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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
9th
Ranking in Enterprise Agile Planning Tools
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
42
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
7th
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 October 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira Align is 1.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 7.5%, up from 6.4% 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%
Jira Align1.7%
Other90.8%
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

"Jira is one of the most widely used tools in the market, and it has a vast amount of data already stored in it. Jira Align is crucial in orchestrating this data and providing valuable views and insights. However, it's essential for tools like Jira Align to offer configurable features. While complete customization might not always be feasible for enterprise-level tools, configurable features allow organizations to drive transformation accordingly."
"The biggest advantage of Jira Align, in my opinion, is its user-friendly interface, making it simple and easy for end users to navigate and utilize. The most valuable feature of Jira Align for me is its automation capabilities, allowing us to create automation rules based on logical conditions for our projects. In terms of cross-team collaboration, Jira Align's integration with our project squads has been highly effective. It enables seamless creation of stories linked to incidents and changes, facilitating better visibility and understanding of the relationships between them. Regarding road mapping and dependency tracking, Jira Align enhances our project planning by aligning with our best practices and providing robust capabilities for mapping out dependencies and tracking progress."
"The OKR experience is great."
"The product's most valuable feature is CMDB for services desk management and backlog projects."
"In our workflow, we utilize a dashboard. Our product development backbone relies on two-week sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, we conduct a planning meeting to discuss and challenge the backlogs. Throughout the sprint, we conduct daily sessions to review code, ensure alignment with coding standards, and address any issues. Once all tasks are completed, we proceed with the deployment process."
"Velocity and reporting provide good visibility, burndown charts, and particularly velocity measurement."
"What I like about Jira is that I can easily keep tabs on the status of different issues and what the team is working on."
"Align enables the capture of all capabilities."
"The software is stable."
"We had a nice experience with technical support."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
"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."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"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."
"It offers good performance."
 

Cons

"The framework could be better."
"Deployment was very complex."
"Maybe some of the terms and the connectivity could be improved."
"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 are fewer customization options in Jira Align due to how it was designed."
"One feature that needs improvement is the tool's ability to change schedules automatically. Users can't simply drag and drop tasks to reschedule them without notifying the entire team. This lack of functionality can hinder project management control, as changes should be communicated transparently to all team members."
"It would be helpful if they had something for capacity planning that was simpler to understand."
"Jira Align's user interface needs improvement because its user experience is really bad."
"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 configuration aspect of the solution is not easy. A person needs a lot of programming knowledge in order to successfully handle the job."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The solution can be improved by making it more user-friendly, and a server-based application rather than client based."
"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company pays approximately 399 USD per month for the solution."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing. The price of the solution depends on the number of people using it and the projects you are working on."
"Jira Align's pricing is reasonable."
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"Jira Align is an expensive solution."
"At our company, we were concerned about the cost of Jira Align, which is expensive"
"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."
"Our customers buy licenses. We are not involved in its purchase."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The solution is expensive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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 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...
 

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: September 2025.
872,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.