Astah Professional vs EdrawMax

Astah Professional is a desktop modeling tool for visualizing software design with diagrams and code-related models. It supports UML diagrams, ERD, data flow, flowchart, requirement, CRUD, and mind map diagrams. ER diagrams can be created manually or generated from imported database tables, with SQL export and reverse engineering. Modeling features include automatic layout, traceability maps, project comparison and merging, map view, and state-transition paths and tables. Astah can reverse engineer Java, C#, and C++ and generate code for PHP, SQL, and other languages. Team features cover file locking, file merging, model comparison, and read-only project references; real-time collaboration is not available. Its API and Script Editor can retrieve model information and create or modify diagrams and models. Plug-ins listed include Mermaid, Microsoft Office, Redmine, and Miro. AI Chat Copilot requires an external provider API key or endpoint. Supported platforms listed for Professional 12.0 include Windows 11 x64, macOS 13+ arm64, Ubuntu 24.04, and Rocky Linux 9.6.

EdrawMax is diagramming software for creating, importing, and exporting a wide range of diagrams. Its online edition offers more than 210 types, including flowcharts, circuit diagrams, floor plans, UML, and network diagrams. The product advertises 20,000+ free templates and 26,000+ symbols, plus AI tools for diagramming, presentations, drawing, symbols, analysis, copywriting, OCR, and stickers. It supports Visio, SVG, and CAD imports and exports to PNG, JPG, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SVG, and Visio. EdrawMax is available on Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and the web. The browser edition processes files on its servers, while the desktop edition processes documents locally. The free plan includes 500 AI tokens and 100M cloud storage, but limits shapes and document pages and adds a watermark to exports. Basic is listed at $5.90 per month billed annually; Unlimited is listed at $11.90 per month billed annually. The pricing note lists a 7-day trial. Premium users can save and open files directly with Google Drive and Dropbox.