LeanIX vs erwin Evolve by Quest comparison

erwin by Quest and SAP LeanIX are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. erwin by Quest is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while SAP LeanIX is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0. erwin by Quest holds a 2.6% mindshare in AM, compared to SAP LeanIX’s 15.8% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of erwin by Quest users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SAP LeanIX users who would recommend it.

erwin Evolve by Quest

Read 19 erwin Evolve by Quest reviews

1,089 Views
828 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

LeanIX

Read 23 LeanIX reviews

6,848 Views
5,341 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve by Quest

LeanIX

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Erwin Evolve by Quest and LeanIX both compete in the enterprise architecture and data governance space. LeanIX offers a more robust feature set, providing better overall value.

Features: Erwin Evolve offers strong data modeling and governance capabilities, extensive collaboration tools, and database integration. LeanIX provides dynamic cloud-native integration, rapid architecture adaptation, and comprehensive visualization capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Erwin Evolve could enhance its cloud adaptability, streamline its deployment process, and improve integration with third-party tools. LeanIX could expand its customization options, provide greater integration with smaller systems, and further simplify its user interface for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Erwin Evolve provides an on-premise deployment model, appealing to organizations prioritizing security, but with longer setup times. LeanIX's cloud-based deployment enables rapid implementation with agile customer service ensuring quick resolutions.

Pricing and ROI: Erwin Evolve generally offers lower initial setup costs, making it attractive for budget-conscious organizations. LeanIX, despite its higher upfront costs, promises significant ROI due to its extensive feature set and cloud-native benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed LeanIX vs. erwin Evolve by Quest Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX vs. erwin Evolve by Quest

July 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 Evolve by Quest

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

12th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (19th)

LeanIX

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve by Quest is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LeanIX is 15.8%, up from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

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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Umit Sengul

Enterprise Architect at E.ON

A platform that facilitates efficient IT architecture management and integration, improving organizational coordination and decision-making

LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance…

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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

"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."

"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."

"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."

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

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

"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."

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

More erwin Evolve by Quest pros

"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."

"The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies."

"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."

"My favorite feature of LeanIX is its ability to induct attribute-driven surveys."

"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."

"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."

"Ease of use is the most valuable feature. From an enterprise architecture perspective, it's not too cumbersome with too many functionalities, yet it has a lot of attributes for the content it covers."

"The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources."

More LeanIX pros

Cons

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

"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."

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

"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done. We have people who use ARIS, who use System Architect and, of course, Visio. erwin has very limited ways to import and export from those kinds of tools. It's not a very easy thing to do."

"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."

"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."

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

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

More erwin Evolve by Quest cons

"I think the tool's main issue might be direct integrations."

"LeanIX has limited in-build diagramming capabilities, requiring the purchase of another tool. That is the main drawback of LeanIX because they don't have a built-in add-on product for diagramming."

"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."

"Another area for improvement is that when you're starting to look into more advanced information, using the solution's APIs and its customizations, documentation for that specific aspect is not very good. There is not too much support built into the offering for that aspect, for a developer."

"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."

"The solution needs to incorporate a data patch tool that moves within and irons data."

"The modeling could be improved."

"The whole integration architecture view of interfaces/data exchange could be improved."

More LeanIX cons

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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"There is a sweet spot of where they need to be on pricing right now. They could go up a little bit in pricing, but it has to do with the cost savings, and it has to do with the practitioners using it. I use it where I get cost savings and I can justify it, but they probably have the ability to flex a 10% up channel on their sales on that. So, they could increase their settle price, not their offering price, when they sell. They can probably hold that up a little bit higher than it is because there are cost savings that we can drive from it."

"It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications."

"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."

"The tool needs to include more flexible licensing options. We do not use the tool all the time. So pricing should be considered only when we use the tool."

"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."

"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."

"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering erwin Evolve?

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

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What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?

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

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What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?

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

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Any experience with Strategic Project Portfolio Management Solutions?

Hi @Cheryl Joseph Looking at the crossover between Project and Portfolio management with EA, then Planview could be a good choice. If looking at Portfolio Management from an EA perspective then Le...

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What do you like most about LeanIX?

The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?

LeanIX pricing ranges from moderate to high. Our usage and costs depend on the number of applications, and as the number of applications grows, so does the cost. We have aligned our usage with appl...

See all answers

Comparisons

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IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve by Quest

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Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs LeanIX

Compared 8% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs LeanIX

Compared 7% of the time

iServer vs LeanIX

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve by Quest

July 2025

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Buyer's Guide

LeanIX

July 2025

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Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

No data available

Overview

erwin is used by more than 50,000 professionals in 60+ countries to get big results from their enterprise data initiatives. erwin is the #1 choice in virtually every industry, from government and healthcare to retail and finance.

erwin Modeling provides a collaborative environment to manage enterprise data through an intuitive, graphical interface. With a centralized view of key data definitions, you can leverage information as a strategic asset and more efficiently manage your data resources to save time and money.

erwin by Quest

LeanIX delivers collaborative Enterprise Architecture designed for modern IT. Our open, data-driven architecture management model helps organizations adapt to the evolving demands of digital. From agile to multi-cloud and beyond, architecture teams using LeanIX have the power to strategically support the business and report 45% reduction in time to value delivery. More than 90,000 users across enterprises worldwide rely on LeanIX to manage their IT landscape, including adidas, Bosch, 7Eleven, and Zalando.

SAP LeanIX

Sample Customers

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.

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX vs. erwin Evolve by Quest

July 2025

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