Abstract Performance of the SAFT-VR equation of state developed for the hard sphere based simple fluids, namely the square-well, Sutherland and Yukawa fluids, is examined by comparing its results with simulation data and an augmented van der Waals (vdW) equation based on a Yukawa (Y) reference. Its shown that both for the equilibrium vapor–liquid data and data along selected isotherms in the liquid and supercritical fluid phases the vdW(Y) equation provides better results, particularly when going to lower temperatures.