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IBM System Architect vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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 Business Process Design
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (1st), Data Governance (10th)
IBM System Architect
Ranking in Business Process Design
26th
Average Rating
6.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 3.0%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM System Architect is 1.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Modeler3.0%
IBM System Architect1.4%
Other95.6%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Sushree Panigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
it_user542103 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
It has helped in supporting the development of an Enterprise Data Model
Data model development: This has built-in ways to create multiple, separate solution data models, including ways to link to an Enterprise Data Model (EDM). Other objects are encyclopedia-wide and need a different approach for managing solution-specific diagrams with an ability to query, e.g…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."
"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 data lineage feature is very valuable."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"The product itself is fantastic and it's about the only way to get an enterprise view of the data that you're designing."
"It improved the way we were able to manage our models."
"It is a very good product if you want to import existing designs, and it is a tremendously flexible product for reverse engineering and database generation."
"The value of understanding your data in a graphical way has been very rich in communicating to developers and testers when they recognize the relationships and the business rules."
"It has helped in supporting the development of an Enterprise Data Model."
 

Cons

"It has a very steep learning curve, limited support for NoSQL or streaming systems, and potentially a high licensing cost."
"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."
"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."
"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."
"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."
"The product is very outdated software; complex to use, and the GUI is a fat client so no mobile or web access."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 tool is expensive."
"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."
"An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise38
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I have no idea about the setup cost because I did not buy the license.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The UI in erwin Data Modeler can be improved significantly because when any new person opens the tool, all the toolbars are kept open with many tools in view, making it appear chunky. If possible, ...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I primarly use erwin Data Modeler for modeling purposes. Once we have the business requirement, we create the models in erwin Data Modeler, and then we perform forward engineering to get the query ...
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Also Known As

erwin DM
System Architect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Wuxi Lake Cloud, Nationwide, ETI, IDS Scheer
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Bizagi, Camunda and others in Business Process Design. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.