Astah Professional vs Eraser

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.

Eraser is a diagramming tool for technical teams that generates diagrams from prompts, code, files, and private Git repositories. It supports flow charts, entity-relationship diagrams, cloud architecture diagrams, sequence diagrams, and BPMN diagrams. Generated diagrams can be adjusted with diagram-as-code or AI edits, and reference libraries can align output with company building blocks. Collaboration includes real-time work, comments, tagging, and unlimited free guests. The service lists GitHub, Notion, Confluence, and a VS Code extension, as well as live diagram embeds and Git-powered updates. The free plan includes 3 files, 3 AI diagrams, and 7-day version history. Starter costs $15 a month when billed annually, or $20 monthly; it adds unlimited files, private files, and API calls. The diagram API is for paid users, while MCP operations are subject to plan AI-credit limits. Eraser says it is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, performs annual penetration testing, and does not train AI models on customer content. Enterprise deployment options include multi-tenant, single-tenant, and self-hosted setups.