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

Jira vs SAP Portfolio and Project Management comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

Jira
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
284
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (1st), Application Requirements Management (1st), Project Management Software (1st)
SAP Portfolio and Project M...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Centralized sprint boards have transformed our planning and now improve cross‑team visibility
While Jira is very powerful, there are definitely areas it could be improved, especially for usability and simplicity. One common challenge is that Jira can feel overwhelming for new users. The number of features, configurations, workflows, and settings is huge. Onboarding non-technical teams or new employees sometimes takes longer than expected. A simple default experience for a beginner would help a lot. Another issue is performance. In large organizations with heavy customizations, large backlogs, or complex dashboards, Jira can occasionally feel slow, especially when loading filters, reports, or larger boards. Pricing can also become expensive as an organization scales and multiple Atlassian products and plugins are added. Some smaller teams sometimes feel the ecosystem becomes costly over time. The mobile experience would be smoother for project managers or leadership users who mainly want quick update approvals or dashboard views on the go. Overall, Jira's biggest strength is flexibility, but that flexibility can also create complexity if not managed carefully. Improving simplicity, performance, and ease of adoption would make the platform even stronger. An additional improvement I would mention for Jira is around balancing flexibility with simplicity. Jira gives organizations a huge amount of customization power, which is great. But over time, many teams end up creating overly complicated processes. After a few years, some Jira environments become difficult to maintain because there are many workflows, custom fields, permissions, and automations layered on top of each other. It would help if Jira would provide a strong built-in recommendation or health check for keeping a project clean or efficient. For example, identifying unused custom fields, suggesting workflow simplicity improvements, flagging redundant automations, or recommending dashboard optimization.
Nalin Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Quality Assurance Group Lead at Samsung
End-to-end project management capabilities and offers seamless vendor and client contract alignment
The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously. This creates problems that I have personally experienced. Therefore, these aspects need to be much more free-flowing and seamless. If something gets stuck, it takes time to resolve, and during the contract phase, we have Service Level Agreements (SLAs). If those SLAs are breached, it becomes problematic. Given that there are approximately 3000 projects running concurrently worldwide, utilizing the system with a vast database and numerous activities taking place. It could benefit from decentralization. Currently, it operates as a central system, but if it could be centralized for specific subsidiaries, it would be easier for us to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found Jira to be scalable."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"I would recommend Jira because it helps from a functional point of view and also with tracking defects."
"It is a complete solution, it has more features as compared to other tools, especially the open-source one that we use, and it is also easy to administer."
"I enjoy working with (and can recommend) Jira for a number of reasons. The best features are that it is friendly and provides good visibility. It's to the point and very effective."
"With Jira, you get what you input, in terms of your data; for me, I get what I need out of it."
"Jira can track projects, time management of assignments, and keep everything on schedule. The performance of the solution is good."
"We've found the scalability to be good."
"It improves productivity, cash flow management, and inventory control for clients."
"SAP is gradually introducing more flexibility and customization options to the system, allowing users to adapt it to their specific needs."
"The SAP PPM software is a very complete solution."
"With SAP Portfolio and Project Management we were able to have a full track of project progress and get useful insights about our projects."
"The integration portion with SAP models is valuable."
"The stability is good, and I have nothing bad to say about it."
 

Cons

"I wish the whole workflow process was easier to set up. You put the requirements in and then you send it to the developer. They get a notification. Then they go into Jira."
"In Jira, sometimes developers are not getting alerts when Jira is moving out of the SLA to the product development team."
"The performance is not so good sometimes. I know that fully depends on the implementation and the IT environment of Jira or the version of Jira installed. The performance is sometimes not so good. I would like to have a better response time from the Jira server. And it fully depends on the administration side of the Jira."
"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."
"From an automation perspective, there are more aspects that could be needed, especially regarding natural language reporting in the generative AI context."
"Their support should be improved. They should be faster and more knowledgeable."
"The inbuilt search functionality is quite buggy and lacks even the basic features."
"I think that for users the solution is very intuitive but for project administrators, the way the product is defined is not very intuitive."
"The initial support package of version 5.0 has some setup difficulties."
"The platform's support structure needs improvement."
"It would be valuable if SAP integrated seamlessly with some products like Jira and Bitbucket."
"The system is old, so there are several issues that arise when we fetch data from integrated systems. Sometimes the data gets stuck, and there are instances where we need to access multiple pieces of information simultaneously."
"The product itself could have an advanced analytics layer with an improved user interface that is adapted to the new digital era."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price at the moment for Jira is okay. I'm absolutely not amused with the plans to try to drive us to the cloud or to other licensing models. For the very simple reason that we are a company in the defense sector where cloud is problematic in a number of the domains. We are now approximately 60 users and the new policy will actually confront us with an upscale to approximately 500 users. I find it unacceptable, and may potentially lead us to look for another solution."
"The licensing model is annoying. They nickel and dime you."
"We are on an annual license to use Jira."
"One of my customers told me that they were receiving better pricing for a similar tool from Microsoft."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, and it is based on what you use."
"The price seems reasonable to me. It's very similar to Splunk."
"Compared to the value Jira provides, it’s not that expensive. It has an yearly licensing cost."
"As a company, we get a subsidized price, and it's lower than what's quoted on their website."
"The product pricing varies based on whether the client is new or existing and the complexity of their business processes."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Project Portfolio Management solutions are best for your needs.
913,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise154
No data available
 

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 operates on a subscription model, typically priced per user. It is quite affordable, and the setup cost is low. Licensing is simple and easy to get started with.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Jira Software
Portfolio and Project Management
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Joy Global Inc., Citrix, EMC Corporation, Concho Resources, Concho Resources, RZD Russian Railways, Family Dollar Stores Inc., Lenovo
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Planisware, monday.com and others in Project Portfolio Management. Updated: August 2026.
913,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.