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 #2 with an average rating of 8.4, while erwin Evolve is ranked #14. erwin Data Modeler holds a 8.4% mindshare in AM, compared to erwin Evolve’s 3.3% 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 47 erwin Data Modeler reviews

5,545 Views
3,771 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,706 Views
1,194 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

erwin Evolve

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Erwin Evolve and erwin Data Modeler are distinct products in the enterprise architecture and data modeling categories, respectively. Erwin Data Modeler has a slight advantage due to its robust data management features highly rated by users.

Features: Erwin Evolve supports visualization of enterprise architectures, business alignment through strategic roadmaps, and includes a web module for organization-wide information browsing. It also integrates with external systems using the Collector tool for comprehensive architecture management. Erwin Data Modeler excels in detailed data modeling, metadata management, and integrates seamlessly with databases offering reverse and forward engineering. Its visual data models simplify complex data representation and support standards enforcement.

Room for Improvement: Erwin Evolve needs enhancements in web-only versions for robustness and alignment with enterprise frameworks. Improvements in user interface accessibility and smoother client-server transition are also desired. Erwin Data Modeler requires expanded database compatibility and improved model comparison speed for complex models. Enhanced documentation for newer users and more intuitive template systems could further improve its utility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Erwin Evolve delivers comprehensive deployment for large organizations with strong customer support for enterprise applications. Erwin Data Modeler stands out with an easy deployment process and proactive customer service ensuring smooth integration with existing databases.

Pricing and ROI: Erwin Evolve demands a significant initial investment that yields returns through streamlined operations and strategic alignment, particularly suitable for large organizations. Erwin Data Modeler offers competitive pricing with high ROI due to its enhanced data management efficiencies, making it appealing for data-centered strategies.

To learn more, read our detailed erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. erwin Evolve

February 2026

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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

2nd

Ranking in Business Process Design

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Governance (9th)

erwin Evolve

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

14th

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 February 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.4%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 3.3%, 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	8.4%
erwin Evolve	3.3%
Other	88.3%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

Sushree Panigrahi

Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.

Data modeling has transformed regulatory reporting and collaboration across cloud environments

In erwin Data Modeler, areas that have room for improvement include performance improvements. I see that large models sometimes cause it to be slow when opening. Impact analysis can lag as well. Version control is another aspect. If we have developed a current version, it is not integrated with Git where we can easily compare different versions. UI modernization is also something we cannot utilize as it is primarily for development. Additionally, cloud-specific optimizations are needed when it comes to Snowflake or Databricks. When it comes to AI aspects, auto-suggestions for normalization or identifying primary, foreign, or surrogate keys are areas that can be improved.

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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

"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."

"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."

"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."

"Drag-and-drop data modeling and reverse engineering out of databases are the most valuable features of erwin Data Modeler by Quest."

"erwin has versioning so you can keep versions, over time, of those models and you can compare any version to any version. If you're looking at a specific database and you want to see what changed over time, that's really useful. You can go back to a different version or connect that to your change-control processes so you can see what was released when."

"Quest can create conceptual and physical data models to facilitate effective communication between business and IT. It can also integrate expertise from various engineering and database systems within your organization to enhance data management and administration."

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

"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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."

"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."

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

More erwin Evolve pros

Cons

"As someone who has used it for a long time, I have seen stability vary from version to version."

"This is a very complex product."

"The price should be reduced."

"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."

"I would like to see the ability to support more NoSQL platforms more quickly. In addition, enhancing the graphics to render more quickly would be beneficial for any user."

"I love the product. I love the ability to get into the code, make it automated, and make it do what I want. I would like to see them put some kind of governance over the ability to make changes to the mart tables with the API, so that instead of just using the modeler's rights to a table -- it has a separate set of rights for API access. That would give us the ability to put governance around API applications. Right now a person with erwin and Excel/VBA has the ability to make changes to models with the API if they also have rights to make changes to the model from erwin. It's a risk."

"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."

"I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

"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."

"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."

"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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."

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

"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."

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

"I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit."

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

"The primary reasons that erwin was selected were that it was much more affordable for us [than Embarcadero] and it was easily maintainable."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"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 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."

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

19%

Performing Arts

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	34

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

Questions from the Community

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

Regarding pricing, I am unsure what the exact price is for erwin Data Modeler, but I believe it is not useful for an individual. It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations l...

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What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I write code and I write code accessing erwin Data Modeler's API, the Application Programming Interface, so that I can use Excel to update erwin Data Modeler and then get those updates and put them...

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What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I work for CVS with a pretty big database as a data modeler on the PBMs, the Caremark PBM side, which is the Pharmacy Benefits Manager. There's a retail side too for all the stores, but our data wa...

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Comparisons

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Compared 41% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 9% of the time

Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 5% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 2% of the time

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 12% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs erwin Evolve

Compared 5% of the time

Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Evolve

Compared 5% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

February 2026

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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

February 2026

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