Lucidchart vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

The compared Quest Software and Lucid Software solutions aren't in the same category. Quest Software is ranked #3 in AM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 8.8% mindshare in the category. Lucid Software is ranked #2 in MMS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 24.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Lucid Software users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler

Read 40 erwin Data Modeler reviews

4,967 Views
3,427 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Lucidchart

Read 56 Lucidchart reviews

5,234 Views
733 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

Lucidchart

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between erwin Data Modeler and Lucidchart based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP LeanIX, Sparx Systems, Quest Software and others in Enterprise Architecture Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Enterprise Architecture Management Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Architecture Management

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 868,759 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (3rd), Business Process Design (9th), Data Governance (14th)

Lucidchart

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Mind Mapping Software (2nd), Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

erwin Data Modeler and Lucidchart aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. erwin Data Modeler is designed for Enterprise Architecture Management and holds a mindshare of 8.8%, down 10.7% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 24.8% mindshare, up 21.6% since last year.

Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler	8.8%
LeanIX	13.1%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect	11.3%
Other	66.8%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Mind Mapping Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Lucidchart	24.8%
Visio	29.6%
draw.io	16.0%
Other	29.599999999999994%

Mind Mapping Software

Featured Reviews

JorgeSanz

Data Governance Senior Advisor at Abu Dhabi National Oil Company

Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency

The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Read full review

Michael Verruto

Managing Director, Project Design+Development at a government with 10,001+ employees

Visual approach facilitates clarity and process efficiency in complex real estate tasks

I haven't done much with Lucidchart's integration with other popular apps such as Teams, though one of my colleagues mentioned it can be added. This has sparked my interest to look into integration with Excel and Word, though we haven't implemented these features yet in our less than a year of operation. I access Lucidchart from multiple devices, including iPhone, iPad, and PC desktop. Our PCs are all laptops, so we can work remotely. I've collaborated with people from home on my iPad while they were on their laptop, though this isn't our routine behavior. I would recommend Lucidchart to others, but I'd also recommend exploring other options. It depends on what your fit and feel is for what you're trying to accomplish. For heavy users or technical users, Lucidchart might be very appealing. It has more capabilities than I'm currently using. The Highway Bridge Maintenance group, who are familiar with Agile processes, speak positively about it. For average users, they might find similar functionality in Miro or other less expensive alternatives. Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."

"The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases."

"The logical model gives developers, as well as the data modelers, an understanding of exactly how each object interacts with the others, whether a one-to-many, many-to-many, many-to-one, etc."

"Being able to point it to a database and then pull the metadata is a valuable feature. Another valuable feature is being able to rearrange the model so that we can display it to users. We are able to divide the information into subject areas, and we can divide the data landscape into smaller chunks, which makes it easier to understand. If you had 14 subject areas, 1,000 entities, and 6,000 columns, you can't quite understand it all at once. So, being able to have the same underlying model but only display portions of it at a time is extremely useful."

"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."

"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."

"The most valuable features are being able to visualize the data in the diagrams and transform those diagrams into physical database deployments. These features help, specifically, to integrate the data. When the source data is accumulated and modeled, the target model is in erwin and it helps resolve the data integration patterns that are required to map the data to accommodate a model."

"We use the macros with naming standards patterns, domains, datatypes, and some common attributes. As far as other automations, a feature of the Bulk Editor is mass updates. When it sees something is nonstandard or inaccurate, it will export the better data out. Then, I can easily see which entities and attributes are not inline or standard. I can easily make changes to what was uploaded to the Bulk Editor. When taking on a new project, it can save you about a half a day on a big project across an entire team."

More erwin Data Modeler pros

"It is important that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because if you support Mac, that means you also support the mobile applications on the iPad... Some of the other employees have access to an iPad, but not all of them do. When we're trying to talk through a process with them on-the-fly, or at the point of occurrence, it's so much nicer if we can both have it up on the iPad. That's why I would say the Mac support is essential."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use, and just being able to drag and drop."

"Easy to work on."

"Lucidchart's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows or workflows is excellent. The way that you put together the parts of charts and edit the chart are all very intuitive and easy to use."

"The wireframe and mock-up features have been the most useful so far. It's easy to create the mock-ups and then communicate to our development team what they need to look like. Lucidchart's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows or workflows is very good as well. I'm able to easily use any style of box that I need to create on a flowchart, to effectively communicate to our development team."

"The interface is easy for a layperson to use and adapt to."

"There is no alternative to Lucidchart if you want to describe a five-step process with bullet points. I believe every person who ever worked with PowerPoint on any type of documentation and then thought about which tool would actually help to describe what they're trying to do but without the words, would come up with Lucidchart."

"It is a very effective tool for documenting processes and using it has improved our efficiency significantly."

More Lucidchart pros

Cons

"Although Quest Software has made tremendous strides in recent years, they need to evolve more in the big data arena; erwin Data Modeler could use a little more work when it comes to big database designs."

