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Jira vs TFS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Jira enhances ROI with cost savings, efficiency, productivity, task management, sprint tracking, process streamlining, flexibility, and integration.
Sentiment score
7.2
TFS enhances productivity and cost-efficiency by automating processes, integrating with Microsoft products, and improving software development for oil and gas.
Overall, the ROI mainly came from improved team productivity, better project visibility, reduced coordination efforts, faster issue tracking, and more predictable delivery execution.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
A return on investment has been seen with Jira, as a lot of time has been saved in arranging tasks, converting software features into epics, tasks, and milestones, making it easy to track progress and plan future roadmaps.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We implement it and track it with the help of the time tracking feature, which makes it quite easy to manage everything in a single platform.
Technical Lead at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Integrating TFS with Visual Studio and Azure Cloud has improved our development processes by providing better integration and reducing errors.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Jira's customer service receives mixed reviews, with praise for responses but criticism for support delays and lack of phone help.
Sentiment score
6.9
Users praise TFS support for its excellence, quick responses, and resources, although some suggest improvements in response time and SLAs.
Jira's customer support is one of the best I have ever dealt with because they respond quickly.
CEO at 2Help
They usually reach out within one to two business days and give specific answers.
Senior Technical Support Engineer I at Krisp
Atlassian's biggest strength is its self-service ecosystem: documentation, community discussions, and integrations.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
as a Microsoft product, it might have limited global documentation or support options compared to GitLab.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Jira is scalable, supporting teams of all sizes, though some face challenges with administration and customization at scale.
Sentiment score
7.4
TFS is scalable, suitable for enterprises, but larger organizations may encounter challenges; rated 6 to 8 out of 10.
In our experience, Jira scales well across team size growth, multiple departments, larger project portfolios, and complex Agile environments.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
As the number of users, projects, and work items grows, Jira can scale effectively.
Integration Supervisor Lead at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Jira supports a growing user base, multiple workflows, integrations, and enterprise-level project management needs.
Software Engineer at ValueMomentum
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Jira is reliable with high uptime, though occasional slowdowns or disruptions may occur due to customization or server issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
TFS is reliable and robust, though minor issues under load or specific setups can impact performance, requiring proper hardware.
It handles team collaborations and large workloads consistently very well.
Software Engineer at ValueMomentum
Downtime is very rare.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
In my experience, Jira is stable, with around 99% uptime.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Its stability is lacking as we have encountered security leaks and glitches.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Jira users seek better customization, simpler UI, improved integration, enhanced performance, and more affordable add-ons for a smoother experience.
TFS requires improved interface, tool integration, agile features, merging, reporting, affordability, stability, cloud synergy, and performance enhancements.
Focus more on improving API integration and automation tools, not just the design.
CEO at 2Help
One feature that could improve Jira is the integration of AI capabilities, such as organizing Jira tasks autonomously with minimum human intervention and executing aggregations and clustering of these tasks.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
A simpler user experience for new users is necessary.
Senior Quality Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
TFS is not as fast, easy to use, or configurable as GitLab, despite moving into the cloud.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I am content with how TFS is structured now, particularly the Azure version.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
 

Setup Cost

Jira's pricing depends on team size, deployment, and plugins, with cloud generally cheaper but scaling costs for enterprises.
Enterprise TFS users experience varied costs; many manage expenses with agreements, praising integration despite fewer features than HPE ALM.
Even if only five people from your team use a financial plugin, you still pay for all 100 seats.
CEO at 2Help
Overall, Jira offers good value for an organization that actively uses its capabilities, but companies should plan carefully for long-term scaling costs, especially in large enterprise environments with many users and plugins.
SDE 2 at Virtusa
 

Valuable Features

Jira offers excellent bug tracking, project management, and agile support with customizable workflows and strong integration with Atlassian tools.
TFS integrates with Visual Studio, enhancing version control, lifecycle management, and Agile support, valuable for diverse development needs.
You can build your own workflows and make it work exactly the way your team needs and integrate it with almost every third-party software.
CEO at 2Help
Agile boards give instant visibility into what is in progress, blocked, or completed. It provides clear status and ownership, which helps the team stay aligned without constant follow-ups.
Senior Quality Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Jira has helped not only our organization but many organizations to be very focused and understand what needs to be done and to prioritize things effectively.
Senior Technical Support Engineer I at Krisp
The integration with Azure DevOps also offers seamless functionality for CI/CD processes.
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
Makes it easier for me to create builds and release pipelines without needing to program YAML files.
IT Manager at a tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Jira
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
283
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 11.0%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 4.3%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Jira11.0%
TFS4.3%
Other84.7%
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
 

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.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business108
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise152
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise64
 

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?
In terms of pricing and setup cost, my experience with the pricing and licensing of Jira was generally positive, especially compared to the operational value it provides for project management and ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Jira Software
Team Foundation Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Square, Nasa, eBay, Cisco, SalesForce, Adobe, BNP Paribas, BMW and LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Find out what your peers are saying about Jira vs. TFS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.