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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
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Enterprise Architecture...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 SAP Enterprise Architecture Designer is 0.9%, up from 0.8% 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…
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

"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."
"I like the tool’s integration and maps."
"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."
"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."
"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."
"Among the most valuable features are the easy-to-use interface and the ability to get quick results... Many tools that I have seen are great for technical people and for giving technical and business information as well, but they're not as friendly and easy as LeanIX... It works well for both technical and business users. It provides a good combination, enabling you to quickly put valuable information in for both technical and non-technical people and derive results."
"The most valuable features are the clean user interface and the fact sheet feature in Application Portfolio Management. The tool integrates well with ServiceNow, which is the usual CMDB platform."
"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

"The solution’s API integration needs to improve. I would like to see a digital screen watch feature also in the solution."
"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."
"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"Another area for improvement is that when you're starting to look into more advanced information, using the solution's APIs and its customizations, documentation for that specific aspect is not very good. There is not too much support built into the offering for that aspect, for a developer."
"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."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"One of the challenges that I've found, even with working with Subway, was that being able to build that out into a detailed solution for a developer or for new process design was one of the challenges, just making that leap."
"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."
"The algorithm is outdated and should be upgraded."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
"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."
"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."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
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Find out what your peers are saying about SAP LeanIX, Sparx Systems, erwin by Quest and others in Enterprise Architecture Management. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.