliable." If you are trying to break into legacy industries, this trial is your golden ticket. If you are building a flashy web app, stick to open source. That is worth the price of admission (which is currently $0)