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LeanIX vs SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Enterprise Architecture...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of LeanIX is 13.1%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
LeanIX13.1%
SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer1.3%
Other85.6%
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…
Artur Chyziewicz - PeerSpot reviewer
Great training available with traceability a key feature
I use this solution to model enterprise software architecture. We are customers of SAP and an educational organization in Poland.  Traceability is a fantastic feature.  They should upgrade the algorithm. The solution currently has an old algorithm and there are now free tools on the market that…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."
"One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool."
"For the reporting capabilities, LeanIX provides dashboards for different levels, including CXO dashboards. There are plenty of dashboards for reporting."
"The usability is very high. It almost looks like a Facebook for Enterprise architecture, it's pretty nice. It's HTML5 based. The repository is very easy. It has 10 different ways of sorting the objects you have in your architecture repository. Maintaining new data or to add data to your repository is very easy."
"My favorite feature of LeanIX is its ability to induct attribute-driven surveys."
"The most valuable feature would be application portfolio management, which is where they came from, but over time, they have got artificial intelligence. They built up a very good repository. If I identify a system by name, from historical information, oftentimes, they can tell me that this is deployed with this number of CPUs and they can give me a really good profile of the application for me to put it into a change management database with very little effort."
"Traceability is a fantastic feature."
 

Cons

"They should improve the out of the box connectors that they provide. They should see if clients are really ready to adapt them."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"The solution needs to incorporate a data patch tool that moves within and irons data."
"They could include a combination of LeanIX and some modeling extensions."
"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."
"The solution’s API integration needs to improve. I would like to see a digital screen watch feature also in the solution."
"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."
"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 algorithm is outdated and should be upgraded."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
"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."
"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."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

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 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...
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Also Known As

No data available
SAP EA Designer
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bosch Rexroth, NSW Department of Education, Yamaha Motor Corporation, Tetra Pak, Deutsche Bahn, Flynn, SKF AB, NTT Group, Travis Perkins, SEEK, Haworth, Asahi Beverages, MediaMarktSaturn, KAO USA, Ørsted, The Mark Anthony Group of Companies, AmTrust, Banco Itaú Unibanco, SHL Medical,...
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Find out what your peers are saying about SAP LeanIX, Sparx Systems, Quest Software and others in Enterprise Architecture Management. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.