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Atlan vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Atlan
Ranking in Data Governance
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (4th)
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Data Governance
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (1st), Business Process Design (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Atlan is 2.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 0.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Modeler0.4%
Atlan2.0%
Other97.6%
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Neumann - PeerSpot reviewer
IT consultant at Pathfinder
Has struggled to meet business needs but supports technical data exploration and transparency
Atlan can be improved by concentrating more on business data since it is developed from developers for developers, and it needs to be more business relevant. For instance, when re-importing data model diagrams, Atlan provides some diagram automation that is not connected to the business glossary, which I consider a significant fault. Atlan needs to improve by focusing more on the business side of data, not only on technical aspects.If you want to focus on technical considerations, it would be beneficial to have an interface with a real business data modeling tool such as Erwin or other business data tools, since data modeling is not the same as Draw.io. Additionally, Atlan can improve its workflows, which are hard to understand. Working with templates, Excel import, export, and running automations is not self-explanatory, and you always need help from Atlan support team. If business people want to use it and run their own reports, it must be easier to customize for their business needs.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interfaces and automated imports have helped me with transparency, as we have different sources from different techniques such as DBT, Snowflake, and other regular databases, making it effective to connect these sources and navigate through them, filter them, and enrich the data with additional meter information."
"The best feature of Atlan is its integration with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack, so business users don't have to go into a data catalog to see metadata about data assets."
"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time through automation."
"The best feature of Atlan is its integration with communication platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack, so business users don't have to go into a data catalog to see metadata about data assets."
"Overall, I rate Atlan as a ten out of ten."
"Overall, I rate Atlan a nine out of ten."
"The technical support services are good."
"As a senior analytics engineer, Atlan's ability to show end-to-end data lineage is the most important feature for me."
"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."
"It has made a lot of difference in terms of naming standards, processes around our metadata, and the schema in which we create a database."
"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."
"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 process of creating visual representations of data structures using erwin Data Modeler allows you to see everything you are doing, and you have visuals to see what you are going to do and what has been done so far."
"Overall, erwin DM's support for Snowflake is very good."
"The biggest lesson I have learned from erwin is the old cliche, that a picture is worth a thousand words, and when a person asks for a set of tables and they actually see that diagram visually, it really assists in any meeting that you will have."
"The product itself is fantastic and it's about the only way to get an enterprise view of the data that you're designing."
 

Cons

"One of the main areas for improvement is its governance capabilities."
"One area that could be improved is the capability to find duplicates of datasets."
"In my experience, it might be less suited for collaboration across teams."
"The challenge is in the lineage, where it requires improvement."
"Customer support for Atlan is not so proactive."
"The product could be improved by offering scheduled email reports for managed assets."
"Certain UI changes could make Atlan more user-friendly."
"Working with templates, Excel import, export, and running automations is not self-explanatory, and you always need help from Atlan support team."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"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."
"The only real complaint I have is the time it takes to do a database comparison on a large model. If they could speed that up, that would be the only thing I can think of that needs improvement."
"The Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."
"Although Quest Software has made tremendous strides in recent years, they need to evolve more in the big data arena; erwin Data Modeler could use a little more work when it comes to big database designs."
"The navigation is a little bit of a challenge. It's painful. For example, if you've got a view open and you want to try to move from side to side, the standard today is being able to drag and drop left and right. You can't really do that in the model. Moving around the model is painful because it doesn't follow the Windows model today."
"Erwin Data Modeler is a good product, but I recently experienced a problem where I was not able to open an erwin Data Modeler file because its version had automatically changed."
"There are some bugs here and there. The default code that comes with the customizable packages is a bit buggy on some platforms such as PostgreSQL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay per-user license. It's a different classification model than with other solutions, where they usually charge you for resources. So, that was a better model for us. And because of this difference in models or classification, it was cheaper for us to go with Atlan."
"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."
"erwin has this option where you pay a one-time fee and you have the license for six years, which makes sense because I don't upgrade my database engine every other year. I have an application that depends on it. This is something weird about PowerDesigner. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."
"The primary reasons that erwin was selected were that it was much more affordable for us [than Embarcadero] and it was easily maintainable."
"Though the solution is not cheap, it's worth the money."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
"Price-wise, erwin Data Modeler is okay. You can purchase a single license and it is not very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlan?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing cost is a bit flexible but not affordable for smaller organizations. It might be way out of their budget, but it is very ...
What needs improvement with Atlan?
Atlan can be improved by enhancing their support process by reducing the resolution time. They have really bad and incomplete documentation, so they should work on the documentation as well, especi...
What is your primary use case for Atlan?
My main use case for Atlan is to define a flexible set of metadata, including measuring the quality of said data. Atlan is also a partner of ours, so we use it to integrate with our own tool. It al...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I have no idea about the setup cost because I did not buy the license.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The UI in erwin Data Modeler can be improved significantly because when any new person opens the tool, all the toolbars are kept open with many tools in view, making it appear chunky. If possible, ...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I primarly use erwin Data Modeler for modeling purposes. Once we have the business requirement, we create the models in erwin Data Modeler, and then we perform forward engineering to get the query ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlan vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.