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

Jira vs Rally Software vs TFS 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Jira boosts ROI through enhanced productivity, versatility, and efficient workflows, leading to cost savings and quick payback periods.
Sentiment score
7.5
Rally Software boosts efficiency by 10%, offers 15X ROI, saves time, and is cost-effective despite some user challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
TFS enhances productivity and cost-efficiency by automating processes, integrating with Microsoft products, and improving software development for oil and gas.
A return on investment has been seen with Jira, as a lot of time has been saved in arranging tasks, converting software features into epics, tasks, and milestones, making it easy to track progress and plan future roadmaps.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We implement it and track it with the help of the time tracking feature, which makes it quite easy to manage everything in a single platform.
Technical Lead at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Tracking has helped people see productivity measures and different observability metrics and traceability metrics of different tools.
Integration Supervisor Lead at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The ROI is visible, as that's why we are investing in these tools and running our projects successfully through them, despite a few challenges such as role-based access being somewhat difficult.
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
Integrating TFS with Visual Studio and Azure Cloud has improved our development processes by providing better integration and reducing errors.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Customer service is valued for timely help, but email-only support and inconsistent technical assistance cause some frustration.
Sentiment score
6.8
Rally Software's customer service is responsive, with quick, knowledgeable support and proactive communication, generally satisfying users despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
6.9
Users praise TFS support for its excellence, quick responses, and resources, although some suggest improvements in response time and SLAs.
Jira's customer support is one of the best I have ever dealt with because they respond quickly.
CEO at 2Help
They usually reach out within one to two business days and give specific answers.
Senior Technical Support Engineer I at Krisp
I did not face any issues with stability or upgrades.
Senior Director, Head of Information Systems Division at Israel Innovation Authority
as a Microsoft product, it might have limited global documentation or support options compared to GitLab.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Jira is highly scalable, integrates well with tools, supports growth effectively, but may incur additional costs with expansion.
Sentiment score
7.2
Rally Software offers strong scalability supporting large enterprises, despite occasional performance issues, effectively handling significant user volumes globally.
Sentiment score
7.4
TFS is scalable, suitable for enterprises, but larger organizations may encounter challenges; rated 6 to 8 out of 10.
As the number of users, projects, and work items grows, Jira can scale effectively.
Integration Supervisor Lead at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Scalability for Jira is great, and it handles growth easily from 100 to thousands.
CEO at 2Help
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Jira is praised for its stability and reliability, with minimal disruptions and consistently high user ratings.
Sentiment score
7.4
Rally Software is generally stable and reliable, with occasional slowness and downtime, but users appreciate the responsive support.
Sentiment score
7.7
TFS is reliable and robust, though minor issues under load or specific setups can impact performance, requiring proper hardware.
In my experience, Jira is stable, with around 99% uptime.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Its stability is lacking as we have encountered security leaks and glitches.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Jira's complexity causes user challenges, requiring enhanced usability, integrations, performance, automation, AI features, and better support.
Rally Software struggles with navigation, integration, user-friendliness, and requires improvements in reporting, customization, and workflow efficiency.
TFS requires improved interface, tool integration, agile features, merging, reporting, affordability, stability, cloud synergy, and performance enhancements.
Focus more on improving API integration and automation tools, not just the design.
CEO at 2Help
One feature that could improve Jira is the integration of AI capabilities, such as organizing Jira tasks autonomously with minimum human intervention and executing aggregations and clustering of these tasks.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
A simpler user experience for new users is necessary.
Product Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
One area for improvement might be the rigidity in role and access configurations, which require many process changes to fit the tool.
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
TFS is not as fast, easy to use, or configurable as GitLab, despite moving into the cloud.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I am content with how TFS is structured now, particularly the Azure version.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
 

Setup Cost

Jira's reasonable pricing escalates for enterprises with more users, add-ons, and data center or cloud subscriptions.
Enterprise users find Rally Software pricing high but valuable for large-scale agile projects, suggesting a more flexible model.
Enterprise TFS users experience varied costs; many manage expenses with agreements, praising integration despite fewer features than HPE ALM.
Even if only five people from your team use a financial plugin, you still pay for all 100 seats.
CEO at 2Help
Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it.
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
 

