Index › Products › Essential Project · October 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Essential Project

7Judge labels

4First choices

0Negative labels

7 / 14Models named it

1Category

October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

4 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Essential Project was named 4 times in EA tools, where SAP LeanIX led with 25%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business14 of 126

under the label threshold

Mid-market6 of 113

under the label threshold

Enterprisenot named

No model named it for this buyer.

In ea tools · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Essential Project for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Enterprise architecture tools	IT operations and endpoint	5%	6 of 113	0%	4	under 10 labels · led by SAP LeanIX at 25%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Essential Project yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Essential Project across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

ShowHide

Model	First choice	Alternative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	1
Kimi K2	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained5 labels4

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative0 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative7 labels in all, every segment counted; 4 of the 4 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“The best enterprise architecture tool for a company with a limited budget is Essential Project (formerly Essential Architecture Manager), an open-source EA tool that provides a comprehensive feature set for zero cost.” Llama 4 Maverick · EA tools · budget prompt · first choice

“I'd recommend starting with Essential Project since it's completely free and open-source” MiniMax M2.5 · EA tools · budget prompt · first choice

“Verdict: The most comprehensive free option.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · EA tools · budget prompt · first choice

“if you want a managed cloud repository with governance features” GLM 4.7 FlashX · EA tools · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Essential Project, over the 7 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Essential Project was named but was not.

ShowHide

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect6 of 71Not among the top eight

Archi3 of 71Not among the top eight

Ardoq2 of 71Not among the top eight

LeanIX2 of 71Not among the top eight

Bizzdesign Horizzon2 of 70Not among the top eight

MEGA HOPEX2 of 70Not among the top eight

Albumi1 of 70Not among the top eight

Archipulse1 of 70Not among the top eight

Lucidscale1 of 70Not among the top eight

Microsoft Visio1 of 70Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Essential Project. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 7 of the 7 answers that named Essential Project and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

erstudio.com6

superblocks.com5

thectoclub.com5

urbahive.com5

itechguides.com4

us.fitgap.com3

archiq.app2

ardoq.com2

capstera.com2

ciopages.com2

No domain is on file for Essential Project, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

erstudio.com/blog/enterprise-architecture-tools6

superblocks.com/blog/enterprise-architecture-tools5

thectoclub.com/tools/best-enterprise-architecture-software5

urbahive.com/en/blog/free-budget-enterprise-architecture-tools-20265

itechguides.com/best/enterprise-architecture-software3

capstera.com/knowledge-hub/articles/enterprise-architecture-tools-guide2

ciopages.com/buyer-guides/enterprise-architecture-tool2

gartner.com/reviews/market/enterprise-architecture-tools2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Essential Project

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Essential Project; a claim can dispute any of them.

Essential Project (Essential Cloud) 1Essential Project (by Essential Architecture Solutions) 1

Follow Essential Project

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Essential Project's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Essential Project, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Essential Project by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Essential Project is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Essential Project, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.