erwin Data Modeler vs erwin Evolve comparison

erwin Data Modeler and erwin Evolve are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. erwin Data Modeler is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.8, while erwin Evolve is ranked #16. erwin Data Modeler holds a 8.3% mindshare in AM, compared to erwin Evolve’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of erwin Data Modeler users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of erwin Evolve users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler

Read 42 erwin Data Modeler reviews

4,941 Views
3,409 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,283 Views
924 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

erwin Evolve

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

erwin Evolve and erwin Data Modeler are complementary products in enterprise architecture and data modeling. erwin Evolve has the upper hand with its strategic enterprise planning capabilities, while erwin Data Modeler excels in detailed database design and management.

Features: erwin Evolve supports business process modeling, enabling holistic organizational views, strategic enterprise planning, and framework support for enterprise architecture. erwin Data Modeler provides comprehensive data modeling, strong integration capabilities, and supports detailed database design, essential for data governance and management.

Room for Improvement: erwin Evolve could improve its ease of deployment, streamline processes for setup, and enhance user experience in complex implementations. erwin Data Modeler could benefit from more intuitive collaboration tools, additional cloud database support, and enhanced template options for diverse data structures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: erwin Data Modeler is noted for straightforward deployment and reliable technical support with consistent updates. erwin Evolve requires intricate setup due to its expansive capabilities, resulting in longer implementation times but benefits from dedicated enterprise-level customer service.

Pricing and ROI: erwin Evolve involves higher initial setup costs due to its comprehensive features, potentially leading to a higher long-term ROI for enterprise architecture-focused organizations. erwin Data Modeler offers a moderate cost structure, appealing with strong data modeling efficiencies for data-centric environments, providing substantial ROI based on its focused features.

To learn more, read our detailed erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve

November 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 873,085 peers since 2012

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 Enterprise Architecture Management

3rd

Ranking in Business Process Design

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Governance (13th)

erwin Evolve

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

16th

Ranking in Business Process Design

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.3%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.9%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler	8.3%
erwin Evolve	2.9%
Other	88.8%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

Khadarvalli Phatan

Data Modeler at Capgemini

Helps map data relationships and document business logic through exportable visual diagrams

I would rate the visualization feature in erwin Data Modeler a six out of ten because the visualization is somewhat poor and some of the features are not user-friendly. You need to spend more time to make it a framework. There are areas where erwin Data Modeler can improve, such as scrolling and zooming in and out to see any particular columns. The visualization is average to above average, but not great. Erwin Data Modeler could improve in areas such as the interface, as there are features like copy and paste, creating duplicates, and the visualization elements and toolbars which feel quite old. The user interface resembles a 1998 Windows structure, so that can be enhanced.

Read full review

Asish Sahu

SPM at Infosys

The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.

Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."

"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."

"The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases."

"It provides flexibility with the code. You can change the code as you want. Basically, you can change SQL based on what's best for your project."

"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."

"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."

"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 code generation ensures accurate engineering of data sources, as there is no development time. Code doesn't even have to be reviewed. We have been using this solution for so long and all the code which has been generated is accurate with the requirements. Once we generate the DDLs out of the erwin tools, the development team does a quick review of the script line by line. They will just be running the script on the database and looking into other requirements, such as the index. So, there is less effort from development side to create tables or build a database."

More erwin Data Modeler pros

"The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider."

"I really liked that it mapped out processes and was able to attach the data model to the appropriate process. You could map out the process, then when you got down to a specific couple of data elements, you could attach the table in the database that supported that process. You could connect it with erwin Data Modeler for that."

"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."

"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."

"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."

"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."

"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."

"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."

More erwin Evolve pros

Cons

"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 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."

"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."

"The solution's reporting side needs to be improved."

"It would be nice to have it on the Linux platform, not just Windows. If they can support Linux, there would be a huge market for it."

"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."

"I would like the solution to be more user-friendly to deploy."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

"The way that we are using it for application management, we have several KPIs. We want to follow and monitor them regarding a number of solutions. We cannot calculate this today. We would like real-time calculations along with the KPIs in order to improve the user experience. We would like the tool to be able to display this, not only as signals, but as charts."

"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."

"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."

"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."

"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."

"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."

"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."

"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."