Valuable Features

Jira supports Agile with customizable workflows, integrations, and dashboards, enhancing project management and collaboration through scalable, flexible tools.
Rally Software offers user-friendly Agile project management with real-time dashboards, customizable reporting, and robust integration capabilities.
TFS integrates with Visual Studio, enhancing version control, lifecycle management, and Agile support, valuable for diverse development needs.
You can build your own workflows and make it work exactly the way your team needs and integrate it with almost every third-party software.
CEO at 2Help
Agile boards give instant visibility into what is in progress, blocked, or completed. It provides clear status and ownership, which helps the team stay aligned without constant follow-ups.
Product Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Jira has helped not only our organization but many organizations to be very focused and understand what needs to be done and to prioritize things effectively.
Senior Technical Support Engineer I at Krisp
Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks.
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
The integration with Azure DevOps also offers seamless functionality for CI/CD processes.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
Makes it easier for me to create builds and release pipelines without needing to program YAML files.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 12.3%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rally Software is 5.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jira12.3%
Rally Software5.3%
TFS3.6%
Other78.8%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rakhee Srivastava - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Information Architect and Principal Consultant UX at Tech Mahindra Limited
Real-time dashboards provide clear insights into project progress and team velocity
Rally Software is easy to use for Agile project methodology because it follows Scrum and Kanban, helping with sprint planning and backlog management. Rally Software provides real-time dashboards for different kinds of stakeholders and governance, giving clear insights into project progress, team velocity, and potential risks. Backlog management is present in the product, allowing prioritization of tasks. The dashboards provide all types of insights through analytics. Capacity planning helps optimize resource allocation, ensuring balanced workload and realistic sprint commitments for our projects. The solution integrates with GitHub, and we can also integrate with Excel and CI/CD pipelines.
PS
Service delivery manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Ensures team collaboration with strong version control but could improve testing capabilities
Version control is the most basic feature in TFS. It has been there since the beginning. We use it primarily for that purpose. Basically ensuring that the code is not overwritten by other team members and maintaining the sanctity of the code. Bringing order to a disparate team which is virtual at different locations is very important, and TFS provides that control. Once you update a code, nobody can modify it until you are done working on it and check in. It is a great product that revolutionized the way teams work together on Microsoft pieces of code. The versioning part has unique features and capabilities which are unmatched with other products out there.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user355629 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Corporate Systems and Emerging Business at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Nov 19, 2015
JIRA can do incident management, work configuration, and a lot of other different things. But we haven't found anything as compelling as CA Agile.
The tools are not overly complex for Agile. It appears that CA has recognized that. They're not just building the connector for Rally, but they are also allowing other groups to build connectors from JIRA into CA PPM and from other tools to CA PPM. If you are looking at open source products, why…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business107
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise110
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise64
 

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 d...
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 a...
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...
What do you like most about Rally Software?
Rally offers many features that help the management of activities, coordination, alignment and reports, which applies...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rally Software?
Rally Software is affordable because our customers also prefer it, and I have never heard concerns about pricing prev...
What needs improvement with Rally Software?
While I'm not heavily involved in project management tools, I am familiar with these tools. One area for improvement ...
Which is better - TFS or Azure DevOps?
TFS and Azure DevOps are different in many ways. TFS was designed for admins, and only offers incremental improvement...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TFS?
While I do not know the exact pricing, TFS is likely more expensive than GitLab.
What needs improvement with TFS?
From a testing perspective, while the build and deploy automation capability and pipeline integration are already pre...
 

Also Known As

Jira Software
CA Agile Central, Rally Enterprise, CA Agile Training, CA Agile Coaching, CA Agile Academy, CA Agile Management , CA ALM
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Physicians Mutual, Harvard Pilgrim HealthCare, Editora Abril, Tata Communications, Level 3 Communications, Seagate, TomTom, Philips, Hiscox, Physicians Mutual, MYOB
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian, Microsoft, OpenText and others in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.