LeanIX vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest comparison

erwin by Quest and SAP LeanIX are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. erwin by Quest is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP LeanIX is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. erwin by Quest holds a 11.0% mindshare in AM, compared to SAP LeanIX’s 16.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of erwin by Quest users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SAP LeanIX users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Read 39 erwin Data Modeler by Quest reviews

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2,300 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

LeanIX

Read 21 LeanIX reviews

6,182 Views
3,223 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

LeanIX

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

LeanIX and erwin Data Modeler by Quest are leading tools in enterprise architecture and data modeling, respectively. LeanIX stands out with its user-friendly approach and quick ROI, while erwin is known for its robust data modeling capabilities.

Features: LeanIX offers user-friendly interfaces for technical and non-technical users, enabling easy mapping of fact sheets and extensive customization. It provides powerful reporting and visualization, along with seamless integration with platforms like ServiceNow and Technopedia. Erwin Data Modeler excels in logical and physical data modeling, offering reverse engineering, versioning, and model synchronization to maintain database consistency across diverse environments.

Room for Improvement: LeanIX users suggest expanding its reporting capabilities, enhancing API integration and documentation, and improving data import functionalities. They also cite the high cost of third-party integrations as a concern. Erwin Data Modeler's users point to its outdated interface, less intuitive reporting, and poor integration with modern data platforms like big data, alongside sluggish performance on large models and a cumbersome comparison tool.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LeanIX, being cloud-based, facilitates rapid deployment and easy scaling, coupled with excellent customer support through dedicated success managers. Erwin Data Modeler is primarily on-premises, which may hinder deployment in dynamic environments. While offering strong technical support, challenges arise in updating and managing complex setups.

Pricing and ROI: LeanIX's pricing is based on application count and may seem costly, but it delivers quick ROI through significant cost savings. Its competitive pricing model aligns well with its extensive functionality. Erwin Data Modeler is generally more expensive, especially with its concurrent licensing options, targeting specific user groups and providing value due to its robustness. However, its ROI may take longer to realize compared to LeanIX.

To learn more, read our detailed LeanIX vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (9th)

LeanIX

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler by Quest is 11.0%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LeanIX is 16.3%, up from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency

The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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Umit Sengul

Enterprise Architect at E.ON

A platform that facilitates efficient IT architecture management and integration, improving organizational coordination and decision-making

LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."

"The solution's ability to compare and synchronize data sources with data models is fantastic. We use it for that on a regular basis to make sure that changes haven't been made to the database outside of the modeling process. I can take existing databases and reverse engineer them and understand their structure within 15 minutes. If I didn't have Data Modeler it would take hours. It increases our productivity and helps in understanding our legacy application."

"The data lineage feature is very valuable."

"The most valuable features are being able to visualize the data in the diagrams and transform those diagrams into physical database deployments. These features help, specifically, to integrate the data. When the source data is accumulated and modeled, the target model is in erwin and it helps resolve the data integration patterns that are required to map the data to accommodate a model."

"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."

"Being able to point it to a database and then pull the metadata is a valuable feature. Another valuable feature is being able to rearrange the model so that we can display it to users. We are able to divide the information into subject areas, and we can divide the data landscape into smaller chunks, which makes it easier to understand. If you had 14 subject areas, 1,000 entities, and 6,000 columns, you can't quite understand it all at once. So, being able to have the same underlying model but only display portions of it at a time is extremely useful."

"It supports a wide variety of databases, including the latest ones. We have chosen to go for a cloud-based database, and it supports that, which is very useful."

"When you're getting down to the database level, where you're building a design and you're creating DDL out of it, or you're going in the other direction where you're reaching into system catalogs and bringing things back, that starts to really require specialization. Visio isn't going to reverse-engineer that for you. Those features in erwin are valuable."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pros

"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."

"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."

"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and the user experience. It's easy to map the fact sheets."

"We've been able to develop some nice looking reports, and the dashboard's capability to map is very easy compared to Enterprise Architect."

"The usability is very high. It almost looks like a Facebook for Enterprise architecture, it's pretty nice. It's HTML5 based. The repository is very easy. It has 10 different ways of sorting the objects you have in your architecture repository. Maintaining new data or to add data to your repository is very easy."

"LeanIX has a great application information architecture."

"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."

"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."

More LeanIX pros

Cons

"erwin generally fails to successfully reverse engineer our Oracle Databases into erwin data models. The way that they are engineered on our side, the syntax is correct from an Oracle perspective, but it seems to be very difficult for erwin to interpret. What I end up doing is using Oracle Data Modeler to reverse engineer into the Oracle data model, then forward engineer the DDL into an Oracle syntax, and importing that DDL into erwin in order to successfully bring in most of the information from our physical data models. That is a bit of a challenge."

