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Atlassian ALM vs TFS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Atlassian ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 2.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 4.5%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TFS4.5%
Atlassian ALM2.4%
Other93.1%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

BRIANJOHNSON2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independant Consultant at B&H Designs Ltd
Long-term testing workflows have improved integration of test planning and defect tracking
The deployment depends on whether you are deploying it on your computer or across the program. Cloud-based system deployment takes some time, as it depends on your rights to your computer. I would rate the deployment as a seven on a scale of one to ten. It took a couple of hours to get it right. The IT department deploys it.
PF
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
Simplified task creation enhances seamless development workflow
We use TFS for our Agile board to handle our sprints, epics, stories, and tasks, tracking how work is progressing. It is also a repository for managing code changes TFS integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio and Azure Cloud, facilitating continuous integration and continuous deployment, which…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"The Atlassian ALM suite consists at least of JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket and HipChat - just the tools you need for organizing your teams in a very efficient way."
"If you can spend the little effort to configure Jira to support your more complex requirements management, then you can concentrate everything in one tool."
"The interface between the repository and test plan stands out as valuable, and I appreciate building the tests and scenarios in Test Lab and the ability to link defects throughout the system, which Atlassian ALM does better than any other testing products."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite, and we have good integration with work management and software build automation (Bamboo), which is the major strength from this provider."
"As a general purpose tool, JIRA and Confluence are still ahead of the competition."
"In Bitbucket, the reviews are pretty good."
"The interface is good with TFS."
"TFS’s test management capability without the expensive licensing has large gaps. Users will be unable to access performance testing and coded UI testing capabilities."
"TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment."
"TFS can support multiple code repositories (example: Git, TFS, CVS, etc.) via plugins, which is really a nice feature."
"TFS is a good product and you can continue working with it."
"You get a managed system where you can manage your development tasks easily, and you don't need to keep your own bookkeeping for tasks and backup items."
"Some of the valuable features are version control and the ability to create different collections in terms of segregating the authorization for teams who connect to small projects."
"TFS sits at the core of our entire software delivery strategy."
 

Cons

"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"The solution is stable but at times, the performance is poor. It takes time to load and the response time is not up to the mark."
"However, it is not really scalable, so if you want to use it for anything larger or plan to use it for product portfolios, then it starts to be problematic."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"For project management, the scheduling of the project tasks should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid using the Atlassian Portfolio."
"All Atlassian products are based on JAVA which makes it a bit difficult to trace problems if you don't have much JAVA skilled staff around."
"Frankly it's a really daunting exercise - challenging, problematic and very flaky."
"Confluence is just a super-inadequate tool for editing documents."
"I haven't been able to get access to the test case management and execution because it requires an extra license fee."
"It is very difficult to delete work items from the database."
"Since the TFS was an on-prem solution, the private network accessibility was restricted."
"There should be management of the project built-in."
"TFS should have capabilities similar to Git, like storing all types of artifacts in the repository."
"Not all of the functionality, which is exposed by the command line interface (tf.exe) is available in the Visual Studio GUI."
"The manageability and performance of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"We have had to recall a prior “production-ready” version to provide as a temporary solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The solution is expensive."
"TFS is expensive, and the licensing costs are yearly. I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We pay for the license yearly."
"Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
"We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
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913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
I am still not satisfied with the requirements area of Atlassian ALM. Atlassian ALM has four parts: test plan, Test Lab, requirements, and reporting. The requirements portion continues to be an are...
What is your primary use case for Atlassian ALM?
I have been using Atlassian ALM for twenty-five years. It used to be called Quality Center, and I first used it in 2000 and 2001. The company changed, but the product remained. Atlassian ALM has no...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
While I do not know the exact pricing, TFS is likely more expensive than GitLab.
What needs improvement with TFS?
From a testing perspective, while the build and deploy automation capability and pipeline integration are already present to a great extent, these are areas where TFS can improve further.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian ALM vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.