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 8.5, while erwin Evolve is ranked #11 with an average rating of 9.0. erwin Data Modeler holds a 8.8% mindshare in AM, compared to erwin Evolve’s 2.8% 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 40 erwin Data Modeler reviews

4,967 Views
3,427 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,227 Views
883 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

erwin Evolve

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve

September 2025

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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

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Governance (14th)

erwin Evolve

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

11th

Ranking in Business Process Design

19th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.8%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.8%, down 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	8.8%
erwin Evolve	2.8%
Other	88.4%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency

The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data."

"We use the Forward and Reverse Engineering tools to help us speed things up and create things that would have to be done otherwise by hand. E.g., getting a database into a data model format or vice versa."

"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 has centralized storage so that a data model can be shared by different teams."

"We had some data integration projects, where we needed to integrate it for about 100 databases. Doing that manually is crazy; we can't do that. With erwin, it was much easier to identify which tables and columns could be used for the integration. That means a lot in terms of time and effort as well as my image to the customer, because they can see that we are providing value in a very short time."

"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."

"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 fitting model is very intuitive."

More erwin Data Modeler pros

"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."

"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."

"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."

"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."

"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."

"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."

"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."

"The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change."

More erwin Evolve pros

Cons

"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 would like to have more data sources from other, different vendors. In recent years, the vendor has reduced the number of data sources, and I would like to have more data sources for every brand. For example, with Oracle, I would like to have compatibility for many versions, including old ones, not just the most recent."

"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."

"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."

"I would like to see more support for working with the big-data world. There are so many new databases evolving and it's very hard for them to keep up with all of the new technologies. It would be good if they were able to dynamically support big-data platforms, other than Hive and Teradata."

"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."

"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."

"The erwin Data Modeler is quite complex to use."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."

"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."

"Business process modelling could be improved."

"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."

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

"They have improved the search engine a little bit but it can always be improved more. The more data you put inside it, the more you want to use it."

"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."

"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."

More erwin Evolve cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."

"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."

"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Government

10%

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	29

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.

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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

What advice do you have for others considering erwin Evolve?

I rate erwin Evolve by Quest a nine out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?

We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 39% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 18% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 12% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler Competitors

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 18% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 13% of the time

Bonita vs erwin Evolve

Compared 12% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 11% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

September 2025

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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

September 2025

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