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IBM Rational ClearQuest vs Jira 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Rational ClearQuest
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Defect Tracking (1st), Software Configuration Management (8th)
Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
274
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Rational ClearQuest is designed for Defect Tracking and holds a mindshare of 41.7%, up 26.7% compared to last year.
Jira, on the other hand, focuses on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites, holds 22.2% mindshare, down 23.7% since last year.
Defect Tracking
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

it_user541326 - PeerSpot reviewer
Tracks change requests, problems, and physical asset management. I would like to see data type for floating point numbers.
Customer Service: Customer service has been adequate. Most of the times we've had any issues IBM has been able to provide a solution. We've dealt mostly with customer service representatives in Brazil. Technical Support: Technical support from IBM is pretty good since you can create a PMR with them and they’re very responsible.
Saroj Ekka - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good repository integration, sprint board and easy to set up
There are some features and reports we need that are not there. For example, if I have to find out the capacity of the current sprint by user and compare it with the previous sprint, that visibility isn't there. We can know the capacity and what happened with the whole sprint, but not for an individual person to see where it's falling and how it's tracking. Report and analytics capabilities are important for a product manager. That visibility is important, so we use Jira. Some of the features are there, and I use my own Excels or other data things to compensate for that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The combination of a highly flexible state machine together with a platform independent API enables possibilities to automate many steps that in many systems are manual."
"It can be adapted to any process flow and easily be integrated with other in-house tools using the ClearQuest API."
"We have found the structure, functionality, and how Jira handles the tickets most valuable."
"Powerful features including a good reporting capability."
"The most valuable features are that it is good for tracking the issues and it provides for the usage of Confluence."
"Reporting: It gives a nice report of my backlog and what my team has currently spent its efforts on."
"The most valuable features of this solution are workflow and reporting."
"It's a Scrum tool, so it's very easy to use."
"Offers a common language set so we can bring people into projects and get them up and running almost immediately."
"Jira is easy to use and there are a lot of tools that are integrated with it."
 

Cons

"Lack of a modern web interface compared to other systems might discourage customers."
"The reporting needs to be better."
"Could be more intuitive."
"Improvements in Jira for the next release could include adding AI tools for dashboarding, making it easier to report insights, and enhancing business intelligence capabilities. It should also improve on-prem support. As far as I know, Jira's on-premise support is being discontinued. From last year onward, they stopped providing on-premise licenses and now only offer cloud support. This shift happened gradually, and I believe they now only offer cloud licenses."
"There's a really steep learning curve for configuration."
"There should be a way to integrate the mobile application or in some way, make it more clear because at first instance, I didn't understand how to use it."
"Pretty much 70% - 80% of the Next-Gen Projects features are still to be developed."
"When we use the plugin in Jira so, there are two different systems which we are working on, Jira and the X-ray plugin. The X-ray plugin should be incorporated into Jira because we have to fetch two reports. One report is faxed through Jira, and one can be faxed through X-ray. So there needs to be clarity about which the Jira team should reflect."
"Jira's collaboration and integration with other apps and tools could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We used to be on a perpetual license provided by our clients."
"It is certainly a long-term solution for our company and for previous companies that I have worked for. They have these long-term term licenses, but I'm not sure if they really pay on a yearly basis. They are certainly using it for a really long period and for a lot of users."
"We have an enterprise license that includes cloud service and support."
"It is very cheap if you forego the local instance and stick to the cloud."
"Its price is fine, but we would like it to be less expensive. We are paying on a yearly basis."
"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"The price of Jira is reasonable."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
29%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Educational Organization
53%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
 

Also Known As

Rational ClearQuest
Jira Software
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Atos SE, STM, Regence BlueCross BlueShield
Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Rational ClearQuest vs. Panaya Test Dynamix and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.