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LeanIX vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

LeanIX
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of LeanIX is 16.0%, up from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 13.6%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

Umit Sengul - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."
"I like the tool’s integration and maps."
"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."
"For the reporting capabilities, LeanIX provides dashboards for different levels, including CXO dashboards. There are plenty of dashboards for reporting."
"The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources."
"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."
"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."
"Provides a single repository for all architecture work."
"Scalable solution for modeling, project sharing, and collaboration. Support for it is good."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and adaptability of Sparx Enterprise Architect."
"Sparx has got a range of modeling features, and I am comfortable with all its offering. I've used a lot of tools over the phone. I found EA Spark, probably the most feature rich product all in all compared to other products. The solution is very cost-effective and that is its best feature. It's a very good delivery architecture tool, which also has enterprise architecture capabilities, and it's got full life cycle processes and software development. So for me, it's a pretty comprehensive tool"
"The solution allows us to quickly present designs and concepts to customers and get their feedback, thereby moving the project forward step by step."
"Scalability is not a problem. You can always increase the footprint of what the thing can do because it's so powerful."
"A feature I like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is its ease of use."
"Automated document generation is a real time saver, no more cut and paste, no more keeping track of which diagrams are in which reports, no more last minute update panics. Just click a mouse and you've got an up to date report."
 

Cons

"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"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."
"I think the tool's main issue might be direct integrations."
"What would make LeanIX better is more variety in terms of reporting, and more flexibility with its data importing feature."
"Report generation could be more detailed. There are some shortcomings when creating reports. We can't create tag-based reports or go beyond basic technical reports."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"It would be beneficial to have additional features and capabilities to enhance mapping between applications, especially across domains where the relationships may not be direct."
"The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean."
"In general, we now have a problem with Sparx Enterprise Architect because many analysts think it's too complicated to use in a giant environment."
"The elements of the modeling sets can have better customization and visual representation. It would be great to have a mobile version."
"This solution is quite complex to use. It would be nice if the learning curve wasn't so steep."
"It really did not work for logical modeling. The look is very old-fashioned. You can't make the diagrams easy on the eye, so we ended up drawing them again in Visio anyhow."
"It can be improved in the area of shared documentation. The idea is that the architecture tool can call back to an enterprise asset, pull that information, and link that as a sub-artifact."
"More challenging than other tools to maintain documents and document versions for an architecture board review."
"The UI could be improved and made a little bit more presentable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"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."
"Licenses are pretty low cost compared to, for example, ARIS."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."
"In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used."
"I use my own license. So, I just bought the professional version, which costs $800 or something like that. In the company where I am working, we have floating licenses. They are probably more expensive. Its licensing is affordable, but we are talking about a large organization, and there could be modelers or viewers of the models. We don't know how much that would cost us."
"The license I use is on-premise. We haven't gone to the cloud where we have to pay monthly or something like that. Sparx is cheaper than most similar tools."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about LeanIX?
The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?
LeanIX is associated with high costs. 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. The first pricing ...
What do you like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
OmniLink
Find out what your peers are saying about LeanIX vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.