No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

SAP PowerDesigner vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

SAP PowerDesigner
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Metadata Management (6th)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of SAP PowerDesigner is 8.6%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 8.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP PowerDesigner8.6%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect8.6%
Other82.8%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

HemantKUMAR6 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect at Sopra Steria
Customer support has delayed successful upgrade to supported version
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 latest version. I tried to upgrade to a trial version before purchasing a new license. During that process, I had some technical issues. When trying to go from 12.5 to 16.5, I could migrate but faced technical challenges. When I approached customer support, they informed me that even 16.5 is not supported. They stated I would need to go to 16.7 before they could look at my issue. They didn't spend any time on the issue because according to them, 16.5 is not supported. Until I get 16.7 and complete the migration, I'm not getting any help from them. I was not too happy with the customer support. This was my only interaction with customer support, and I haven't received any resolution to my issue. It can be rated as low as zero because that's the only time I approached them. I cannot even say zero out of ten because I approached only once. Perhaps they are correct that they don't support 16.5, so they don't want to spend any time on that.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Architect at Deepview S.r.o.
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

"If you have the money for it, buy it."
"Apart from some improvements needed to integrate better with open source systems, SAP PowerDesigner is an excellent tool."
"It can automate many routine tasks and save human resources to focus on real problems."
"I would highly recommend this product to be used in each and every application system where you have to design a relational database."
"The initial setup was very easy."
"The most valuable feature of SAP PowerDesigner is the testing of the models, it has the best function. Reverse engineering is very helpful too."
"What I appreciate best about SAP PowerDesigner is that it is a very detailed and comprehensive tool."
"This product is very useful when starting a new project."
"Scalability is not a problem; you can always increase the footprint of what the thing can do because it is so powerful."
"It provides good utilization and it's a convenient tool for building exact architectural work."
"It is an EA tool that is approved by Open Group. It is in the tool register of Open Group."
"A feature I like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is its ease of use."
"Automated reporting saves me a kazillion hours a week of cutting, pasting and editing."
"I would definitively recommend the solution to any IT department as it's very cheap and very powerful."
"From an architectural point of view it is easy to define the application landscape and maintain the relationships between components, which helps when the current state application architecture is considered especially by architects new to an organisation and also assists the embedded architects to design the future state architecture more effectively."
"In this way, the quality of the documentation has improved."
 

Cons

"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."
"SAP PowerDesigner could improve by making the repository easier to understand. It is difficult to understand how the repository works because when I used logical models as part of the team, we wanted to use them together and update the older versions of the data model version but it was confusing. The repository needs to be explained."
"The solution is very, very expensive. It would be ideal if it was a more affordable product."
"Pricing for small consultancies needs improvement. They sustain prices to competing tools. The competing tools tend to do special offers. PowerDesigner SAP doesn't pay much attention to the pricing of it and there are no special offers."
"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."
"Based on my experience with SAP PowerDesigner, I'd like to see improvements in the DMM feature."
"SAP PowerDesigner is not a product that's really actively developed anymore in the sense that the user interface is outdated."
"It took me a while to figure out how to use the report generation features effectively. So, it would be really nice if they had a way to make that a little bit more interactive and a little bit more straightforward."
"It can be improved in the area of shared documentation. The idea is that the architecture tool can call back to an enterprise asset, pull that information, and link that as a sub-artifact."
"I would like the system to more "intellectually" build a scheme, place icons, and connect lines on the schemes."
"One room for improvement in Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is that it's not very friendly. Another room for improvement in the tool is that it doesn't enable you to import the metadata from a database very easily, so reverse engineering of a database was very difficult. Its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement."
"The product needs better tools for defining report templates."
"I think the solution could be improved visually. It's not as visually appealing as other solutions."
"It would be nice to have it supported on the Linux operating system."
"The Business Process Modeling or BPM feature can be improved to make it more interactive and user friendly because it is a tool for technical people. My current use is only for business process modeling notation and putting in the icons etc. You need to take them in as a class, which makes things very complex. Because of this complexity, it is not an easy-to-handle solution. Enterprise Architect is not very good for mockups. We cannot create user screens and other similar kinds of stuff, which is bad. For these things, we prefer to use Axure RP and other similar solutions. They should either remove this feature from this product or provide some kind of connectivity with Axure RP so that people can do better mockups of screens and import them. They need to augment and strengthen the BPM feature, which is the main feature. They need to put in some elements like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They should look into such features because these things are coming up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is low."
"I bought the software outright and do not pay a licensing fee."
"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."
"I would like SAP to prove free licenses to professionals that are using the solution. The free version is limited."
"The ROI has been 43%."
"SAP PowerDesigner is cheaper than eriwin."
"The price of the solution is too expensive. When we asked for certain licenses in different countries it was unattainable."
"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"Pricing and licensing are suitable even for small companies."
"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."
"The licence has a costly upfront fee which gets you access. You have to pay an annual maintenance fee, which is less."
"There is a license for this solution. When comparing this solution to others it is priced well."
"The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Architecture Management solutions are best for your needs.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SAP PowerDesigner?
Synchronization is vital since I experience multiple problems, such as mismatched models and manual DDL handling. Improving the synchronization between models and databases can enhance integration ...
What is your primary use case for SAP PowerDesigner?
I use SAP PowerDesigner for data modeling, which greatly enhances the clarity of my data management processes. I manage data across multiple databases, including cloud databases, Teradata, and Orac...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
We are mostly using the ArchiMate language to describe enterprise or solution architecture, along with a bit of use cases. We are producing quite large models, with over 10,000 elements and relatio...
 

Also Known As

Sybase PowerDesigner
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Medtronic, Cirque du Soleil, Antarc, B&G Manufacturing, EarlySense, eBay, Ferrero, James Austin Company, Lenovo, Sagem, RAK Ceramics, Vodafone
OmniLink
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP PowerDesigner vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.