LeanIX vs erwin Evolve comparison

Quest Software and SAP LeanIX are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Quest Software is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.0, while SAP LeanIX is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Quest Software holds a 2.6% mindshare in AM, compared to SAP LeanIX’s 15.3% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SAP LeanIX users who would recommend it.

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,108 Views
831 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

LeanIX

Read 23 LeanIX reviews

6,585 Views
5,136 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

LeanIX

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

Erwin Evolve and LeanIX compete in the enterprise architecture domain. LeanIX has an upper hand in features and value, offering superior integration and a strong collaborative environment.

Features: Erwin Evolve excels in robust modeling capabilities, extensive analytics, and comprehensive enterprise architecture planning. LeanIX offers superior integration capabilities, a strong collaborative environment, and efficient application portfolio management.

Room for Improvement: Erwin Evolve could improve its deployment complexity, responsiveness of customer support, and adaptability to rapid changes. LeanIX may enhance its initial cost structure, expand customization options, and improve support for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: LeanIX offers seamless cloud-based deployment and responsive customer service, while Erwin Evolve involves more complex deployment and less suited support for rapid response.

Pricing and ROI: Erwin Evolve's cost-effective setup appeals to budget-conscious enterprises, offering reasonable ROI over time. Despite a higher initial cost, LeanIX justifies the investment with a faster ROI through enhanced analytics and operational efficiencies.

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

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX vs. erwin Evolve

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

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 August 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LeanIX is 15.3%, up from 15.3% 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."

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

"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."

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

"We use erwin Evolve to publish to the website. This allows us to enable publishing our website using parameterisation features. In a very fast, quick way, we can publish a table or chart onto a website."

"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."

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

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

More erwin Evolve pros

"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 solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."

"Interfaces well with downstream systems of data."

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

"I like the tool’s integration and maps."

"One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool."

"I would rate LeanIX at an 8.5, trending towards nine."

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

More LeanIX pros

Cons

"Business process modelling could be improved."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."

"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."

More erwin Evolve cons

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

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

"They should improve the out of the box connectors that they provide. They should see if clients are really ready to adapt them."

"The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner."

"One of the challenges that I've found, even with working with Subway, was that being able to build that out into a detailed solution for a developer or for new process design was one of the challenges, just making that leap."

"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."

"The modeling could be improved."

"Does a poor job of being able to allocate detailed costings to components within the network."

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."

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

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

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

"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."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Government

10%

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

Bonita vs erwin Evolve

Compared 11% of the time

ARIS BPA vs erwin Evolve

Compared 9% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 9% of the time

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ServiceNow vs LeanIX

Compared 21% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs LeanIX

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

August 2025

Download erwin Evolve product report

Buyer's Guide

LeanIX

August 2025

Download LeanIX product report

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

No data available

Overview

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

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

July 2025

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