Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
275
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
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 17.4%, down from 23.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.5%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira17.4%
Polarion ALM7.5%
Other75.1%
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

"A most valuable feature involves the ability to customize the entries and to update them quickly."
"The solution offers up great transparency that makes it possible for everyone inside the departmental organization to see what's happening."
"The most valuable feature of Jira for sprint planning is the timeline feature, which allows for better visualization and planning of releases."
"Reporting: It gives a nice report of my backlog and what my team has currently spent its efforts on."
"We've found the scalability to be good."
"We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"Jira can track projects, time management of assignments, and keep everything on schedule. The performance of the solution is good."
"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."
"The solution offers good integration."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
"It offers good performance."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
 

Cons

"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."
"Atlassian has multiple tools and it becomes difficult for a customer to process everything differently. Atlassian should combine them and form a single solution for DevOps by including the Jira Confluence, Bitbucket, Bamboo, and others. This would be much easier for customers by purchasing a package, rather than purchasing bits and pieces. With Azure DevOps and other companies, it becomes easier to go with one company having multiple areas that they can cater to, but in Atlassian, the problem is that you have to select different solutions to have a full package. For example, to have document management customers have to purchase Confluence and for Git repository management they have to purchase Bitbucket, et cetera. There is always another add-on that you need to attach to have a complete solution in Jira."
"End-to-end management from product backlog to test completion could be improved."
"I'd like to see better notetaking capabilities so every user can get notes when someone provides comments on a Jira ticket. So if they don't want to provide the comments on the Jira ticket, they can get the personal notes in a Jira tool for every profile."
"If Jira would be interested in offering a SharePoint version, it would be beneficial."
"It lacks features to cover all testing aspects, so we often integrate it with other plugins or tools like X-ray."
"The following definitely need improvement: UI, speed, and mobile app functionality."
"Of course, the price could always be cheaper."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
"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 tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"We use PTC Windchill, and Polarion ALM doesn't have native integration, so we had to purchase the connector to integrate it with Polarion ALM. We still haven't implemented it."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Jira could be lower."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"We had a perpetual license but have changed to a subscription."
"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."
"It is subscription-based, and we probably pay yearly. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of price."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"Jira is expensive and a lot of people are choosing DevOps because they are cheaper, open-source, easy to use, and have basic licenses. Jira should decrease its price to be more competitive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"It is an expensive product."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business103
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise149
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 backlog management for Agile in Polarion ALM could be improved or enhanced in future releases. What is missing is that if you have a hierarchy in your backlog with epics, features, and user sto...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
 

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: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.