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Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 20.0%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.3%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

AmitUbale - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient project management that's comprehensive and and helps with time efficiency
We use Jira primarily for project management within the organization. It helps us manage tasks, bug management, and tracking tickets effectively. We assign tickets to individual team members and track them easily For project management, Jira has helped facilitate efficient task segregation and…
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

"The workflows are very easy to handle as far as scalability goes."
"This is our way of communicating with different teams. We are a global company. I am based in San Diego, for example. A lot of the BAs are based in Paris. The development team is based in Minsk. We absolutely need to be in constant communication and on the same page."
"It is a very convenient tool. We can organize our sprints through scrum or kanban. There are scrum boards, and there are kanban boards. If you prefer scrum, you can use Jira. If you prefer kanban, you can still use Jira. You can create your kanban boards in a similar way as you create your scrum boards. It is very useful. It also seems to be very popular these days."
"This solution focuses on lean methodology which we have found useful and it can also be used on any device."
"We can cope with processes easily without adapting the tool, but adapting the tool to processes."
"Overall, it is very intuitive. It is so lightweight and easy to use. It is easy to manage our product backlog and user stories, and it produces great reports."
"The layout, workflow, automation, and metrics are helpful in Jira."
"I like it for team collaboration and task management. I also like its analytics and dashboards."
"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."
"Polarion ALM is excellent for tracking who is working on what and how many people are involved in a project."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"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."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"Polarion ALM helps us better structure our customer requirements, and we can also validate the specs of our products against those. If anything changes on our side, we see the impact, and we can see the effect If a customer changes requirements."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
"The technical support is quite good."
 

Cons

"I don't know whether there is a Jira problem or a test risk problem, however, sometimes, we face issues on fetching the reports."
"I would like to have a future-proof idea of the cost and the roadmap for my class."
"Not very intuitive for project admins."
"I have noticed a problem with Jira in the Philippines. In the Philippines, there are only a few companies that offer local support, which is alarming."
"If I'm comparing it to ALM Octane, the documentation is not as robust as ALM Octane's documentation. So, they can improve on the documentation side."
"The way to configure it can definitely be improved. It is very difficult and complex to configure. Its configuration should be simplified."
"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."
"The sprint-related graphics need to be improved."
"The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The user interface is not yet optimized."
"The most important thing for them to improve should be platform-independent features. They should also provide extensive pipelines and release pipelines that we can define and we can work on."
"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 solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are on an annual license and could be less expensive."
"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"For very small companies, if you have less than 10 individuals, it is $10 a year for each of the products. When we were a part of the enterprise and had more than 10 people using it, or before they came up with this solution for small companies, it was $2,500 a year for the license for Jira and Confluence, and I believe something like $600 a year to perpetuate the license. I can't remember if it was $600 or $2,500 annually. It was for up to 25 people at the time, and this was in the early 2000s and mid 2000s."
"If I compare Jira's licensing model with that of other products, I think that the other products have a much better licensing model."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive. We pay annually for the solution."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"The solution is expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"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."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
We operate under a nonlimited license with Jira, allowing a number of users to access it with a single enterprise license.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Jira Software
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, IBS AG, Zumtobel Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. Polarion ALM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.