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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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Polarion ALM is 6.4%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 3.7%, down from 4.9% 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 ALM6.4%
TFS3.7%
Other89.9%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Consultant 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.
PS
Service delivery manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Ensures team collaboration with strong version control but could improve testing capabilities
Version control is the most basic feature in TFS. It has been there since the beginning. We use it primarily for that purpose. Basically ensuring that the code is not overwritten by other team members and maintaining the sanctity of the code. Bringing order to a disparate team which is virtual at different locations is very important, and TFS provides that control. Once you update a code, nobody can modify it until you are done working on it and check in. It is a great product that revolutionized the way teams work together on Microsoft pieces of code. The versioning part has unique features and capabilities which are unmatched with other products out there.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."
"The technical support is quite good."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"When it comes to functionalities like a real-time collaboration feature and traceability capabilities, Polarion ALM has had those basic features for the past five years already, and they are pretty mature products that have all the needed requirements management features, such as traceability and reporting, and even configuration management or version controlling."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"The software is stable."
"It's an integrated system that includes all the information that we need to deliver our products smoothly and to track the progress of each piece of code."
"A notable feature of TFS is its ease of creating user stories and tasks, which simplifies the process of adding and editing them."
"It is a stable solution."
"For what I need TFS for, I have never run into any limitation."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard and task-selection capability."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is its compatibility with Microsoft Windows systems. We have predominantly Microsoft solutions and TFS work well."
"The interface is easy to navigate."
"The most valuable features of TFS are the test plans. We can reproduce reusable test plans in test automation. We have a lot of queries and this feature is very useful."
 

Cons

"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."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"The solution can be improved by making it more user-friendly, and a server-based application rather than client based."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"Based on my understanding, the tool's integration capabilities with multiple tools is an area of concern that Polarion needs to focus on more."
"The configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"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 program and portfolio planning facility can be improved."
"Sometimes we feel that it need more CPU, and RAMs on TFS server, either we implemented the hardware with the product minimum requirements."
"It has been really dated. When you start to work more in an agile environment, it is not really that flexible. They tried to replicate the look and feel of Jira, but it is not quite there. It was nice to use in the past, but it is not as flexible now with the changing development environments and methodologies."
"TFS needs to be stable."
"The user interface could improve and test management was not useful in TFS."
"TFS should have capabilities similar to Git, like storing all types of artifacts in the repository."
"One of the areas that could be improved is to have an effective full lifecycle management."
"There are glitches, such as runners getting stuck, deployments generating errors, and it's becoming outdated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"The solution is expensive."
"TFS is expensive, and the licensing costs are yearly. I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"On a scale where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's licensing cost at one on a scale of one to ten."
"The overall price of TFS is good."
"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."
"I was working with the engineering team, and that was not under my umbrella. From what I can remember, its license was yearly. They had the licenses on a per-user basis, and they included MTM."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
"I am not in a position to comment on the licensing terms, as we are talking about an enterprise arrangement."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
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 te...
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: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.