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Polarion ALM vs TFS comparison

 

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

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)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.5%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 4.1%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Polarion ALM7.5%
TFS4.1%
Other88.4%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Pmurki@Micron.Com Praveen - PeerSpot reviewer
Version control is excellent and good for code review, branching, merging strategies and more
I've worked with TFS for source control and Agile project management. We also used TFS for seamless team collaboration and tracking.  I used TFS for a couple of years. Now, we use Azure DevOps. It's a wonderful tool for source control and CI/CD pipelines It's a really valuable tool for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"The software is stable."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"The solution's iteration board is good because you can track all your work with it."
"TFS is very user-friendly."
"What I like the most is that you can set permissions on just one folder."
"The initial setup is easy, it is easy to understand and use."
"The most valuable feature from my point of view is project management, which includes user stories as well as task management."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is that it keeps the code secure while working collaboratively in a team of four or five individuals."
"The most valuable feature is the backlog."
"It has great functionality: work items, backlogs, source code, build releases, and it's easy to use."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"Integration requires a lot of effort. You typically need to work with an implementation partner to get it done. Most connectors available for Polarion ALM are paid. Unlike other vendors offering several standard connectors for free, integrating third-party software with Polarion ALM involves discussing and coordinating with the third-party software providers, which requires effort."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"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 weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs."
"TFS should allow more integration with different platforms."
"TFS isn't a great tool if you're on the cloud."
"There is room for improvement from reporting point of view."
"Not all of the functionality, which is exposed by the command line interface (tf.exe) is available in the Visual Studio GUI."
"They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers."
"The tool needs improvement in stability."
"I'm looking for specific options that aren't currently available, such as active status, new status, or what's currently in progress."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run."
"There are different prices depending on the configurations. There is a free version available. There is no extra cost for the solution. However, the hardware could be something that needs to be considered."
"We pay for the license yearly."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"I am not in a position to comment on the licensing terms, as we are talking about an enterprise arrangement."
"You will need to obtain server and account licenses."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 do you like most about TFS?
Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Polarion ALM vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.