Polarion ALM vs Rally Software comparison

Siemens and Broadcom are both solutions in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category. Siemens is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while Broadcom is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.0. Siemens holds a 6.1% mindshare in ALM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Siemens users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Polarion ALM

Read 24 Polarion ALM reviews

3,475 Views
3,197 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Rally Software

Read 120 Rally Software reviews

4,189 Views
3,770 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Polarion ALM

Rally Software

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Rally Software and Polarion ALM both compete in the application lifecycle management solutions category. Rally Software appears to have an edge in pricing flexibility, while Polarion ALM provides comprehensive features that suit compliance-focused industries.

Features: Rally Software offers robust project management, release tracking, and scrum support. It enhances its functionality through flexibility and integration capabilities, especially with JIRA. User-friendly interfaces improve team interaction tracking and reporting. Polarion ALM provides high traceability and management of requirements, tests, and releases, advantageous for industries focusing on compliance.

Room for Improvement: Rally Software needs to improve Kanban support and performance, focusing on metrics and integration. It also requires more intuitive reporting and analytics. Polarion ALM can enhance user experience, ease integration with external tools, and improve its interface, as well as enrich its test management and reporting capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rally Software offers deployment in public cloud, on-premises, and hybrid cloud models. It is known for responsive customer service, although some users find initial navigation difficult. Polarion ALM provides diverse public and private cloud deployment options, with comprehensive but costly support.

Pricing and ROI: Rally Software is cost-effective for smaller teams with bulk purchasing discounts, showing significant ROI through streamlined processes. Though pricier, Polarion ALM justifies its cost for larger enterprises by offering features essential for traceability and compliance, balancing cost with functionality.

To learn more, read our detailed Polarion ALM vs. Rally Software Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM vs. Rally Software

January 2026

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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

Polarion ALM

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

5th

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Rally Software

Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

8th

Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Polarion ALM is 6.1%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rally Software is 5.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Polarion ALM	6.1%
Rally Software	5.5%
Other	88.4%

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites

Featured Reviews

LasseMikkonen

CEO at byte

Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies

Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Read full review

Rakhee Srivastava

Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited

Real-time dashboards provide clear insights into project progress and team velocity

Rally Software is easy to use for Agile project methodology because it follows Scrum and Kanban, helping with sprint planning and backlog management. Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks. Backlog management is present in the product, allowing prioritization of tasks. The dashboards provide all types of insights through analytics. Capacity planning helps optimize resource allocation, ensuring balanced workload and realistic sprint commitments for our projects. The solution integrates with GitHub, and we can also integrate with Excel and CI/CD pipelines.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."

"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."

"It offers good performance."

"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."

"The technical support is quite good."

"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."

"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."

"The software is stable."

More Polarion ALM pros

"We have teams come and go all the time. We have teams in India, America, Ireland, Poland, Italy, England... we are spread out everywhere! Rally is our key tool for scrum planning and our single source of truth, and it handles it all flawlessly."

"With this product, searching for historical information or the evolution of the requirement, detecting conflict between projects has helped a lot."

"When it comes to the valuable features of Rally Software, it excels at burn-down charts, burn-up charts, and road mapping once it's set up. I particularly appreciated the new feature for releases and road mapping, which worked exceptionally well."

"What I like the most about Agile Central is that it is the only system I need to have full control and visibility of our entire body of work plus the activities and processes required to deliver it."

"CA Agile Central provides visibility into how teams are meeting business objectives."

"It drives the conversation behind some of the pain points the teams have, based on the data that we're able to pull out of the system. As a result of that, we're able to make better decisions, to become better as a whole."

"Helps me plan an estimate of how soon or how far out we'll be able to deliver something."

"Tech support is very responsive, helpful, and available."

More Rally Software pros

Cons

"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."

"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."

"Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only."

"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."

"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."

"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."

"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."

"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."

More Polarion ALM cons

"Rally Software is highly complex, and it takes some effort to get everything tied together. But once you do, it's a satisfying experience, and the result looks beautiful. Azure, ServiceNow, and Jira do not have all the features that Rally Software provides in one place, making it an exceptional tool for project management."

