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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 (2nd)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 21.9%, down from 23.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 8.1%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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 managing software development."
"It improved communication, as it was a popular tool, and most people enjoyed using it."
"We use it for capacity planning. We need to gauge and assess whatever is coming to our pipeline and then everything comes to the pipeline, appears as a pic, and then based on that, we create the story points and we take it from there."
"The configurable workflows and boards make it easy for us to execute and oversee our own unique process."
"It also works well with all the integrated tools that you buy."
"The most valuable features of Jira are all the integrations with other systems. It's not the best in any specific area but it has lots of plug-ins and integrations."
"It is user-friendly, and you can manage your project according to the methodology you want. It is also easy to configure."
"Scaling the product wouldn't be difficult."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
"The most valuable feature is the function of the ALM system."
"The solution offers good integration."
"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."
"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."
"I am impressed with the solution’s stability."
"Scalability is good...The integration is quite good."
 

Cons

"In Jira, sometimes developers are not getting alerts when Jira is moving out of the SLA to the product development team."
"They can maybe dumb down the directions for building the automation a little bit because to be able to build out the automation, I had to play around with it and learn what all the fields meant and what they were referencing. I don't have an IT background originally. My background is in biology, and I got into project management by chance. I am good at it, but I haven't really worked with coding languages. In terms of writing automation, it is easier for devs because they intuitively know what they're being asked, but as a PM who originally didn't have IT experience, it was a little bit daunting at first. It could also have an extra hierarchy to be able to allow tasks under stories. It could be the way it is set up at our organization, but currently, under stories, you can have sub-tasks, but you can't create a task. Being able to customize your hierarchy a little bit more would be beneficial because sometimes, the devs would say, "Well, here's a story, and now we need sub-tasks," but as we were building out the sub-tasks, sometimes we had to go a step lower to dig in a little bit more, and we couldn't do that."
"The initial setup was a bit problematic in terms of getting access to Jira. That goes for a few users, including me."
"The thing I don't like is that it is hard to decide which dropdown options should be selected. When we try and submit it, it will state that there are certain mandates in place. It won't allow us to submit the form unless we fill out all the details."
"The release of a MailServer feature within Jira would be beneficial."
"I would like to see more robust release management within the tool."
"Test case management could be more user-friendly. When we add or update test cases, there should be a better way to organize them within the dashboard."
"There are a limited number of gadgets accessible in Jira; thus, additional ones should be supported."
"One of Polarion's shortcomings would be planning. It can handle plans, but the planning feature is very basic."
"As Polarion ALM is a development-oriented tool, easy support or easy access is provided by default, but if I want to use detailed features, I need to write the script, particularly the VM script, and this is its area for improvement. I want Polarion ALM to have a graphical user interface that doesn't need scripting. In the next release of the tool, I'd like for it to not require scripting and programming because needing to run script language is time-consuming."
"Technical support needs some improvement."
"The solution's editing capabilities need improvement."
"The ease-of-use could be improved a little."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. The product offers flexibility in pricing since it depends on the memory bits you have used."
"I don't feel that price is an issue."
"We have a corporate license, and it is probably based on the number of people."
"We are a regional research and education institute. We're using the free license provided for educational institutes."
"The pricing for Jira is reasonable, although I think they can bring it down because the plugins cost extra."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"We are on an annual license to use Jira."
"We make use of the solution free of charge."
"Software for medical devices is always 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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

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?
Polarion ALM ( /categories/application-lifecycle-management-alm-suites ) could see improvements in performance and scalability. The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing f...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM ( /products/polarion-alm-reviews ) is a tool that delivers both document views and table views simultaneously. It organizes configurations according to norms and standards, making it s...
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.