More erwin Evolve cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."

"Pricing is very high compared to any other 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."

"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."

"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 solution is expensive."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."

"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."

"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."

"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."

"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Architecture Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

21%

Performing Arts

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	12

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.

See all answers

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

I do not recall the pricing from about a year and a half ago, but it seems reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

erwin Data Modeler could improve its UI as it still feels old school and not very modern. There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and h...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 38% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 17% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 11% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

Camunda vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 2% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler Competitors

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 19% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 10% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 9% of the time

Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Evolve

Compared 9% of the time

ARIS BPA vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

November 2025

Download erwin Data Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

November 2025

Download erwin Evolve product report

Also Known As

erwin DM

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

Overview

Erwin Data Modeler provides an effective approach to visualizing and managing data models. It assists in creating, reversing, and synchronizing data models with ease, supporting logical and physical transitions while enhancing understanding across teams.

Erwin Data Modeler is a comprehensive tool designed for professional database management. It offers capabilities to organize and enforce standards, automating script generation with robust reverse engineering and DDL output. Users can manage complex data environments, capitalize on integration with data intelligence, and maintain large-scale databases smoothly. Despite its strengths, improvements in multi-language support, database integration, and reporting features are needed. Users benefit from extensive support for conceptual, logical, and physical database modeling, enhancing architectural design and data governance for platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata.

What are the key features of Erwin Data Modeler?

Visual Representation: Facilitates clear visualization of data models, aiding comprehension.
Versioning and Editing: Enhance usability with versioning and bulk editing capabilities.
Reverse Engineering: Offers powerful tools for reverse engineering and DDL generation.
Integration: Aligns with data intelligence to streamline database management.
Naming Standards: Enforces consistency with automated script creation.

What benefits should users consider in Erwin Data Modeler reviews?

Collaboration: Promotes team understanding and collaboration through visual tools.
Automation: Reduces manual effort through automated processes and integration.
Scalability: Handles large database management efficiently, crucial for enterprise settings.
Data Governance: Facilitates effective data governance with structured modeling.

Erwin Data Modeler finds application in industries focused on robust data management, implementing it for enterprise data warehouses, business domain models, and operational systems. It supports architectural design and governance, aligning with business applications demanding precise data representation and visualization.

Quest Software

erwin Evolve provides comprehensive graphical support for handling large data models. It offers features such as metadata access, version control, and model comparison, enhancing operational reports and system analytics through its collaborative web-driven design.

erwin Evolve facilitates reverse engineering and database integration, fostering collaboration and process exploration through its web interface. Customizable and easy to configure, it supports workflow configuration and architectural modeling. Users can utilize its capabilities for developing industry models, managing transformation programs, and presenting standard operating procedures. Despite its strengths, there are demands for improved integration, enhanced UML support, and a more modern user experience. Users also express challenges with legacy system updates and call for better connectors and collaborative features.

What are the key features of erwin Evolve?

Graphical Support for Large Data Models: Provides visualization capabilities for complex data structures.
Metadata Access via API: Allows integration and management of metadata across platforms.
Version Control and Model Comparison: Enhances tracking and analysis of model changes.
Collaborative Web Interface: Facilitates teamwork and process exploration remotely.
Architectural Modeling: Supports the design and configuration of enterprise architecture.

What are the benefits and ROI of using erwin Evolve?

Customization and Ease of Configuration: Reduces setup time and adapts to specific organizational workflows.
Enhanced Accessibility and Mobile Usability: Offers access to critical information on the go.
Operational Reports Creation: Generates insights and facilitates informed decision-making.
System Analytics Handling: Provides robust tools for analyzing system performance and integration.

Data-driven organizations in sectors like finance and healthcare implement erwin Evolve for data warehousing, enterprise architecture, and business process modeling. They leverage its capabilities for cataloging architectural elements, linking to CMDBs, analyzing system interfaces, and describing business processes. Utilization extends to IT solution registration, business capability planning, and strategic modeling, with frequent deployments on cloud platforms to support transformation initiatives.

Quest Software

Sample Customers

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

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve

November 2025

Free Report: erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve

Find out what your peers are saying about erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve report.

See our list of best Enterprise Architecture Management vendors and best Business Process Design vendors.

We monitor all Enterprise Architecture Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.