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

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 (5th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
281
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 22.7%, down 50.0% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 11.2% mindshare, down 21.4% since last year.
Defect Tracking Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Rational ClearQuest22.7%
Adminitrack14.6%
Assembla Workspaces11.9%
Other50.800000000000004%
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jira11.2%
Microsoft Azure DevOps9.5%
OpenText Application Quality Management6.5%
Other72.8%
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."
"Customization level of the tool to meet client’s requirements, you can do almost all of the customizations for a project or ticket management system, and notification, hooks, and UI customization are very stable."
"In combination with a good Configuration Management plan, an organization can create an optimal level of administration and automation creating good traceability in your tasks."
"This enabled us to completely migrate from paper-based forms to electronic forms for a number of business areas."
"The workflow feature with stateful record types and the ability to implement these rapidly in our project have been of value to us."
"It has improved my organization because it gives us collaboration."
"Reports, analytics, and a ton of widgets, they are great and intuitive. Perfect for an agile team."
"Jira has impacted the productivity and cost efficiency for me and my development team, though I have faced some challenges with Jira during this time."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the configuration, being able to configure it to suit your own needs."
"The benefit of Jira to our company is that the product is extensible."
"The burndown charts help track projects."
"It was very easy to learn Jira. As a scrum master, I run daily stand-ups, and they are run directly from Jira. The feature that I really love in Jira is called Issue Navigator. It allows me to customize how I want to show the user stories within Jira to my squad."
"The integration is nice. We can integrate with TeamViewer and many more solutions. We need to go into Jira to complete the secure software delivery."
 

Cons

"However, the user interface seems very static and the user experience was not the best."
"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"The user interface could benefit from a more modern look and feel."
"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"It’s very expensive, especially considering that there are much more economical options out there."
"Jira could be more, for example, like Micro Focus, which is what I mostly work with currently."
"The scalability has to be improved more because Jira currently is similar to a standalone solution with very limited integration."
"If they want Jira to be the one-stop shop of the view of all of your deliverables, not just from a defect tracking perspective, but also from a requirement perspective, a code perspective, and a testing perspective, it needs to pull out more data and work better as an integration tool."
"We'd like to use it with non-Agile projects in the future, however, right now, it is a very Agile-focused product."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of integration with SVN, and auto-sync with the build release number."
"For me, the solution is too complicated as it has too many features. It would be nice if they could streamline things."
"It would be ideal if Jira had future functionalities to integrate more easily with various aspects of code reviews."
"They can maybe dumb down the directions for building the automation a little bit because to be able to build out the automation, I had to play around with it and learn what all the fields meant and what they were referencing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Almost everybody uses JIRA nowadays because it is the most cost-effective solution."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"JIRA's pricing is very economical. I would say that JIRA is a great deal more economical than Microsoft."
"I am not sure if the client is using a commercial version. I think it is on a per-user basis, and it is around 15 Canadian dollars for a user, but I'm not sure. It also has a free version."
"There is an annual subscription to use Jira."
"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
"The tool is expensive."
"Worth the extra cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Defect Tracking solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
5%
Insurance Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business108
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise151
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.