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Jira Align vs Polarion ALM 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

Jira Align
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Value Stream Management Software (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira Align is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.2%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

ShyiamaKishun - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a straightforward setup process and efficient project management features .
Jira Align supports program increment planning by facilitating the planning aspect, including team setup, dependency management, and defining the layout for each step or stage in a project. The platform aids in breaking down targets into parts, aligning with Agile principles, and ensuring a structured layout. The most impactful feature of Jira Align for project management lies in its capabilities related to planning and setting up projects. The platform visually understands targets, offering a clear and detailed layout. We can determine when to speed up the process or access the project. We can address the issues related to planning and development efficiently. It is a great product to use, aiding in project planning and alignment. I recommend it to others and rate it a ten out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Defect tracking and dashboards are the most valuable features of Jira Align."
"The most valuable features of Jira Align are its product roadmap and reporting."
"Jira Align's most valuable features are the roadmap, the program board, and the reports."
"The product's most valuable feature is CMDB for services desk management and backlog projects."
"The reporting structure is great."
"Jira Align is an intuitive tool that features a roadmap view...The initial setup was straightforward...Jira Align is definitely worth the money."
"Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement."
"The tool helps us with better tracking across various departments. Jira Align is highly valuable for organizations due to its flexibility. With my experience as an administrator, I can attest that it can be tailored to meet the diverse needs of any organization. It helps to eliminate the mess created by Excel spreadsheets."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"The technical support is quite good."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"The best feature of Polarion ALM to me is its traceability link."
"It is a very stable solution."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution’s stability could be improved."
"There are fewer customization options in Jira Align due to how it was designed."
"Other companies that are competitors of Jira and Confluence, they are able to create their active directories for the vendors that don't come in internally."
"There is no linkage between the Jira records and the overarching schedule. We maintain the overarching schedule in Microsoft Project, and there is no linkage back and forth with the Jira tasks. They are independent of each other."
"The vendor should implement automation features"
"One of the biggest issues I found in the new version was once we clicked on one of the tasks that were specifically for our group and went to look at the other portfolios in other areas we had to browse all the way back to the beginning. If you click the back button, it would not work, it stayed the same place. Additionally, if you click on page B, but then you wanted to go back to page A it would not go back to page A. You would have to browse back to the portfolio and then find your group again and open it. This was the only issue that I had with it and I am not sure if it is a Jira issue or it was because of the way the site was laid out."
"Deployment was very complex."
"The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The interface for this solution needs to be made more user-friendly to provide a better user experience."
"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 weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"The planning and task management aspects of the solution were not that easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"Jira Align has price packages for different purposes."
"The tool is moderately expensive."
"The pricing and licensing costs are rated lower, around six mainly due to significant increases in licensing costs that were not well-received by users."
"The software is very good, but the price is expensive. Our licensing costs are on a monthly basis, but there are no additional costs to the standard license fees."
"Jira Align is quite expensive for small-to-medium companies, but it's quite reasonable for larger ones."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate Jira Align a seven out of ten."
"The license for Jira Align is priced fairly."
"The solution is expensive."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Jira Align?
I joined the company because they had a large project, and as a startup company, they needed to scale up efficiently. My task was to review the current baseline, assess the team's capabilities, and...
What needs improvement with Jira Align?
The platform's communication features could be more robust for better team integration.
What is your primary use case for Jira Align?
We use Jira Align for business strategies, collaboration, and reporting. The solution allows us to manage the various products and features delivered on that platform.
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates. Sometimes, database migrations take too long, spanning two...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
As a manual tester, I use Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) for our weekly builds validation. These builds are crucial as they eventually lead to final release builds for customers. I...
 

Also Known As

AgileCraft
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Anthem, nielsen, Homeland Security, NCR, dimension data
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira Align vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,429 professionals have used our research since 2012.