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TFS vs Zephyr Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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

TFS
Ranking in Test Management Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (8th)
Zephyr Enterprise
Ranking in Test Management Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Test Management Tools category, the mindshare of TFS is 4.9%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zephyr Enterprise is 5.5%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TFS4.9%
Zephyr Enterprise5.5%
Other89.6%
Test Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JM
Director - Quality Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Integration with tool streamlines test management but needs better exporting options
I use it for test management within Jira This tool boasts an incredibly user-friendly interface that integrates seamlessly with other Jira tools. I particularly appreciate its intuitive features for designing test plans, creating test cases, and executing test cycles. Some areas for improvement,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"TFS is more useful, organized and user-friendly."
"TFS is a very easy to use product, scalable and configurable, very well integrated into a native development environment with massive reporting services, and provides end to end Application Life Cycle management capabilities."
"We use TFS for forecast management."
"This tool provides a complete solution for ALM."
"TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment."
"The features such as branching and labelling are very good because they actually help you create a master branch which is a running branch."
"Stability is okay."
"TFS is a good product and you can continue working with it."
"Zephyr Enterprise is a stable solution."
"It has a very intuitive user experience."
"It has many features, but the main things that we need are the test cycles and integration with automation because we have automation for the web and mobile applications. We use it for test case management to run the test cases and get the results. At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements. We are able to get the test execution report and the test pass and fail report. This summary is delivered to our management."
"Now, we are getting consolidated reports in one place, we have all our metrics and repository together, and this is helpful."
"Zephyr really improves the testing of the product on many levels - planning, test case creation, automation goals, test reporting, and verification of the testing."
"If anyone is looking for a good, lightweight, flexible and agile test management product, I think they would do very well with Zephyr Enterprise."
"It has a very intuitive user experience."
"If anyone is looking for a good, lightweight, flexible and agile test management product, I think they would do very well with Zephyr Enterprise."
 

Cons

"There might be some complexity in its off-cloud versions."
"TFS is scalable with different Microsoft tools for test management but it is not scalable with other third-party tools."
"The project management side should be addressed and the project and release planning should be somewhat extended."
"Technical support is a challenge. It is a pain to get anything from Microsoft done."
"I'd like to see some kind of visualization tool for TFS that would make life much easier."
"There are glitches, such as runners getting stuck, deployments generating errors, and it's becoming outdated."
"There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs."
"TFS is scalable with different Microsoft tools for test management but it is not scalable with other third-party tools."
"We would like support for the agile and behavior-driven development (BDD) approaches."
"The only thing I have missed is an easy way to configure showing the latest execution results of all test cases linked in JIRA (story/epic), thus, receiving the state of a feature."
"Creating better default varieties of reporting would make the product much better and more popular."
"Security needs improvement to protect customer information better."
"We have a lot of automation for our products, and we require a utility for its integration with automation. Currently, we have to write this utility ourselves. It would be great if they can provide such a utility."
"It's difficult to export the test cases in Zephyr, especially with screenshots or attachments, making sharing test cases not very easy."
"We are looking for advanced support with integration to CI tools. This is something which Zephyr does not have today."
"For JIRA, in comparison to other solutions, such as TestRail, Zephyr is good, but it is not as good as DFS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs."
"The overall price of TFS is good."
"We are using the open-source version."
"If running TFS on-premise is expensive, maybe you could consider moving to the Cloud and use the Visual Studio Team Services."
"Use the Microsoft recommended “seat-based” licensing model. This allows a single developer with multiple machines to consume only one client license."
"We pay for the license yearly."
"I would like to see TFS improve its web interface as there are some limitations with IDs and the integration behind it and with open source tools like VS Code."
"I was working with the engineering team, and that was not under my umbrella. From what I can remember, its license was yearly. They had the licenses on a per-user basis, and they included MTM."
"It costs a couple of thousand dollars for a little more than 125 users, per month."
"DFS is more expensive than Zephyr. DFS is around $32 per person, whereas Zephyr is $10 per person. There is a major difference in the price, which is the main reason why we are trying to shift to Zephyr."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
6%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with Zephyr Enterprise?
Some areas for improvement, include its export capabilities. Exporting test cases, especially those with screenshots or attachments, can be cumbersome, hindering easy sharing and scalability.
What advice do you have for others considering Zephyr Enterprise?
I would recommend it mainly for manual testing and test management. Within Zephyrscale, they also have automated testing, however, I would recommend it only for test management. The overall rating ...
 

Also Known As

Team Foundation Server
SmartBear Zephyr
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vendex KBB IT Services, Info Support, Fujitsu Consulting, TCSC, Airways New Zealand, HP
Hyundai, Fujitsu, Google, David Jones, Burger King, Ingenico, Websense, Dow Jones, Harris, Saab
Find out what your peers are saying about TFS vs. Zephyr Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.