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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
7.1
Organizations report enhanced efficiency and quick ROI from Jira, despite some dissatisfaction with recent changes and plugin support.
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.
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
It's always hard to measure ROI precisely, but overall, the development time usually pays off within a year through efficiency gains.
CEO at 2Help
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 relies on documentation and forums, with varied satisfaction in email and technical support responsiveness.
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
I did not face any issues with stability or upgrades.
Senior Director, Head of Information Systems Division at Israel Innovation Authority
Whenever there are issues, the internal Jira enterprise team is contacted directly.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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 scales well from small teams to thousands, offering customization and integration with other tools, despite potential cost increases.
Sentiment score
7.4
TFS is scalable, suitable for enterprises, but larger organizations may encounter challenges; rated 6 to 8 out of 10.
Scalability for Jira is great, and it handles growth easily from 100 to thousands.
CEO at 2Help
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Jira is largely stable, experiencing occasional performance issues, with users valuing recent reliability improvements despite costly enhancements.
Sentiment score
7.7
TFS is reliable and robust, though minor issues under load or specific setups can impact performance, requiring proper hardware.
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 face customization challenges, inadequate search and integration, performance issues, and seek improved interface, reporting, and training.
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
It would be appreciated to have more reporting capabilities in Jira, such as easily exporting capabilities to show how tasks are in progress and how the team is performing well or poorly.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
To improve Jira, maybe some AI features could be added.
Senior Director, Head of Information Systems Division at Israel Innovation Authority
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 can be costly for larger teams due to user count and plugin dependencies, prompting alternatives exploration.
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
 

Valuable Features

Jira is user-friendly with powerful integrations, customizable workflows, Agile support, and robust reporting for enhanced collaboration and productivity.
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
The main feature is the hierarchy, as features can be converted into epics and topics, allowing bigger tasks to be partitioned into smaller ones.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
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
277
Ranking in other categories
Application Requirements Management (2nd), Project Management Software (1st)
TFS
Ranking in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Test Management Tools (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites category, the mindshare of Jira is 13.3%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TFS is 3.7%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Jira13.3%
TFS3.7%
Other83.0%
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.
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
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business105
Midsize Enterprise56
Large Enterprise150
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
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?
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...
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 do you like most about TFS?
Microsoft's technical team is supportive.
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.
 

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: December 2025.
881,036 professionals have used our research since 2012.