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No Magic MagicDraw vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

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
Ranking in Business Process Design
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (2nd), Data Governance (9th)
No Magic MagicDraw
Ranking in Business Process Design
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 2.6%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of No Magic MagicDraw is 2.6%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler2.6%
No Magic MagicDraw2.6%
Other94.8%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Sushree Panigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.
Data modeling has transformed regulatory reporting and collaboration across cloud environments
In erwin Data Modeler, areas that have room for improvement include performance improvements. I see that large models sometimes cause it to be slow when opening. Impact analysis can lag as well. Version control is another aspect. If we have developed a current version, it is not integrated with Git where we can easily compare different versions. UI modernization is also something we cannot utilize as it is primarily for development. Additionally, cloud-specific optimizations are needed when it comes to Snowflake or Databricks. When it comes to AI aspects, auto-suggestions for normalization or identifying primary, foreign, or surrogate keys are areas that can be improved.
reviewer2080611 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Ease of use and real-time collaboration empower effective teamwork and streamlined development
For CAMEO, it's not only the ease of use, it's versatility, its communicability, but Rhapsody is the worst tool I've ever used. It is very difficult, not user-friendly, and very expensive. It works only with its IBM counterparts. SPARX Enterprise Architecture is very easy to use, but it's limited. It gives you an idea of how your model is developing, so this feature helps maintain integrity or correctness of system models. It's really a good feature to have. You've got to have the simulation toolkit installed to be able to do that, and that works really well. The MagicDraw or CAMEO system is good on its own, but it should be integrated and should come out of the box with the simulation toolkit because there are some things you can't do without it, making it very difficult to have to look for another license to be able to do that. I would prefer that it come with the simulation toolkit.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."
"The product allows us to reuse entities and attributes."
"The logical model gives developers, as well as the data modelers, an understanding of exactly how each object interacts with the others, whether a one-to-many, many-to-many, many-to-one, etc."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"There is absolutely no problem with the stability."
"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."
"There is a lot of documentation available on the Internet to understand its functionality."
"The MBFC capability of MagicDraw is higher than the other competitors."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to quickly build multiple layers within the organizational and business process environments, as well as in the SysML product environments, and converting to files that can be accessed by clients who do not have a system and a teamwork server access."
"It is pretty easy to use. It is pretty versatile."
"I would rate MagicDraw a nine out of ten because of the price. Enterprise Architect has a lot of bugs and MagicDraw is a lot more accurate and flexible. It's a level better."
"I think one of the key things is the plugins for integration with requirements management tools like Doors"
"The most valuable features are the visibility, standard compliance, and interface."
"Offers good standards compliance and is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"I would like to see improved reporting and, potentially, dashboards built on top of that. Right now, it's a little manual. More automated reporting and dashboard views would help because currently you have to push things out to a spreadsheet, or to HTML, and there aren't many other options that I know of. I would like to be able to produce graphs and additional things right in the tool, instead of having to export the data somewhere else."
"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."
"As erwin Data Modeler files get larger, the response time really slows down, and when I have multiple files open I sometimes get a glitch where a lot of the text fields get solid black and the first eight characters of column names might be blacked out with a rectangle."
"In terms of improvements, support could have been better in terms of installation, especially of workgroups. We struggled quite a bit to get it up and running. Collaboration could have been better from an installation perspective, but it is trivial as compared to what we use it for. Other than that, I don't have much feedback. It works pretty well, and the fact that we've been using it for more than a decade shows that it is quite solid."
"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."
"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."
"The documentation for MagicDraw and the video tutorials compared to other competitors is an area for improvement."
"They don't really support code engineering, and that's why we have to move to Enterprise Architect. MagicDraw is stuck at C++03 standards, whereas most C++ programs today want to use the latest definition of the C++ standards. We were at C++11, and we wanted to do code engineering with C++11 or 17, but they didn't support it. That pushed us into a different tool, which is Sparx Enterprise Architect."
"There are some technical features that you have to study and do research on to be able to understand."
"The UI UX of the tool is not really user-friendly and needs to be completely reformed."
"There's lots of documentation. They process multiples of guides. They've got all kinds of guides and documentation out there, but it's kind of hard to find. There are a lot of videos. You can go to YouTube and find videos on how it's been used in different ways, but it just kind of scratches the surface."
"It would be better if the User Interface were updated. At the moment, it's a classic environment. It reminds me of the old Windows interface, for example, Windows 95. It would be better to make it more user-friendly. It would also be better if it could integrate with SAP solutions. It isn't easy to find experts in the field. It's hard to find people around the globe that have the necessary skills and expertise to manage this solution. For example, in our case, we needed someone with refrigeration knowledge that also knew how to use the tool, and that was a challenge. We also had issues relating to erasing. Sometimes, it kept it in the background and didn't erase it at all. We had to review the entire list to ensure that the item was deleted."
"There could be a trial version for students."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."
"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."
"This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost."
"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."
"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"I would say licensing would be anywhere from $3,500 to $6,500 per person or per seat (it's a per seat style license)."
"The licensing is on a yearly basis, and it's expensive."
"The price of No Magic MagicDraw could improve. The price of the solution is too expensive for smaller-sized companies. There should be a better pricing model."
"I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. It is an expensive product compared to software for model-based system engineering."
"In addition to the initial cost, you have to pay annually for support in order to get the upgrades."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Performing Arts
5%
Manufacturing Company
24%
Government
11%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Regarding pricing, I am unsure what the exact price is for erwin Data Modeler, but I believe it is not useful for an individual. It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations l...
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I write code and I write code accessing erwin Data Modeler's API, the Application Programming Interface, so that I can use Excel to update erwin Data Modeler and then get those updates and put them...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I work for CVS with a pretty big database as a data modeler on the PBMs, the Caremark PBM side, which is the Pharmacy Benefits Manager. There's a retail side too for all the stores, but our data wa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for No Magic MagicDraw?
Maybe the price is a little bit high for a small company to acquire this tool. However, they offer trial versions and trial licenses for members of INCOSE.
What needs improvement with No Magic MagicDraw?
For CAMEO, it's not only the ease of use, it's versatility, its communicability, but Rhapsody is the worst tool I've ever used. It is very difficult, not user-friendly, and very expensive. It works...
What is your primary use case for No Magic MagicDraw?
I deal with DOD lifecycle acquisition sorts of things as some of the main use cases currently, and I expect to continue using it for more than 25 years.
 

Also Known As

erwin DM
MagicDraw
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Northrop Grumman, Labcorp, Deposco, ClearView Training, IT Services Promotion Agency, Intelligent Chaos, Metalithic Systems Inc., Sodifrance
Find out what your peers are saying about No Magic MagicDraw vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.