Navicat Data Modeler Alternative: Database Design Software Without the Enterprise Edition

Disclosure: I build Schemity, a desktop ERD tool - this post is from our blog and uses it for the examples.

TL;DR: Navicat Data Modeler 5 draws models for free in its Lite edition, but reverse engineering, Import SQL, SQL export and both synchronize directions are Enterprise only: US$749 perpetual or US$379.99 a year. Schemity reads the live database on every license, prices each schema change before it runs, keeps the diagram as JSON in Git, and opens a Navicat .nmodel file with its table positions.

Navicat Data Modeler draws database models in every edition, but only its Enterprise edition can read a database, import or export SQL, or synchronize a model with a database, so the Navicat Data Modeler alternative worth weighing depends on whether you need that round trip. If you need Oracle, MongoDB, or conceptual and Data Vault models, stay with Navicat. If you design the physical schema of a database that already runs, you are paying US$749, or US$379.99 a year, for the part that touches it. Schemity is database design software that reads your live database, shows the impact of every schema change before it runs, and keeps the diagram as a file in Git.

This page compares the two as of 5 November 2026, from Navicat's own product pages, feature matrix, store and online manual for Navicat Data Modeler 5, which Navicat released in September 2026 (sometimes called Navicat Modeler): what each edition can do with a real database, what it costs over three years, how the model stays in step with the database, where the model file lives, and where Navicat is the better choice.

Which Navicat Data Modeler Edition Can Read a Database?

Only Enterprise: the free Lite edition draws models but cannot reverse engineer a database, import or export SQL, or synchronize in either direction.

Navicat Data Modeler comes in two editions, the free Lite and the paid Enterprise (sold at a lower price as a Non-Commercial license, which Navicat restricts to "educational and non-profit use"). The feature matrix splits them like this:

The online manual labels each of the database features "Available only in Enterprise Edition". So Lite is for drawing: you can model a schema in it, but nothing you draw reaches a database, not even as SQL you could copy, and nothing in a database reaches the model.

The same model features also come inside Navicat Premium 18 Enterprise, which its manual marks "Available only in Enterprise Edition", and inside the Enterprise edition of single-database products such as Navicat for MySQL. If your team already owns one of those, you may already have the modeler.

In Schemity, every license connects to the database. Reverse engineering reads PostgreSQL (including Supabase and CockroachDB), MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite (including Cloudflare D1) and Snowflake into a diagram, and Import SQL reads a dump or CREATE TABLE statements. There is no edition to upgrade to.

What Does Navicat Data Modeler Cost in 2026?

Working against a real database costs US$749 perpetual for Enterprise, with one year of maintenance included, or US$37.99 a month, or US$379.99 a year.

Verified on Navicat's plan page and store on 5 November 2026, in US dollars, for one user:

A perpetual license includes a year of maintenance, which Navicat says covers "software upgrades, live chat, technical support and key reset requests." At purchase you can add a second year for US$119.84 or a second and third year for US$179.76. The license "is per user base", a key works on Windows, macOS or Linux, and five or more perpetual licenses earn a volume discount. Navicat's site offers local versions by region, and its store runs promotions, so the price you see may differ; the figures here are the US list prices with no coupon applied.

Over three years with updates throughout, for one engineer:

Two licensing details matter on a locked-down machine. A subscription "contacts our licensing server once per hour", and a perpetual key can be activated offline, but only through a second computer with internet access that visits Navicat's activation page. Navicat also says a perpetual license and a subscription "cannot be used at the same Navicat Data Modeler."

Schemity is $129 once, with a year of updates, an optional $29 a year after that, use on up to three of your machines, and a two-week free trial with every feature. Navicat's own trial is 14 days, and Lite is free for drawing. Schemity's free use after the trial is also design-only, with no time limit, and it still imports SQL, which Lite cannot.

Does Navicat Data Modeler Keep the Model in Sync With the Database?

Yes, in Enterprise, in both directions: it compares the model with a database and writes a deployment script, and it can pull a database's changes back into the model.

Credit to Navicat here, because this is a real feature. Synchronize Model to Database compares a model with a connection, lists the differing objects, and shows two tabs before anything runs: a DDL Comparison of each object's statements on both sides, and a Deployment Script with "the specific scripts that will be executed on the target database". You can reorder the script, and an option to "Continue on error" lets the run carry on past a failing statement. Synchronize Database to Model runs the same compare the other way.

What the wizard shows you is SQL. The manual's page for it says nothing about the rows already in the target tables, and that is where the expensive questions live: how many rows a dropped column takes with it, whether an ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT will fail on data that already breaks it, which views depend on the column, and whether the change rewrites a large table. None of that is in the statement, and the wizard's answer to a statement that fails is an option to carry on past it.

In Schemity, a connected diagram is read again from the database every time you open it, and Refresh re-reads it on demand after a migration ran elsewhere: tables you placed keep their position, dropped ones disappear, and new ones arrive placed clear of the rest. A change you draw becomes a migration SQL diff against the real database, and impact analysis prices it before it runs: the rows a drop would take, the statements that would fail on existing data, the dependent views that would block or break, and the statements that would rewrite or lock a large table. So you see the impact of every change before it runs: nothing is applied until you approve it, and a migration file written by an ORM or an AI agent is analysed the same way without being run.

