Comparison
MapleSpire or Structurizr: which one scales to enterprise governance?
Structurizr and MapleSpire both build on the C4 model and on a real model rather than drawings. They differ on a question that matters a great deal in a large organization: where shared metadata lives, and who can keep it current.
Structurizr shines when architecture is code, written and reviewed in Git by engineering teams. MapleSpire targets a governed repository: one set of tag and technology catalogs for the whole organization, editable visually by everyone who has the right to.
Two modelling philosophies
Structurizr is a models-as-code tool: architecture is written in a text DSL, versioned in Git and pushed to a server that renders the diagrams. Its documentation recommends one workspace per software system, owned by the team that builds it.
MapleSpire is a shared visual model: objects, relationships and views live in a database, are edited together in real time and stay available offline. Tag and technology catalogs are organization-level entities, not text copied into every file.
Neither approach is better in the abstract. The difference shows when the number of teams, systems and contributors grows.
Assigning metadata: tags, technologies, versions, groups
| Metadata | Structurizr | MapleSpire |
|---|---|---|
| Tags | Free text per element (tags "A,B"); styles bound to the tag text | Tags and tag groups defined once for the organization, referenced by ID |
| Renaming or merging a tag | Find-and-replace in every workspace | Rename, recolor, merge or archive: applied everywhere, across every landscape |
| Technologies | Free text (technology "Java") | Managed catalog: aliases, light and dark icons, documentation links |
| Technology lifecycle | Not modelled | Active, deprecated, retired or merged; new entries go through approval |
| Version in use | Add it yourself in text or properties | Version recorded on every technology usage |
| Groups and domains | Visual groups declared in the DSL | Groups that can carry tags and technologies; hierarchical domains |
| Custom properties | properties and perspectives (free key-value pairs) | Planned in the model, not yet editable in the interface |
In Structurizr, you describe an element with the tags, technology, properties and perspectives keywords. They are free-form strings, typed element by element. Archetypes provide defaults and styles hook onto tags, but there is no central registry defining what a valid tag or technology is.
In practice, “PostgreSQL”, “Postgres” and “postgresql 16” can coexist across workspaces. Renaming a tag means a find-and-replace across every repository involved, and nothing stops anyone from using a technology the organization has retired.
In MapleSpire, an object does not store a tag’s text: it stores a reference to a tag defined once for the organization. Technologies come from a managed catalog with aliases, icons and a lifecycle.
What about owners?
Ownership — which team answers for an element — is often the first metadata a governance process asks for. In Structurizr, it goes into a free property such as an owner key, with no link to a team directory.
MapleSpire already manages teams for access control, and its model plans for assigning owning teams to objects. That assignment is not exposed in the interface yet: we would rather say so plainly than promise it.
Update once, for everyone
For an enterprise view, Structurizr suggests a three-step approach: gather software systems into a DSL catalog shared by URL, have each team workspace extend that catalog, then generate an overall landscape. An administrator produces that landscape by pulling every workspace, running the generator and pushing the result. It is a copy: it must be regenerated to reflect later changes.
In MapleSpire, tags and technologies live in the organization’s database. A change made in the admin console is visible immediately in every landscape, with no publishing step. Within a landscape, each object exists once and every diagram references it.
Two caveats, for accuracy. In MapleSpire, the detailed model is still scoped to each landscape; only the catalogs are shared across the organization. And each technology usage keeps the catalog revision it was recorded with, so a catalog change never silently rewrites history.
Access control and change review
The open-source core of Structurizr server has no authentication or role-based access: workspaces are public. Roles, SAML, LDAP and the admin API come with the licensed prebuilt binaries. Its great strength lies elsewhere: because the model is code, every change can go through a pull request, a review and automated validation in CI.
MapleSpire’s AGPL-3.0 code includes organization roles, teams with read or write grants per landscape, OIDC single sign-on with Google or Microsoft, and an audit log of administrative actions. Changes are prepared in drafts, with a change list and a merge that detects conflicts.
Current limit: MapleSpire drafts do not yet have a formal approval step before merge. If your governance requires mandatory review of every change, Structurizr’s pull-request flow is stricter today.
Which one scales better?
| Criterion | Structurizr | MapleSpire |
|---|---|---|
| Consistent vocabulary across teams | Depends on discipline and reviews | Enforced by single catalogs |
| Non-developer contributors | Must learn the DSL and Git | Visual, multi-user, real-time editing |
| Up-to-date big picture | Landscape regenerated on demand | Live shared catalogs; detailed model per landscape |
| Mandatory change review | Pull requests and CI | Drafts and merge, no formal approval yet |
| Access control and SSO | Licensed binaries | Included in the open-source code |
| High availability | Depends on chosen storage and license | Sync runs as a single instance for now |
If your challenge is getting the whole organization to speak the same language — the same tags, technologies and versions — and bringing in architects, product leads and teams who do not live in Git, MapleSpire scales better for governance.
If your architecture is already managed as code, your contributors are developers and governance runs through pull-request review, Structurizr remains an excellent choice.
Migrating, or running both
MapleSpire imports a Structurizr DSL workspace and generates the matching C4 diagrams. It also exports to Structurizr DSL, Mermaid, JSON, CSV, SVG, PNG and Markdown, so you can try MapleSpire on an existing workspace without giving up your files.
Sources
Statements about Structurizr are based on its official documentation, consulted on October 12, 2026. The MapleSpire features described here are those in the published code.