"I love the product. I love the ability to get into the code, make it automated, and make it do what I want. I would like to see them put some kind of governance over the ability to make changes to the mart tables with the API, so that instead of just using the modeler's rights to a table -- it has a separate set of rights for API access. That would give us the ability to put governance around API applications. Right now a person with erwin and Excel/VBA has the ability to make changes to models with the API if they also have rights to make changes to the model from erwin. It's a risk."

"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."

"We can only get licenses through partners."

"The interface must be improved."

"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."

"I still use Visio for conceptual modeling, and that's mainly because it is easier to change things, and you can relax some of the rules. DM's eventual target is a database, which means you actually have to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but in a conceptual model, you don't often know what you're working with. So, that's probably a constraint with erwin. They have made it a lot easier, and they've done a lot, but there is probably still room for improvement in terms of the ease of presentation back to the business. I'm comparing it with something like Visio where you can change colors on a box, change the text color and that sort of stuff, and change the lines. Such things are a whole lot easier in Visio, but once you get a theme organized in erwin, you can apply that theme to all of the objects. So, it becomes easier, but you do have to set up that theme."

"I would like to see the reporting capabilities be more dynamic and more inclusive of information. The API is very sparsely understood by people across the user community."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest cons

"LeanIX has limited in-build diagramming capabilities, requiring the purchase of another tool. That is the main drawback of LeanIX because they don't have a built-in add-on product for diagramming."

"The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner."

"They could include a combination of LeanIX and some modeling extensions."

"Another area for improvement is that when you're starting to look into more advanced information, using the solution's APIs and its customizations, documentation for that specific aspect is not very good. There is not too much support built into the offering for that aspect, for a developer."

"It would be beneficial to have additional features and capabilities to enhance mapping between applications, especially across domains where the relationships may not be direct."

"I find LeanIX's pricing expensive for the functionality it offers. However, with the acquisition by SAP, the pricing might become more affordable due to scale and tiered application pricing. Currently, it offers different tiers for the first 400 applications: 400 to 600 and 600 to 1,000, making it expensive from a pricing standpoint."

"Not a ten because you always have that gap between complexity and easy to use. And the more complex the tool becomes, the more difficult it is to get the usability."

"LeanIX should improve its support services."

More LeanIX cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"Price-wise, erwin Data Modeler is okay. You can purchase a single license and it is not very expensive."

"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."

"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."

"Likewise, the solution is a little pricey."

"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."

"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."

More erwin Data Modeler by Quest pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."

"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"There is a sweet spot of where they need to be on pricing right now. They could go up a little bit in pricing, but it has to do with the cost savings, and it has to do with the practitioners using it. I use it where I get cost savings and I can justify it, but they probably have the ability to flex a 10% up channel on their sales on that. So, they could increase their settle price, not their offering price, when they sell. They can probably hold that up a little bit higher than it is because there are cost savings that we can drive from it."

"It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications."

"The tool needs to include more flexible licensing options. We do not use the tool all the time. So pricing should be considered only when we use the tool."

"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."

"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."

"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...

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Any experience with Strategic Project Portfolio Management Solutions?

Hi @Cheryl Joseph Looking at the crossover between Project and Portfolio management with EA, then Planview could be a good choice. If looking at Portfolio Management from an EA perspective then Le...

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What do you like most about LeanIX?

The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?

LeanIX is associated with high costs. It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications. The first pricing ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs erwin Data Modeler by Quest

Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 21% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs LeanIX

Compared 13% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs LeanIX

Compared 10% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs LeanIX

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler by Quest

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

LeanIX

February 2025

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Also Known As

erwin DM

No data available

Overview

erwin pioneered data modeling, and erwin Data Modeler (erwin DM) remains trusted, award-winning software for data modeling and database design, automating complex and time-consuming tasks. Use it to discover and document any data from anywhere for consistency, clarity and artifact reuse across large-scale data integration, master data management, metadata management, Big Data, business intelligence and analytics initiatives – all while supporting data governance and intelligence efforts.

erwin by Quest

LeanIX delivers collaborative Enterprise Architecture designed for modern IT. Our open, data-driven architecture management model helps organizations adapt to the evolving demands of digital. From agile to multi-cloud and beyond, architecture teams using LeanIX have the power to strategically support the business and report 45% reduction in time to value delivery. More than 90,000 users across enterprises worldwide rely on LeanIX to manage their IT landscape, including adidas, Bosch, 7Eleven, and Zalando.

SAP LeanIX

Sample Customers

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX vs. erwin Data Modeler by Quest

March 2025

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