Where Does a Navicat Model Live?

A current Navicat workspace is one .nmodel archive that Navicat shares through Navicat Cloud or its On-Prem Server, while a Schemity diagram is a file in the repository next to the code it describes.

Navicat's release notes name the .ndm2 file of Data Modeler 3 and 4, a single JSON file. Navicat 18's manual names the newer format: "Workspace files (.nmodel) are stored under the Profiles Location." We opened the one in Schemity's own test suite, saved by Navicat 18: six models in four dialects, 37 tables in all, make a 268 KB tar archive of 188 gzip-compressed JSON files, one per object and named by UUID, plus a small JSON index.

Navicat's answer is its own sharing. A workspace can be saved to Navicat Cloud or to a Navicat On-Prem Server, which can push a notification to each member's copy when a shared file changes. That works, and it keeps the model inside Navicat's services rather than next to the code it describes.

A Schemity diagram is a plain JSON file in a workspace folder you choose. Put the folder in the application repository and the schema design is versioned with the code it describes: the same branch, the same history, blame and revert. Nobody reviews a schema change by reading that JSON, though: colours, positions and sizes change with every edit and would bury the one column that matters. A reviewer opens the pull request's migration file in Schemity's change preview and sees it drawn on their own diagram, with its impact, or opens the updated diagram against a database the migration has not reached yet and sees the same preview there.

How Do You Move a Navicat Model to Schemity?

Open the .nmodel file with Import Navicat on a new diagram's empty canvas, and the chosen diagram's tables arrive with their keys, indexes, check constraints, comments and positions.

If the file holds several diagrams, you pick one; when they span several databases, each is labelled with its own (a single .nmodel can hold a MySQL model next to a PostgreSQL one). Import Navicat reads MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite and SQL Server models, and column types become your diagram's database's own, so a MySQL model can start a PostgreSQL design; checks, defaults and indexes that do not carry over to the new database are counted in the drawer. What Schemity does not draw, the model's views, triggers, functions and sequences, is left out and counted in the drawer, so you know what did not come across.

Two cases it does not cover, stated plainly. Navicat Oracle models are refused by name, because Schemity has no Oracle dialect. And the older .ndm2 files of Data Modeler 3 and 4 use a different layout that the import does not read. For either, export the model to SQL in Navicat (an Enterprise feature) and use Import SQL, or connect Schemity to the database the model describes and read it directly. The same canvas also opens the other model formats Schemity imports: DBML, Visual Paradigm, MySQL Workbench and DbSchema.

How Does AI Work in Navicat Data Modeler and in Schemity?

Navicat runs an AI assistant inside the modeler on a provider key you supply, in Enterprise only; Schemity runs no model and gives the agent you already use a local MCP server instead.

Navicat Data Modeler 5 can design tables, optimize them, fix views and fill comments with AI. Its manual says the assistant "relies on external AI providers", so you bring an account and an API key: OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek and others, or a local model through Ollama or LM Studio. With Ollama or LM Studio the model runs locally, which is a fair answer to the privacy question.

Schemity takes the other route. It is a local database MCP server with 18 tools for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, OpenCode or any MCP host: the agent can read the schema, analyse a migration file it has written, and propose changes that land on your diagram as unsaved edits for you to review. The agent never gets the database credentials, and nothing it does writes to a database.

Navicat Data Modeler vs Schemity

Navicat Data Modeler is broad data modeling software whose database round trip starts at the US$749 Enterprise edition, and Schemity is database design software that reads the database and previews each schema change against it, for $129 once.

Where Navicat Data Modeler Wins

Navicat Data Modeler is the better choice when you model Oracle, MongoDB or another database Schemity does not connect to, when you need conceptual, logical, dimensional or Data Vault models, or when your team already shares models through Navicat.

More databases. Navicat models MongoDB, Oracle, OceanBase, TiDB and several more alongside the relational databases Schemity covers. Schemity connects to PostgreSQL (and Supabase and CockroachDB), MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite (and Cloudflare D1, read over its HTTP API with an account ID and API token) and Snowflake and goes deep on them; it will not follow you to MongoDB or Oracle.

More model levels. Navicat keeps conceptual, logical and physical models, converts between them, adds a hybrid model, and supports dimensional and Data Vault 2.0 methods. Schemity models the physical schema only, the one the database actually runs.

Governance features. Data Modeler 5 added naming standards and a glossary you can load from CSV, plus bulk schema editing. Schemity has schema lint for the schema itself, but no naming-standards dictionary.

More notations. IDEF1X and UML are a setting per diagram in Navicat. Schemity draws crow's foot.

A free edition for a small team. Lite is free for up to five users per organization, with Navicat's collaboration projects. Schemity's free use after the trial is design-only.

Already in the family. If your team owns Navicat Premium Enterprise, the modeler is already in your license.

If the physical schema is the job and the database already exists, compare the other alternatives too: the DbSchema alternative, for a desktop database IDE that covers even more engines, the MySQL Workbench alternative for MySQL shops, and the Visual Paradigm alternative for a modeling suite with a similar edition split.