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LeanIX vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect 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
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (5th)
 

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 Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 11.3%, down from 15.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
LeanIX13.1%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect11.3%
Other75.6%
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…
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly 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."
"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."
"My favorite feature of LeanIX is its ability to induct attribute-driven surveys."
"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 LeanIX's ease of use in general."
"I can develop a report and then do a presentation, or develop a report and some other diagrams and then put them all in one presentation, and from there, I can present things directly, so there is no need to move images."
"For the reporting capabilities, LeanIX provides dashboards for different levels, including CXO dashboards. There are plenty of dashboards for reporting."
"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."
"The solution is easy to use, supports SysML and UML, and is able to connect to MATLAB. This is very important for us."
"Using Sparx Enterprise Architect allowed my customer to detail and make the company's IT strategy visible and accessible to all. The system provided clear roadmaps for IT development and helped to keep up-to-date documentation of systems and processes."
"Scalability is not a problem. You can always increase the footprint of what the thing can do because it's so powerful."
"It's like a repository. So far, we use it only for Information Modelling."
"It is a very flexible product. It can do a lot. It is also a reliable product."
"Ability to keep inventory of reusable blocks, and use in different diagrams with views of various templates."
"It has led some teams to do better code reviews - to be less focussed on coding conventions (syntax) and more focussed on the semantics because of the abstraction level clear design affords."
"Simplified our task at maintaining architecture information and traceability with requirements."
 

Cons

"They could include a combination of LeanIX and some modeling extensions."
"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."
"They should improve the out of the box connectors that they provide. They should see if clients are really ready to adapt them."
"What would make LeanIX better is more variety in terms of reporting, and more flexibility with its data importing feature."
"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."
"LeanIX should improve its support services."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"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."
"Even if there are web-based tools in the Enterprise Architecture tool ecosystem (like Prolaborate), the main modeling application is still a fat client application."
"I would like the system to more "intellectually" build a scheme, place icons, and connect lines on the schemes."
"What should be improved are the integration capabilities of the solution with Bizagi."
"Because its easy to create diagrams one needs to be vigilant on the housekeeping of orphaned fragments - I have written my own scripts to do this, maybe they are available now."
"It would be great if we could decrease the use of different parts of the Toolbox."
"The initial setup of the Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect It's very complicated. It's very difficult to start with the right templates because there are many possibilities. The deployment took approximately two days."
"Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality."
"There used to be that feature in ArchiMate Modeling of Enterprise Architect called inherited relationships. Now it's gone."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"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."
"It’s the best deal in town, by far."
"Use floating licenses strategically."
"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."
"It is very economical and low cost. You have to pay for a one-time license, and it is active forever."
"Pricing and licensing is very attractive, simple, and straightforward."
"It is cheaper than other solutions. Its cost is around $686 per year. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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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
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

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 Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
 

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 LeanIX vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.