Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Jira vs Polarion ALM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
6.8
Number of Reviews
279
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
Polarion ALM
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 12.6%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polarion ALM is 6.1%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira12.6%
Polarion ALM6.1%
Other81.3%
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.
LasseMikkonen - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at byte
Has provided mature traceability and configuration features while supporting complex product development for mid-to-large companies
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and test result management with it, it is very limited. Jama Connect has similar limitations, and both should really focus on developing the integrations and extendability. For example, Jama Connect does not even have an extension marketplace, whereas Polarion has a small one. However, compared to the Atlassian Marketplace where you can get whatever applications for whatever price, it is a totally different ballgame. I would highly recommend Polarion ALM add more AI features to it. I know they have started to do something, but for example, I have been developing widgets for IBM DOORS Next, AI widgets, so that you can write and analyze requirements with the AI, and I have also done the same for Jira, creating a couple of Jira applications in the marketplace as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a user friendly solution."
"Jira has impacted the productivity and cost efficiency for me and my development team, though I have faced some challenges with Jira during this time."
"The most valuable feature is that it has different APIs available, with good services, and it is completely by the books."
"It's easy to deploy."
"I think one of the most powerful features in Jira is the customization of fields and workflow."
"It is a good defect tracking tool. It has a lot of capabilities and functionalities. There are a lot of graphs and a lot of tracking. It can be sprint-driven if you want."
"The product is good, stable and very cost-effective for small teams."
"It includes by default all the necessary tools for a project manager to work and make their work more efficient."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its browser experience. I rate its traceability feature a ten out of ten. From the initial stage to the release, you can manage everything through a single point."
"It offers good performance."
"The technical support is quite good."
"When it comes to functionalities like a real-time collaboration feature and traceability capabilities, Polarion ALM has had those basic features for the past five years already, and they are pretty mature products that have all the needed requirements management features, such as traceability and reporting, and even configuration management or version controlling."
"The initial setup of this solution was straightforward, and there were not too many problems with it."
"Polarion ALM has some valuable tools for managing our targets and requirements. I think that's its best feature."
"Polarion ALM's integration is very good and easy to use."
"Polarion ALM delivers both document views and table views simultaneously and organizes configurations according to norms and standards."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, we create the same bug with two or three different Jira tickets in my company, which leads to duplication, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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."
"If CI/CD is integrated with it, it would be better. I've used Azure DevOps before, and it's nice to have everything, such as CI/CD Repos and other things, integrated. Jira has fewer integrations. Azure DevOps has an easier interface, and it has got everything in one spot. I don't have to jump around in different applications."
"One thing that I don't like about Jira is that when you do an export, it only allows a thousand issues. So the export feature needs to be better."
"There is a difference between their cloud and their server versions. The next-gen project, which is an advanced feature that allows you to visualize the road map of your delivery over multiple products and over time, is not available yet for the sever version. It appears there in the list, but it's still not right. I've tried to use it many times and I am watching the device show their tracker, but it seems they intentionally want this to increase the utilization of the cloud instead of the server. It is really a nice feature and it's a shame that we don't have it."
"Once a story is closed, all the records, versions, and documentation associated with it are gone. We lose the traceability of what was done."
"The pricing is quite high."
"Integration with some of the automation tools could be improved."
"The weak point of Polarion ALM software is about reporting and time for extraction of the data...The quality of reporting needs to improve."
"The system’s technology is not the most current, leading to missing features that are common in web-based applications."
"The tool needs to improve its planning. It also needs to add more integrations."
"I also recently suggested that CMS consider incorporating generative artificial intelligence into the system."
"Integration requires a lot of effort. You typically need to work with an implementation partner to get it done. Most connectors available for Polarion ALM are paid. Unlike other vendors offering several standard connectors for free, integrating third-party software with Polarion ALM involves discussing and coordinating with the third-party software providers, which requires effort."
"Test management lacks an automated process."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be lower."
"The ballpark figure is about $100 a month."
"We are using the enterprise license which is nice because it ensures that we always have the latest versions of Jira software."
"I am not sure about the pricing, but I know its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Almost everybody uses JIRA nowadays because it is the most cost-effective solution."
"There are other solutions that are free making this solution seem expensive in comparison."
"I don't deal with licensing in my current consultant position."
"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."
"If the pricing would come down and it was more affordable then we wouldn't have to switch."
"You have to pay around 50-60 euros per user."
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
"Software for medical devices is always expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The license model is okay for large companies but would be quite expensive for smaller enterprises."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites solutions are best for your needs.
882,333 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business107
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise150
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
 

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?
Jira itself is fairly priced for the features it provides, but pricing is a bit higher than some alternatives, mostly because many plugins and add-ons are paid and licensed per user. So even if onl...
What needs improvement with Polarion ALM?
Polarion ALM can learn from Atlassian tools a lot, as the usability is not the best, and it is really narrowly focused on requirements management only. For example, if you want to do testing and te...
What is your primary use case for Polarion ALM?
We are in our product development using Polarion ALM's functionalities. I am a power user, partly responsible for configuring the tool. We are using it for many things. The idea was to go for a req...
What advice do you have for others considering Polarion ALM?
The pricing of Polarion ALM and IBM ELM is pretty much aligned. They are not at the same level, but I would say aligned according to the capabilities of the tools, with DOORS being more expensive b...
 

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: February 2026.
882,333 professionals have used our research since 2012.