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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

"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
"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."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."
"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."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"The features I find the most valuable are requirement tracking and schematics."
"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."
"Team Foundation Server (TFS) is easy to use, and we have a complete trail and traceability. We also like the access control part."
"The most valuable features of TFS are bug reporting and its high performance."
"A notable feature of TFS is its ease of creating user stories and tasks, which simplifies the process of adding and editing them."
"I like the build management features and the integration with Jenkins and many other tools."
"The most valuable feature is simplicity."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is that it keeps the code secure while working collaboratively in a team of four or five individuals."
"As far as queries are concerned, creating, grading, or customizing the queries as a primary requirement is very easy to do."
"User alerts are very helpful for knowing when work is required."
 

Cons

"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
"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 solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"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 product access management features and connectivity need improvement. Rights management is also complex and could be simplified."
"More options could be provided from the perspective of requirements management, which would help product owners to use the tool effectively."
"There is room for improvement from reporting point of view."
"The program and portfolio planning facility can be improved."
"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."
"The manageability and performance of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"TFS needs to be stable."
"TFS on-premise does not support integration with SharePoint Online."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Software for medical devices is always 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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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 license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"It is an expensive product."
"TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid."
"Microsoft products are always expensive. Obviously, they are quality products, but it would be helpful if there was a reduction in price. But compared to other vendors, I think the cost is high."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
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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
14%
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 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.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.