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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

"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"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."
"The software is stable."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"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."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"You can see the work ticket and you can circulate that within the teams. You can define your flows, customize according to your needs, and you can create dashboards and create the reports according to your needs."
"It's user friendly. We haven't had any issues so far. It's flexible. If we need something, we can always contact the owner in our headquarters to make a configuration."
"Microsoft's technical team is supportive."
"The most valuable feature is integration, particularly if you have a .NET application."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard and task-selection capability."
"TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment."
"Work item management integration with source control."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is integration."
"The most valuable feature is simplicity."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"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."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"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."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"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."
"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 solution's server for deployment needs to be improved."
"TFS on-premise does not support integration with SharePoint Online."
"TFS's CI/CD, project pipelines, and management development could be improved."
"The project management side should be addressed and the project and release planning should be somewhat extended."
"This solution is quite old and it is already being bundled as Azure DevOps Server."
"The product access management features and connectivity need improvement. Rights management is also complex and could be simplified."
"Not all of the functionality, which is exposed by the command line interface (tf.exe) is available in the Visual Studio GUI."
"The usability of TFS is not that great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"TFS is not cheap."
"TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
"It is an expensive solution."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
"The pricing is reasonable at this time."
"We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
"We are using the open-source version."
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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.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.