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Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Jira
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 20.5%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

AmitUbale - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient project management that's comprehensive and and helps with time efficiency
We use Jira primarily for project management within the organization. It helps us manage tasks, bug management, and tracking tickets effectively. We assign tickets to individual team members and track them easily For project management, Jira has helped facilitate efficient task segregation and…
Dina Bindi - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides traceability and compliance with high flexibility
It's extremely flexible. Configuring items is straightforward and doesn't require involving the supplier each time. We find the requirement management, test management, documentation, and dashboards very effective. However, we don't use DevOps-related features, such as integration with tools like SVN or Git, because we use Azure DevOps. The aspects related to requirements, testing, changes, tasks, and agile methodology are excellent, which is why we've been using it for a long time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution assists us with being able to quickly and easily start sprints and keep accurate track of them, including billing using a time-tracking add-on."
"JQL, JIRA Query Language enables me to filter all the issues, display the items as I want."
"Jira's most valuable features are ease of use, simple to understand, and highly flexible. Additionally, you can use kanban or scrum which is a benefit."
"We have not encountered difficulties with the scalability."
"It's an open-sourced product that is easy to customize."
"I have found Jira to be scalable."
"The initial setup isn't too complicated."
"Kanban boards are most valuable"
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
 

Cons

"Adding applications is very expensive."
"The dashboard reports can be improved. Its dashboard reports are good, but you cannot have complex reports. They are currently very basic. For instance, we can only choose two columns for a dashboard, so it is not friendly enough."
"Integration with some of the automation tools could be improved."
"In general, although we use JIRA, we never really learned how to use it properly. The learning curve of the solution is high. It has a lot of power, and yet we don't understand its capabilities."
"Users can be confused about how to use this tool as it's very complex."
"The hierarchy for Jira tickets is too flat."
"Sometimes the screens can be a bit too busy. There's often a lot of information on the screen. I think paring things down and applying some UX improvements might enhance the look and feel of the interface."
"I would love to have more features to make nice documents, like Release Notes or a feature overview, right from JIRA."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"To try this solution, use their cloud offering to get familiar. After that, it's in my view worth the money."
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"I am not sure about the pricing, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"There is an annual subscription to use Jira."
"It does not cost that much."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"Our license for Polarion ALM is yearly. And it's not the cheapest tool that we've looked at. So if we had made our decision purely based on the licensing cost, we wouldn't have selected Polarion."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"It is an expensive product."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?
We operate under a nonlimited license with Jira, allowing a number of users to access it with a single enterprise license.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Jira Software
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.