"The solution is expensive."

"I'd like to be able to color code timeboxes, so I have an easy visual way to track the success of sprints."

"More customization capabilities would be helpful. Providing a little bit more structure around how the system should be set up in terms of the hierarchy structure might be helpful as well."

"It requires better scalability for the implementation of the whole suite. We do not use it in that fashion, and visibility is sometimes a problem."

"It's a bit cumbersome to manage the Project Picker. As we sunset teams or projects close out - but we still have test cases tied to those teams or projects that are being used in other spaces - we have this monstrous list in the Project Picker that becomes really difficult to manage and find, and we can't clean that up ourselves. It would be nice if it was easier to do that and not lose your history."

"One area for improvement might be the rigidity in role and access configurations, which require many process changes to fit the tool."

"We'd like better dashboards to make visibility better."

More Rally Software cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive product."

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."

"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."

"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."

"Software for medical devices is always expensive."

"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is expensive and may not be worthwhile for a small company."

"The license costs are fairly high as compared to some of the other solutions out there."

"Rally Software costs $50 a month, and for a base account, that price is acceptable."

"From a price point, it's a cost effective solution for our needs."

"We are always looking for a discount, if the solution was less expensive it would be a benefit."

"Frankly, pricing is expensive and needs to be carefully planned for when budgeting."

"I don't know the exact pricing, but I think the tool is priced high. They provide quality workmanship, good software, regular upgrades, and they're always attentive and listen to users. Everything comes with a price. I think it's an expensive solution compared to Jira or other competitors, but it's a complete package."

"I understand it's a little more expensive. That is why many people prefer Jira."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

29%

Computer Software Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	110

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?

The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...

See all answers

What do you like most about Rally Software?

Rally offers many features that help the management of activities, coordination, alignment and reports, which applies agility across the organization. If I were to highlight a particular feature, i...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rally Software?

Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it, and I have never heard concerns about pricing preventing us from using this tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Rally Software?

While I'm not heavily involved in project management tools, I am familiar with these tools. One area for improvement might be the rigidity in role and access configurations, which require many proc...

See all answers

Comparisons

Codebeamer vs Polarion ALM

Compared 27% of the time

Jira vs Polarion ALM

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Polarion ALM

Compared 11% of the time

Jama Connect vs Polarion ALM

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Software Delivery Management vs Polarion ALM

Compared 3% of the time

More Polarion ALM Competitors

Microsoft Azure DevOps vs Rally Software

Compared 27% of the time

Jira vs Rally Software

Compared 18% of the time

Jira Align vs Rally Software

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Application Quality Management vs Rally Software

Compared 5% of the time

Digital.ai Agility vs Rally Software

Compared 3% of the time

More Rally Software Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM

January 2026

Download Polarion ALM product report

Buyer's Guide

Rally Software

January 2026

Download Rally Software product report

Also Known As

No data available

CA Agile Central, Rally Enterprise, CA Agile Training, CA Agile Coaching, CA Agile Academy, CA Agile Management , CA ALM

Overview

The world’s first 100% browser-based ALM enterprise solution, which enables seamless collaboration across disparate teams, multi-directionally linked work items, full traceability, accelerated productivity and automated proof of compliance.

Siemens

With Rally Software, you can plan, prioritize, manage, track, and continuously improve your work so that you can deliver the value that your customers need with speed, quality, and efficiency. Our enterprise-class Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) SaaS platform provides visibility into progress, roadblocks, and dependencies across multiple teams, projects, and programs. This allows you to align to your strategic goals and create better business results, and to do it all in a single system of record.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group

Physicians Mutual, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Editora Abril, Tata Communications, Level 3 Communications, Seagate, TomTom, Philips, Hiscox, Physicians Mutual, MYOB

Buyer's Guide

Polarion ALM vs. Rally Software

January 2026

Free Report: Polarion ALM vs. Rally Software

Find out what your peers are saying about Polarion ALM vs. Rally Software and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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