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Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 21.1%, down from 24.0% 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

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 most valuable feature is that it is somewhat flexible."
"It was easy to use. The consultants that we had on board were familiar with it. So, obviously, having a community that had used it before or was familiar with it was a positive thing."
"The most valuable features are that it is good for tracking the issues and it provides for the usage of Confluence."
"Offers great multiple reporting charts."
"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."
"It's very flexible. I can define workflows and custom fields and dependencies between issues and projects. And every project can have a custom configuration with my fields, my names for fields, my validations, and my workflows. It's very customizable."
"I've never had a bug or a bug message that I needed to open a ticket for."
"In our organization, we use Jira for project management and usually use the Scrum project type. We might adjust the workflows and stages to better suit our needs, but we mostly use the default functionalities it offers to manage our projects."
"The solution offers good integration."
"The tool helped us to more effectively and efficiently gather and structure the information (requirements, test plans, project management data, etc.), and share it with the involved stakeholders in a safe and change-controlled manner."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution."
"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 delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"It meets with everybody's needs without having to grab plugins."
 

Cons

"Jira is a project management tracking tool, and it would be great to see integration with the source front or Azure DevOps, etc."
"It would be very practical if you can more freely reach the information that is already inside the system. Currently, we have to buy add-ons for it. There is a lot of information in the Jira system that you can handle only through add-ons. You cannot reach such information on your own. If you want to use this information, which is already in the system, you have to buy some add-on to use. For example, information about how much time an assignee is spending on a ticket is there in the system, but you cannot access it without an add-on. JQL is a very good way to reach the data inside Jira. If we can reach more objects, even through JQL, it would be great."
"I'm mostly focusing on the requirements traceability with my thesis, the integration could improve for other tools. The companies are not only using Jira. For example, for the test cases or for the documents templates, we are using Polarion and we have been having some integration issues."
"The solution can improve by including test management functionality in a native bundle without plugins."
"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."
"A lot of features, such as time tracking, are only available through the marketplace. If multiple users are working on a user story, we aren't able to pull out the reports. So, there are many things that they aren't offering. They are available only through the marketplace. That's not good for a product."
"It should be less expensive."
"The sprint-related graphics need to be improved."
"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."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The solution needs to improve its user experience and graphics."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The user interface of Polarion ALM needs improvement as it can experience changes that disrupt workflows, especially during major updates."
"Nowadays, the dashboard is too complex to be created."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Worth the extra cost."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"The basic price of Jira is reasonable, but for each plugin, we have to keep paying more. When you add it all up, it can be expensive. The main problem we face is we are forced to purchases plugin licenses for users who are not going to use them. For example, we have Jira licenses for approximately 450 people but if we only want a purchase a plugin for few people it is mandatory to buy the license for the 450 people who have Jira licensees. This is a problem because sometimes we need plugins for the product manager or for people in charge of the report, not everyone. For us, it can be very expensive in the end, they should alter this policy to allow plugins for only a set number of licenses."
"Jira and its solution off the shelf are cheap. It is cheap for startups."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"The tool's pricing is expensive. The new pricing is indeed quite expensive compared to what it was a few years ago. Last year, when we intended to renew our subscription, we found the pricing considerably higher."
"It depends on the type of license. In terms of subscription, it is cheap, and it works pretty well."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
"The solution is expensive."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"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
Educational Organization
38%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
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 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...
 

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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.