Mplus is a structural equation modeling package of three modules and costs about $900. It is probably the most comprehensive SEM package.  Stata is a general--do everything--statistical package that includes sem at no charge beyond the cost of the software.Stata's graphic interface for drawing sem models is outstanding. If you own Stata then there is no reason for buying Mplus unless you need some aspect of Mplus that is not in Stata's sem or gsem commands.

For the last research project, I had worked on SEM with a variant of Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis and I had the chance on selecting between many different software. The best I had found was SmartPls, Stata, SPSS and R. 

My constraint was that the researcher I was working for as assistant was not very related to statistic analysis or mathematical multi-equation understanding. The solution was regarding the difficulty of usage, SmartPls was definitive winner because was easy to manage by him. It graphical facilities was deciding for someone do not understood those topics.

• Stata cons I found are that do not have graphic inputs that make them easy manageable to set up.
• The pros in Stata are that is a very commonly used software and you can find easily and the programming skills required is very basic because is statistical software.

I reviewed Mplus website and documentation. The cons are that is not a very wide usage program that could do not have large support to any problem you can have.

Otherwise if you have some programming experience I would use R, previous software are not open-source and make them not very flexible.  I recommend to check next journal and compare the Mplus software limitations the author argues.

Article Different results on tetrachorical correlations in Mplus and...

Very correct. Most of these packages are very similar and user friendly. Even the analysis  using different packages gives almost same results. I found PLS a bit more attractive but have been using AMOS for quite sometime now. 

Dear Witold:

I do not know Mplus, but STATA offer a very friendly environment to programm and carry out your estimation. The user guide is also very useful.

Greetings

Federico

I've been toying around with AMOS and SmartPLS. The SmartPLS 3.0 was by far the best statistical tool Ive used. With AMOS, i need to install a few plugins, thanks to James Gaskin

 Mplus is a structural equation modeling package of three modules and costs about $900. It is probably the most comprehensive SEM package.  Stata is a general--do everything--statistical package that includes sem at no charge beyond the cost of the software.Stata's graphic interface for drawing sem models is outstanding. If you own Stata then there is no reason for buying Mplus unless you need some aspect of Mplus that is not in Stata's sem or gsem commands.

Can I ask one question here? Can I use SPSS (not AMOS) to perform SEM?

Thanks in advanced.