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Atlan vs SAP PowerDesigner 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 Metadata Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (12th)
SAP PowerDesigner
Ranking in Metadata Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of Atlan is 4.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 3.2%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Atlan4.3%
SAP PowerDesigner3.2%
Other92.5%
Metadata Management
 

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.
Kopparapu Venkatesh Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Data modeling tool improves data management and decision-making efficiency
The lineage analysis helps my organization understand data dependencies at an enterprise level. As a SAP PowerDesigner developer, I monitor data across the organization, creating data models that reflect not just one data warehouse but comprehensive organizational information. If you have a small company, lineage helps track employee data across different areas such as finance and HR. Data governance prevents duplicate records, so when tracking employee details, SAP PowerDesigner highlights where data exists in various areas, helping ensure we only use the appropriate sources. This functionality allows us to assess the impact of data deletions effectively. I utilize the reverse engineering capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner. Reverse engineering is helpful, especially since I have colleagues new to SAP PowerDesigner. They often do not know which columns are available where. In SAP PowerDesigner, we can reverse engineer existing data from its source and identify errors in production. For instance, by using Ali's example, if an error arises, I can trace it back to the table and environment it originated from using the reverse engineering feature. The best features of SAP PowerDesigner, from my perspective, are its ability to keep the connectivity between the source database and the new system, data redundancy and availability, and impact analysis. The first feature acts as a bridge between systems. The second allows us to see what data is already available and what new data can be brought in. The third, impact analysis, helps determine how many tables will be affected if a specific table is deleted. This critical point allows us to capture how much data will be lost if any table is removed. Currently, these features shape my daily work. SAP PowerDesigner primarily benefits business management units by offering three types of data modeling structures: conceptual, logical, and physical models. The conceptual model communicates high-level insights to top executives, while logical and physical models address complex queries faced by developers in analytics. SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems. The tool enables mapping from end to end, making my work faster and more efficient than using other ER data modeling solutions. The interface allows easy creation of data models and searching for existing data, ensuring I can complete my tasks significantly quicker. The importance of SAP PowerDesigner's collaboration capabilities lies in fostering a unified data management approach. It acts as a unified tool, preventing the duplication of existing data in analytical processes, thus saving both effort and storage costs, which is essential for effective data management. We utilize collaboration capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner with various source systems such as PG admin, Postgres, Oracle, and Snowflake. Recently, we have added Snowflake for cloud data modeling and POC work, streamlining the collaboration process across different systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By switching to Atlan, we have increased our productivity and saved a lot of business time through automation."
"The AI part is integrated for enriching metadata engagement, making it a comprehensive tool."
"Overall, I rate Atlan a nine out of ten."
"As a senior analytics engineer, Atlan's ability to show end-to-end data lineage is the most important feature for me."
"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."
"Atlas is quite intuitive."
"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."
"They also offer automated lineage embedded in the connectors, allowing us to track where the data is coming from and where it's going. We find it very efficient in cataloging data sources. Additionally, the user-friendly interface is a big plus, making it easy for users to familiarize themselves with the solution. These two features, in my opinion, stand out the most."
"SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems."
"It is a very stable solution, which is one of the advantages of using PowerDesigner, especially in big databases."
"The most valuable feature is the way you can extend it and customize it. With most modeling tools, you fit your modeling process to fit the tool. In PowerDesigner, you can make the tool fit the way you want to work."
"It offers a lot of features in one solution, and you would have to get multiple other products to bundle together all of the capabilities that you get in just this product."
"One of the key reasons for choosing this solution above others is because of the repository features which we're able to consolidate and work on a single repository where we store all our models in one location."
"Technical support is good... for a price."
"The most useful feature has been the detailed possibility to model almost anything regarding physical databases."
"Even if you don't customise or extend PowerDesigner, the tool is still the easiest modelling tool to use, with spreadsheet-like editing capabilities, the ability to link to or replicate (in a managed fashion) objects from a different model."
 

Cons

"There are some improvements. There is a feature called Playbooks, which basically allows me to automate certain activities that would otherwise be manual. It's a very interesting feature, but there is room to improve it because, depending on the task you automate, the playbooks seem to have a hard time handling the task. So, it could be improved there. Even though it's a great feature, it can evolve further."
"The product could be improved by offering scheduled email reports for managed assets."
"The challenge is in the lineage, where it requires improvement. Atlas needs to capture areas where organizations use less known applications."
"Atlan can be improved by integrating agents that can support users in finding assets of interest."
"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."
"Customer support for Atlan is not so proactive."
"SAP PowerDesigner is not a product that's really actively developed anymore in the sense that the user interface is outdated."
"SAP PowerDesigner could improve by making the repository easier to understand. It is difficult to understand how the repository works because when I used logical models as part of the team, we wanted to use them together and update the older versions of the data model version but it was confusing. The repository needs to be explained."
"This product does not have a good BPMN Modeler."
"Better support for integration with open-source technologies is needed. For example, I try to use open-source databases such as Postgres and MySQL instead of Microsoft, DB2, or Oracle, however, I think it's lacking in capability from the tool to the database."
"Reverse-engineering of late JDK and .NET. Use third party parsers and enhance Object-Oriented metamodel to cater for newer language features."
"UI could be improved by enabling simpler navigation."
"Pricing for small consultancies needs improvement. They sustain prices to competing tools. The competing tools tend to do special offers. PowerDesigner SAP doesn't pay much attention to the pricing of it and there are no special offers."
"The solution itself does not need to be improved. However, they could add support for different languages."
 

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."
"When you purchase the license for SAP PowerDesigner, you have to buy one year of support. The tool is worth the money."
"I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"I would like SAP to prove free licenses to professionals that are using the solution. The free version is limited."
"Regarding costs, SAP PowerDesigner is pricey, as I've heard from my team manager, which is why the company has been thinking of bringing another solution on board."
"The pricing varies based on functionality and users."
"The ROI has been 43%."
"PowerDesigner is not the cheapest solution on the market, so make sure that you are using it to its full potential."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Government
7%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
 

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 needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
Synchronization is vital since I experience multiple problems, such as mismatched models and manual DDL handling. Improving the synchronization between models and databases can enhance integration ...
What is your primary use case for SAP PowerDesigner?
I use SAP PowerDesigner for data modeling, which greatly enhances the clarity of my data management processes. I manage data across multiple databases, including cloud databases, Teradata, and Orac...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlan vs. SAP PowerDesigner and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.