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Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Avolution ABACUS
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (7th), Data Governance (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.0%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.4%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Modeler8.4%
Avolution ABACUS3.0%
Other88.6%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…
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

"For what it does it is very good and a reasonable price."
"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."
"It is a very powerful tool that does what an enterprise architect needs it to do and it supports the business in knowing more about the business so that they can do better."
"I would recommend it very strongly."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"If you want a data model of flexibility and catalog scalability I would recommend it from that perspective."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"It is a very stable solution...The initial setup of Avolution ABACUS is very easy."
"The best features of erwin Data Modeler include the forward engineering tool, which gives you the schema according to the data model that you generate."
"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."
"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."
"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."
"This tool is beneficial to any organization as it is foundational; there is no better way than this, and it is a must-have for every organization, whether large or small."
"I have used most of the modeling tools available, but I found that erwin Data Modeler is the most suitable data modeling tool in our current industry."
"The product itself is fantastic and it's about the only way to get an enterprise view of the data that you're designing."
"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."
 

Cons

"Their local presence in the Middle East could be scaled more, particularly in customer service. It would be good if they'd also have mobile dashboards for executive management out of the box."
"For some of the functionality, it might be a little complicated for people getting started."
"While this is one of the most powerful tools on the market it does not integrate well with Microsoft Office or others."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."
"I use reference models, which are taxonomies, in my EA work. It is a reference model/taxonomy of things with capabilities, sub capabilities, and sub-sub capabilities, so you're working it down. I haven't yet found a simple way to implement that in Abacus. It could be that it is there, but I don't know how to do it."
"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."
"It needs more flexible analysis parameters and more capability as a BPM tool and doing BPM simulation, compared with Bonita BPM or Bizagi."
"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."
"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."
"What I did not like was that sometimes while I was creating relations, I was not getting errors. The errors only appeared when I tried to upload the model into a new database, which took a lot of time because I was creating a model, reproducing XML, and then trying to add the XML in the database."
"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."
"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."
"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."
"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."
"I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"It is expensive."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"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."
"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."
"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."
"The solution is expensive."
"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?
While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...
What is your primary use case for Avolution ABACUS?
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommend...
What advice do you have for others considering Avolution ABACUS?
I rate Avolution ABACUS eight out of ten. The focus should be on implementing and understanding enterprise architecture concepts rather than the specific tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the licensing process is painful and quite onerous. The setup is okay, but there is room for improvement.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Regarding improvements, the first thing I would mention is that every release has some issues, some of which are related to current functionalities, which means they often seem not very well tested...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
My main use case for erwin Data Modeler is to implement a single data architecture design department so everyone is using erwin Data Modeler for their data models to be a transactional application ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.