"I would like to see more support for working with the big-data world. There are so many new databases evolving and it's very hard for them to keep up with all of the new technologies. It would be good if they were able to dynamically support big-data platforms, other than Hive and Teradata."

"I would like to see the reporting capabilities be more dynamic and more inclusive of information. The API is very sparsely understood by people across the user community."

"The interface must be improved."

"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 report generation has room for improvement. I think it was version 8 where you had to use Crystal Reports, and it was so painful that the company I was with just stayed on version 7 until version 9 came out and they restored the data browser. That's better than it was, but it's still a little cumbersome. For example, you run it in erwin, then export it out to Excel, and then you have to do a lot of cosmetic modification. If you discover that you missed a column, then you would have to rerun the whole thing. Sometimes what you would do is just go ahead and fix it in the report, then you have to remember to go back and fix it in the model. Therefore, I think the report generation still could use some work."

"I am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

"When I download a flowchart as a PDF file, it breaks it up. I would like to see the continuous display of flow charts, even if they are larger than one page."

"One area for improvement is the fact that I had to create two sheets. I had to create a process flow diagram, and I had to create a timeline. I wasn't able to do that in one sheet. If they could add that kind of feature, where you could input a timeline and different types of templates into one worksheet, that would be really useful. I had to include two and then cut and paste, and that was an extra step for me."

"One of the issues has been that, as far as I understand, even to view it, the other person needs a Lucidchart account unless you send them a PDF. That's been a bit of an issue because some people in our organization don't have Lucidchart accounts, only certain people have logins. If we just want to collect comments from people, that's been a bit complicated."

"I am not quite sure what different functionalities it provides as well as the difficulties other people are facing. When I have a better understanding of the solution, I will increase my rating of it. No solution is perfect, so I am sure that I will be facing some problems in the future."

"When you want to add text to a connector arrow, I have not figured out how to position the text vertically. It always wants the text to stay horizontal."

"I would like to have more text boxes to write more comments so I can write a small note below a picture. I would like some flexibility."

"It would be nice to have more features that help me visually present information. Since I use it as a canvas, my use case for it is probably very specific. I use it as a way to present information to people visually on a large mind map. So, it would be nice to be able to have more graphical things to clean it up, like a header, banners, or something to help draw attention to certain areas. I would also like more infographic-like features, because I am kind of limited to float chart shapes. This makes the solution a little cumbersome."

"There were some things I wish were a little bit more user-friendly. For instance, when you're putting all the stuff onto a document or PDF, there's a set limit of width and height. It would have been very nice in certain situations to be able to drag people on the far edges and move them back up so that everything fits nicely onto the page."

More Lucidchart cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost."

"The tool is expensive."

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

"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 pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

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

"The solution is expensive."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."

"I pay $95 a year for it. It seems like a reasonable price."

"I was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."

"We signed up for the month-to-month and it charged us all at once for the whole year. I believe we signed up for the $7.99 one. I think that was the price."

"We chose Lucid based on the price comparison between it and draw.io... Lucidchart was about 15 percent cheaper per user... I was surprised to learn that it came with a separate subscription model and was not included in my existing Lucidchart subscription."

"The pricing is very competitive. It is more cost-effective than some competing products, such as Visio."

"Lucidchart's pricing model is not excessive, as compared to similar products. It is pretty much in line with everyone else."

"I have a subscription as an individual user for one year, and it is not expensive."

More Lucidchart pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Architecture Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.

See all answers

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

I do not recall the pricing from about a year and a half ago, but it seems reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

erwin Data Modeler could improve its UI as it still feels old school and not very modern. There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and h...

See all answers

LucidChart vs LucidSpark for brainstorming sessions over Zoom

Hi @Krista Thompson - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating ...

See all answers

Do you recommend Lucidchart?

I definitely recommend Lucidchart. I feel it is one of the top visual collaboration platforms that’s available on the market. Out of all the solutions I have tried, it is by far the best for diagra...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Lucidchart?

The system is a bit clumsy when it comes to stylizing to match corporate imaging styles. In real estate, we need everything to have the same look and feel as our materials. Beyond dropping a logo i...

See all answers

Comparisons

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 39% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 18% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 6% of the time

LeanIX vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

More erwin Data Modeler Competitors

Figma vs Lucidchart

Compared 16% of the time

Visio vs Lucidchart

Compared 13% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Lucidchart

Compared 10% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs Lucidchart

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs Lucidchart

Compared 7% of the time

More Lucidchart Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

September 2025

Download erwin Data Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart

September 2025

Download Lucidchart product report

Also Known As

erwin DM

No data available

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

Our online diagram application makes it easy to sketch and share professional flowchart diagrams. From brainstorming to project management, we support all of your communication needs. That’s why millions of users choose Lucidchart.

Lucid Software

Sample Customers

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Architecture Management

September 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP LeanIX, Sparx Systems, Quest Software and others in Enterprise Architecture Management. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Enterprise Architecture Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.