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SAP Information Steward vs SAP PowerDesigner comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

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

SAP Information Steward
Ranking in Metadata Management
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (15th)
SAP PowerDesigner
Ranking in Metadata Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Metadata Management category, the mindshare of SAP Information Steward is 2.8%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 2.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Metadata Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP PowerDesigner2.7%
SAP Information Steward2.8%
Other94.5%
Metadata Management
 

Featured Reviews

FranciscoSantos - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Pixel Studio PTY
Provides accurate data that is validated against a personalized reference tool
For most SAP customers, Information Steward is enough because it is able to build quality data rules to detect issues in the source systems like SAP HANA, Business Warehouse, or other systems. A business user can first organize their data into several data domains. For example, procurement, human resources, and logistics setup. The domains can build data quality dimensions where you can describe the kind of rule that you are going to use. The user then can immediately see if something is wrong with their data using traffic lights. Another great feature of SAP Information Steward is the accuracy that the content is followed by validating against the reference tool. With the solution, you are creating data quality dimensions. Within these dimensions, you are creating business data quality rules that are looking for specific fields. From these rules, you can create a scorecard. The scorecard will highlight the percentage of good data and ensure the user can feel confident that the data is accurate within predetermined limits. SAP tables have field names that are very cryptic, making them hard to understand the meaning of the fields. Metapedia helps describe these fields in business terms.
Kopparapu Venkatesh Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Data modeling tool improves data management and decision-making efficiency
The lineage analysis helps my organization understand data dependencies at an enterprise level. As a SAP PowerDesigner developer, I monitor data across the organization, creating data models that reflect not just one data warehouse but comprehensive organizational information. If you have a small company, lineage helps track employee data across different areas such as finance and HR. Data governance prevents duplicate records, so when tracking employee details, SAP PowerDesigner highlights where data exists in various areas, helping ensure we only use the appropriate sources. This functionality allows us to assess the impact of data deletions effectively. I utilize the reverse engineering capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner. Reverse engineering is helpful, especially since I have colleagues new to SAP PowerDesigner. They often do not know which columns are available where. In SAP PowerDesigner, we can reverse engineer existing data from its source and identify errors in production. For instance, by using Ali's example, if an error arises, I can trace it back to the table and environment it originated from using the reverse engineering feature. The best features of SAP PowerDesigner, from my perspective, are its ability to keep the connectivity between the source database and the new system, data redundancy and availability, and impact analysis. The first feature acts as a bridge between systems. The second allows us to see what data is already available and what new data can be brought in. The third, impact analysis, helps determine how many tables will be affected if a specific table is deleted. This critical point allows us to capture how much data will be lost if any table is removed. Currently, these features shape my daily work. SAP PowerDesigner primarily benefits business management units by offering three types of data modeling structures: conceptual, logical, and physical models. The conceptual model communicates high-level insights to top executives, while logical and physical models address complex queries faced by developers in analytics. SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems. The tool enables mapping from end to end, making my work faster and more efficient than using other ER data modeling solutions. The interface allows easy creation of data models and searching for existing data, ensuring I can complete my tasks significantly quicker. The importance of SAP PowerDesigner's collaboration capabilities lies in fostering a unified data management approach. It acts as a unified tool, preventing the duplication of existing data in analytical processes, thus saving both effort and storage costs, which is essential for effective data management. We utilize collaboration capabilities in SAP PowerDesigner with various source systems such as PG admin, Postgres, Oracle, and Snowflake. Recently, we have added Snowflake for cloud data modeling and POC work, streamlining the collaboration process across different systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The scorecard will highlight the percentage of good data and ensure the user can feel confident that the data is accurate within predetermined limits."
"Setup is straightforward."
"Data insight is the most valuable feature."
"Initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable features are data quality insight, metadata management, and metadata dictionary."
"The Data Cleansing and the scorecard dashboard are very valuable. Additionally, the financial aspect of SAP Information Steward is very good. When a rule is incorrect then it will show how much is it costing the business. These features are very valuable."
"Ability to collect information, monitor user access and to plan storage capacity."
"The solution is very fast."
"It's a stable system. It never crashes."
"The most valuable features of SAP PowerDesigner are the creation the flow charts and folders. It is a powerful tool."
"Provides the flexibility to create logical and conceptual data models."
"SAP PowerDesigner enhances the clarity of our data management significantly, as around 80% of data can be searched quickly and maintained in our SAP systems."
"The feature I found valuable in SAP PowerDesigner is extraction. I also like that my company hasn't faced any issues because of the clear documentation about SAP PowerDesigner."
"The most useful feature has been the detailed possibility to model almost anything regarding physical databases."
"SAP PowerDesigner is fairly stable."
"The solution is a very pragmatic tool. It's quite easy to use."
 

Cons

"The support team is not very responsive."
"The solution could improve by incorporating other applications, such as Power BI to show more visualization. More interaction with other solutions would be a good benefit."
"The user experience of metapedia could be improved."
"We'd like to see some manipulation techniques included in SAP Information Steward."
"Needs to be more powerful on rules."
"Performance could be improved."
"A problem with the solution is that it does not allow us to review the results of Information Stewards for other analogies."
"SAP Information Steward could be improved by offering a cloud version of the product."
"They didn't spend any time on the issue because according to them, 16.5 is not supported."
"The solution is very, very expensive. It would be ideal if it was a more affordable product."
"It would be helpful if there were glossary, catalog and governance tools. It would help make it a true end-to-end product."
"Not very intuitive or user-friendly."
"It also has a web portal feature, which is much more convenient for giving people access to look at entity-relationship diagrams, but that web portal is unstable and does not work. It freezes up all the time."
"In terms of improvement, the pricing is a bit high."
"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."
"One disadvantage of SAP PowerDesigner is that you cannot reverse engineer the ALTER statements, so that's an enhancement or area for improvement I'm looking forward to seeing from the SAP team in the future. That should directly reflect on the physical data models my company builds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SAP Information Steward is an expensive solution compared to others."
"A bit pricey, and better tools are available for a lower price."
"I do not know if there were additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"Smaller-sized organizations may not be able to invest in SAP Information Steward because of the cost."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"PowerDesigner is not the cheapest solution on the market, so make sure that you are using it to its full potential."
"The ROI has been 43%."
"I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee."
"The price of the solution is too expensive. When we asked for certain licenses in different countries it was unattainable."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Government
18%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
It was a long time back when my company purchased it, but I am now participating in upgrading it to the latest version. I found customer support to be tedious during the upgrade process to the late...
 

Also Known As

Information Steward, SAP Data Insight
Sybase PowerDesigner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Water, Graphic Packaging International, OSRAM Licht AG, Maxim Integrated
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 SAP Information Steward vs. SAP PowerDesigner and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.