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IBM Rational ClearQuest vs Jira comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Rational ClearQuest
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Defect Tracking (1st), Software Configuration Management (7th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
279
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Rational ClearQuest is designed for Defect Tracking and holds a mindshare of 21.7%, down 41.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 12.3% mindshare, down 22.2% since last year.
Defect Tracking Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest21.7%
Adminitrack14.3%
Assembla Workspaces12.4%
Other51.6%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jira12.3%
Microsoft Azure DevOps10.3%
Codebeamer7.0%
Other70.4%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user808977 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
It can be adapted to any process flow
ClearQuest is a Defect Tracking system with a highly adaptable state machine together with an easy to use API, which can do all of the functions available in the GUI. This simplifies integration and automation of many steps is why the organization still uses a much older version, as there are no…
Akhil Viswam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Agile workflows have streamlined sprint planning and tracking for faster feature delivery
Jira has a very good interface and it is very easy to manage sprints, tasks, and epics. The main feature is the hierarchy, as features can be converted into epics and topics, allowing bigger tasks to be partitioned into smaller ones. The hierarchy feature in Jira helps the team significantly compared to other tools that have been used, such as Trello, which is mainly useful only for a waterfall model. For modern Agile practices, Jira is the most adapted tool in the industry. Another valuable feature is that Jira APIs have been used for data science projects to analyze tasks and get insights. This has also been very helpful in the project.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"The combination of a highly flexible state machine together with a platform independent API enables possibilities to automate many steps that in many systems are manual."
"Some of the features that are most important to me of JIRA Agile are the sprint planning, being able to write user stories and being able to use task management."
"I have found Jira to be stable."
"A very comprehensive product; easy to set up and is very user-friendly."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"No other platform can compete on speed or search."
"I have found the tracking, project and task management most valuable in this solution."
"The most valuable features are the customized Dashboard, Sprint Planning, and Automatic Notifications."
"In Jira, the integrations I have used so far are the repository integration, like when it gets added, or the integration with Confluence, which is good."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"I don't know whether there is a Jira problem or a test risk problem, however, sometimes, we face issues on fetching the reports."
"Performance is something that can always be improved upon in a feature release. Additionally, it would be a benefit to add Markdown in Jira because sometimes it might be better to describe everything in Markdown because it is a common language structure."
"Lacks some common building block approaches to certain things."
"I also wish Jira had an indicator to tell you that you are approaching the limit for the story points that can be delivered during a sprint. I don't think there is an indicator like that, but such an indicator will be very helpful because then I will be easily able to see that we are approaching the limit."
"To improve Jira, providing proper documentation, examples, or snippets for scripting workflows would be beneficial."
"Its UI can be improved a little bit. I know this a business tool and not a commercial tool, but it could be a little bit more interactive like the HP ALM/Quality Center, which provides you the results of graphs and gives you a lot of visual representations. I feel Jira lacks a little bit in this aspect."
"There are no fields to search or to filter by, mainly the ones which use a data around a date and time when something changes."
"For me, the solution is too complicated as it has too many features. It would be nice if they could streamline things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"It's not very cheap. It's also not very costly. I'd rate it a five out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It is an affordable tool."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"I understand JIRA is quite expensive."
"Jira is expensive and a lot of people are choosing DevOps because they are cheaper, open-source, easy to use, and have basic licenses. Jira should decrease its price to be more competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
35%
Government
5%
University
4%
Transportation Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business107
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise150
 

Questions from the Community

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Is Jira better or would you go with Micro Focus ALM Octane?
Hi Netanya, Basically , it all depends on the use cases for your environment and the business needs. Hope the below data may be relevant to you for identifying your needs and deciding on the approp...
Which is better - Jira or Microsoft Azure DevOps?
Jira is a great centralized tool for just about everything, from local team management to keeping track of products and work logs. It is easy to implement and navigate, and it is stable and scalabl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Jira?
Jira itself is fairly priced for the features it provides, but pricing is a bit higher than some alternatives, mostly because many plugins and add-ons are paid and licensed per user. So even if onl...
 

Also Known As

Rational ClearQuest
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos SE, STM, Regence BlueCross BlueShield
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational ClearQuest vs. Panaya Test Dynamix and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,696 professionals have used our research since 2012.