No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Atlassian 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

Atlassian ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Atlassian ALM is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 4.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TFS4.4%
Atlassian ALM2.4%
Other93.2%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

BRIANJOHNSON2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independant Consultant at B&H Designs Ltd
Long-term testing workflows have improved integration of test planning and defect tracking
The deployment depends on whether you are deploying it on your computer or across the program. Cloud-based system deployment takes some time, as it depends on your rights to your computer. I would rate the deployment as a seven on a scale of one to ten. It took a couple of hours to get it right. The IT department deploys it.
PF
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
Simplified task creation enhances seamless development workflow
We use TFS for our Agile board to handle our sprints, epics, stories, and tasks, tracking how work is progressing. It is also a repository for managing code changes TFS integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio and Azure Cloud, facilitating continuous integration and continuous deployment, which…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In Bitbucket, the reviews are pretty good."
"The interface between the repository and test plan stands out as valuable, and I appreciate building the tests and scenarios in Test Lab and the ability to link defects throughout the system, which Atlassian ALM does better than any other testing products."
"The main power of this tool is the integration between the different products of the Atlassian suite, and we have good integration with work management and software build automation (Bamboo), which is the major strength from this provider."
"The most valuable feature is the Scrum board."
"As a general purpose tool, JIRA and Confluence are still ahead of the competition."
"If you can spend the little effort to configure Jira to support your more complex requirements management, then you can concentrate everything in one tool."
"This solution fits very well into our agile product management environment."
"The Atlassian ALM suite consists at least of JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket and HipChat - just the tools you need for organizing your teams in a very efficient way."
"The most valuable features are related to source code management. Using TFS for source code management and being able to branch and have multiple developers work on the same projects is valuable. We can also branch and merge code back together."
"As a QA geek, MS Test is the most valuable component."
"With TFS online, now everything is in the cloud, it is tidy and easy to compare and restore, especially my unfinished work, where I use the shelving changes feature."
"The initial setup is fairly easy."
"I like the build management features, the integration with Jenkins and many other tools, the team rooms for team collaboration, and issue tracking are very valuable features."
"This solution is simple to learn, it's straightforward and you don't need a lot of time to learn the functionalities."
"The work item feature is most valuable. It allows us to store all product requirements. We can also link the test cases to those requirements so that we know which feature has already been tested, and which one is waiting for testing. We can also couple the code reviews, unit tests, and automated tests into these requirements. It is reliable. It has all the features and good performance. It also has reporting tools or analysis tools."
"With TFS we can manage the whole application lifecycle with a single product, and it is visible for all the team members."
 

Cons

"The automation for scheduling software and doing software tests should be simplified because it's complex and too rigid."
"The reports are not really customizable, which is something that they should improve on."
"Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive."
"There is room for improvement in the high-level project management."
"The solution is stable but at times, the performance is poor. It takes time to load and the response time is not up to the mark."
"However, it is not really scalable, so if you want to use it for anything larger or plan to use it for product portfolios, then it starts to be problematic."
"Frankly it's a really daunting exercise - challenging, problematic and very flaky."
"All Atlassian products are based on JAVA which makes it a bit difficult to trace problems if you don't have much JAVA skilled staff around."
"The overall reports in TFS could improve. Additionally, there should be an easier way to migrate from an older version to a newer one."
"Team Build definitions bug-tracking tools."
"The continuous integration and continuous delivery should begin with DSS."
"When you are trying to connect from Visual Studio code to TFS the integration isn't so easy and I think that could be improved."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
"Customization of build templates needs better tools and tracking and it should be more friendly on test lab setup."
"Integration from Visual Studio could be improved."
"We have had to recall a prior “production-ready” version to provide as a temporary solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a community edition available, but if the price were lower for the addons then more people would use the full version."
"The overall price of TFS is good."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
"There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"The solution is expensive."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
"TFS is expensive, and the licensing costs are yearly. I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We pay for the license yearly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian ALM?
Atlassian ALM is too expensive. The pricing is very expensive.
What needs improvement with Atlassian ALM?
I am still not satisfied with the requirements area of Atlassian ALM. Atlassian ALM has four parts: test plan, Test Lab, requirements, and reporting. The requirements portion continues to be an are...
What is your primary use case for Atlassian ALM?
I have been using Atlassian ALM for twenty-five years. It used to be called Quality Center, and I first used it in 2000 and 2001. The company changed, but the product remained. Atlassian ALM has no...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
While I do not know the exact pricing, TFS is likely more expensive than GitLab.
What needs improvement with TFS?
From a testing perspective, while the build and deploy automation capability and pipeline integration are already present to a great extent, these are areas where TFS can improve further.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, NASA, Cisco, eBay, Redfin, Toyota, Kaiser Permanente, Gilt, CSIRO, Autodesk, The Daily Telegraph, CODE, Illumnia
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian ALM vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.