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TFS vs Zephyr Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 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

TFS
Ranking in Test Management Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (9th)
Zephyr Enterprise
Ranking in Test Management Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Test Management Tools category, the mindshare of TFS is 4.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zephyr Enterprise is 5.8%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TFS4.6%
Zephyr Enterprise5.8%
Other89.6%
Test Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JM
Director - Quality Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Integration with tool streamlines test management but needs better exporting options
I use it for test management within Jira This tool boasts an incredibly user-friendly interface that integrates seamlessly with other Jira tools. I particularly appreciate its intuitive features for designing test plans, creating test cases, and executing test cycles. Some areas for improvement,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has sped up the build and deployment process, and we can now deploy the same application version to each environment in a repeatable and automated fashion."
"TFS is a good product and you can continue working with it."
"The most valuable feature of TFS is the central repository, and you can see what changes other developers did from which branch."
"In terms of usability, JIRA might provide a better user experience but from an organizational and stability point of view, TFS wins hands-down."
"Customer Service: It's very good."
"You get a managed system where you can manage your development tasks easily, and you don't need to keep your own bookkeeping for tasks and backup items."
"TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment."
"It is user-friendly with a straightforward drag and drop interface, which makes it easier for me to create builds and release pipelines without needing to program YAML files."
"We use the solution for test case management."
"It's very simple to use, which is beneficial, and it has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money."
"Zephyr Enterprise is a stable solution."
"Zephyr really improves the testing of the product on many levels - planning, test case creation, automation goals, test reporting, and verification of the testing."
"It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management."
"At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements."
"It has integration with test automation tools."
"Now, we are getting consolidated reports in one place, we have all our metrics and repository together, and this is helpful."
 

Cons

"When you are trying to connect from Visual Studio code to TFS the integration isn't so easy and I think that could be improved."
"For VSTS, more flexibility around the customisation of test reports."
"The manageability and performance of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers."
"The tool needs improvement in stability."
"The solution should have better dashboards."
"I understand Microsoft is phasing out TFS in favor of Git, so I would steer anyone interested in TFS to look into Git."
"The product needs to stay competitive with its peers like Github, and the adoption of other markup language renderings in the code section of TFS."
"For JIRA, in comparison to other solutions, such as TestRail, Zephyr is good, but it is not as good as DFS."
"The solution is not really stable. Sometimes in the past, some pages wouldn't load due to issues."
"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."
"We have a lot of automation for our products, and we require a utility for its integration with automation. Currently, we have to write this utility ourselves. It would be great if they can provide such a utility."
"It's difficult to export the test cases in Zephyr, especially with screenshots or attachments, making sharing test cases not very easy."
"The only thing I have missed is an easy way to configure showing the latest execution results of all test cases linked in JIRA (story/epic), thus, receiving the state of a feature."
"Creating better default varieties of reporting would make the product much better and more popular."
"We faced some errors while uploading the test cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
"It is pretty expensive compared to other project management tools."
"The price of the solution is cheaper than other competitors and it is a per-user license."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"We pay subscription fees on a yearly basis and the price is reasonable."
"TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
"TFS is not cheap."
"It costs a couple of thousand dollars for a little more than 125 users, per month."
"DFS is more expensive than Zephyr. DFS is around $32 per person, whereas Zephyr is $10 per person. There is a major difference in the price, which is the main reason why we are trying to shift to Zephyr."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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 improvements. In addition, TFS seems complicated to use and I don’t think it has a very fri...
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 present to a great extent, these are areas where TFS can improve further.
What needs improvement with Zephyr Enterprise?
Some areas for improvement, include its export capabilities. Exporting test cases, especially those with screenshots or attachments, can be cumbersome, hindering easy sharing and scalability.
What advice do you have for others considering Zephyr Enterprise?
I would recommend it mainly for manual testing and test management. Within Zephyrscale, they also have automated testing, however, I would recommend it only for test management. The overall rating ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Team Foundation Server
SmartBear Zephyr
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Hyundai, Fujitsu, Google, David Jones, Burger King, Ingenico, Websense, Dow Jones, Harris, Saab
Find out what your peers are saying about TFS vs. Zephyr Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,880 professionals have used our research since 2012.