Northwise

Architecture practice, not folklore.

Northwise helps architecture teams document, govern, and decide — with the structure of TOGAF, the depth of ArchiMate, and the speed of a tool that actually gets used.

From €120/architect/month · Reader access free for everyone · Built in the EU

[Screenshot: Plumbline assessment dashboard]
Plumbline — architecture readiness assessment with section scores

The three things every architecture practice forgets

Standards become wallpaper.

Principles published in a Confluence space that nobody reads. The mandate is there. The behaviour change isn't.

Decisions get rerouted by chance.

No clear path from a team's question to an architecture answer. The right person finds out three months later, in prod.

Drift happens silently.

What's running in code never quite matches what's documented. The gap widens until an audit surfaces it.

What Northwise does about it

Plumbline — automated governance assessments

Plumbline runs structured assessments against your architecture principles and produces a readiness score by section. When scores dip, the AI-author drafts principle suggestions into an inbox you review, accept, or reject. Governance that happens, not governance that's promised.

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[Screenshot: Plumbline assessment results page]
Assessment results with section-by-section readiness scoring

Decision Matrix — every decision routed, recorded, audited

A short questionnaire determines whether a change needs no review, a lightweight async sign-off, or a full architecture board decision. Routing follows your responsibility matrix. The full cycle — submit, claim, decide, revise — is tracked end-to-end.

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[Screenshot: Decision matrix outcome page]
Decision matrix outcome with review type determination

Git Tech Discovery — catalogue from code, not from rumours

Connect GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps. Northwise scans dependency manifests, populates your technology catalogue with production dependencies, and automatically raises Findings when Hold or Banned technologies appear in mapped applications.

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[Screenshot: Git tech discovery drift dashboard]
Drift dashboard showing banned-technology findings across the estate

Built for how architecture practice actually works

ArchiMate + TOGAF, native.

First-class metamodel with the full element and relationship vocabulary. 15 TOGAF deliverable types. Your artefacts carry structure, not just labels.

Read access is free for everyone.

No per-viewer fees. The whole organisation can see what architecture decides. Governance is only useful if people can read the output.

EU-built, EU-hosted, GDPR-clean.

Hosted on Scaleway and Hetzner datacentres in the Netherlands and Germany. No data leaves the EU. No exceptions.

Bring your own LLM key.

Per-tenant Anthropic configuration for AI-author features. You control the model, you control the spend. No bundled AI cost surprises.

How we compare

The EU-native mid-market alternative to incumbent EA suite vendors. No per-viewer fees, no US-hosted data, no "contact for pricing" theatre.

NorthwiseEnterprise EA toolsConfluence + diagrams
Per-user pricing€100–120 / architect€200–400 / seatVaries by licence
EU sovereigntyHetzner / ScalewayVaries (often US)Tenant-dependent
Reader access freeConfluence seat required
Decision routing built-inEnterprise tier only
Code-to-catalogue automationGit scanningPartial (some tools)
AI-authored governanceBring your LLM keyProprietary AI add-on

Pricing at a glance

No per-viewer fees. No "contact for pricing" theatre. Real numbers, up front.

Free

Solo architects
€0
forever
Start free

Team

Growing teams
€95
per architect / month
Start free trial

Business

Mature practices
€125
per architect / month
Start 14-day trial

Enterprise

Large orgs
Custom
negotiated annually
Talk to sales

See full pricing details →

Ready to make architecture decisions stick?