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LeanIX vs SAP PowerDesigner comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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 PowerDesigner
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of LeanIX is 15.3%, up from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 8.8%, up from 8.4% 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…
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Effective in terms of validating everything, but sometimes they don't allow us some flexibility and GUI could improve
I would recommend SAP PowerDesigner to others for data architecture management. It provides all the functionalities in terms of data modeling, so it's also a good tool for that. I see trends in terms of data classification, but I don't see this tool with the intelligence to do that automatically. So, like, with artificial intelligence. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because there are too many validations. Also, I found some gaps in terms of relationships; they didn't appear when you do reverse engineering. Also, this tool lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements and maybe also to incorporate some artificial intelligence in providing descriptions for each data element included in the solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources."
"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and the user experience. It's easy to map the fact sheets."
"For the reporting capabilities, LeanIX provides dashboards for different levels, including CXO dashboards. There are plenty of dashboards for reporting."
"One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool."
"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."
"I like the tool’s integration and maps."
"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it's built very well, easy to use, and simple to describe freely what is needed in logical and physical data models."
"I do a data-centric design, so for me, the data analysis and design tools are the most valuable features."
"It's a great tool for documentation."
"It can automate many routine tasks and save human resources to focus on real problems."
"Provides the flexibility to create logical and conceptual data models."
"I like the property sheet capability and the user-defined attributes that you can set up."
"The physical database model is definitely the most valuable feature because it describes normalization exactly the way you understand the data, and it deploys it perfectly with open source systems."
"It's a stable system. It never crashes."
 

Cons

"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"Does a poor job of being able to allocate detailed costings to components within the network."
"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"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."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"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."
"This product does not have a good BPMN Modeler."
"There are some minor things that could be easier. We're writing up procedures to bring all the modeling back into one group as this reduces delays in production."
"There are many areas of this solution that needs to be changed."
"The solution itself does not need to be improved. However, they could add support for different languages."
"This product lacks artificial intelligence that should be very good in terms of automatically identifying the classification of elements."
"Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature."
"Technical support needs improvement."
"You have the possibility to complete a connection for abbreviations if you are creating columns or names of the tables. In the Citrix environment, this has been lagging to the point where the PowerDesigner was not usable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee."
"When you purchase the license for SAP PowerDesigner, you have to buy one year of support. The tool is worth the money."
"The pricing varies based on functionality and users."
"PowerDesigner is not the cheapest solution on the market, so make sure that you are using it to its full potential."
"I would like SAP to prove free licenses to professionals that are using the solution. The free version is limited."
"Regarding costs, SAP PowerDesigner is pricey, as I've heard from my team manager, which is why the company has been thinking of bringing another solution on board."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"The ROI has been 43%."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
What do you like most about SAP PowerDesigner?
It allows us to have proper documentation in terms of the databases.
What needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature. Even if I have an ETL tool, I'd like the DMM options to directly connect to ETL tool repositories lik...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
Find out what your peers are saying about LeanIX vs. SAP PowerDesigner and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.