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TFS vs Zephyr Enterprise comparison

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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
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (9th)
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 September 2026, in the Test Management Tools category, the mindshare of TFS is 5.6%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zephyr Enterprise is 5.0%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Test Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
TFS5.6%
Zephyr Enterprise5.0%
Other89.4%
Test Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

PF
Angular C Full Stack Developer at Great American Insurance
Simplified task creation enhances seamless development workflow
We use TFS for our Agile board to handle our sprints, epics, stories, and tasks, tracking how work is progressing. It is also a repository for managing code changes TFS integrates seamlessly with Visual Studio and Azure Cloud, facilitating continuous integration and continuous deployment, which…
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

"The most valuable features of TFS are the test plans, as we can reproduce reusable test plans in test automation and we have a lot of queries, making this feature very useful."
"TFS sits at the core of our entire software delivery strategy."
"I like the Kanban board. It is very useful in terms of seeing who is working on what and what the current status of work is."
"As of now, there are no products in market which you can compare with TFS which provides you complete integration with different components required in ALM hemisphere, I have tried various Open Source tools, but none of them can match the functionality TFS provides."
"As a QA geek, MS Test is the most valuable component."
"This solution is simple to learn, it's straightforward and you don't need a lot of time to learn the functionalities."
"Since it is a robust solution, I face no performance issues. Also, considering how well the implementation process of the solution was carried out, we never faced any issues while using the solution."
"The most valuable features of TFS are bug reporting and its high performance."
"If anyone is looking for a good, lightweight, flexible and agile test management product, I think they would do very well with Zephyr Enterprise."
"Now, we are getting consolidated reports in one place, we have all our metrics and repository together, and this is helpful."
"It's very simple to use, which is beneficial, and it has 90% of the basic features you need without having to pay a lot of extra money."
"At this moment, it is fulfilling our requirements."
"It has a very intuitive user experience."
"We use the solution for test case management."
"The solution does its job well."
"Zephyr really improves the testing of the product on many levels - planning, test case creation, automation goals, test reporting, and verification of the testing."
 

Cons

"The security model could be more granular."
"Even with VS Code as an open source ID, TFS at the backend as a repository is difficult and integration is complex."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
"For VSTS, more flexibility around the customisation of test reports."
"TFS has room for improvement as there have been global security issues that many companies, including ours, have experienced."
"The product needs to stay competitive with its peers like Github, and the adoption of other markup language renderings in the code section of TFS."
"Overall, I think it would be useful to have something similar where Microsoft comes up with supporting concepts of scaling Agile in TFS so that clients don't have to look for a separate tool."
"There have also been some security glitches with this solution."
"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."
"Additionally, they could improve the daily reporting. It does generate reports, but they are screen based reports."
"For JIRA, in comparison to other solutions, such as TestRail, Zephyr is good, but it is not as good as DFS."
"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."
"It's difficult to export the test cases in Zephyr, especially with screenshots or attachments, making sharing test cases not very easy."
"Security needs improvement to protect customer information better."
"Creating better default varieties of reporting would make the product much better and more popular."
"We are looking for advanced support with integration to CI tools. This is something which Zephyr does not have today."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft products are always expensive. Obviously, they are quality products, but it would be helpful if there was a reduction in price. But compared to other vendors, I think the cost is high."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable at this time."
"There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid."
"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."
"The overall price of TFS is good."
"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."
"It costs a couple of thousand dollars for a little more than 125 users, per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Construction Company
8%
University
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise26
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: August 2026.
911,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.