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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

"The scalability of TFS is good, and we have approximately 200 users using this solution in my organization."
"As the solution is cloud-based, we always use the latest version, and we use it comprehensively for client career management."
"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."
"The interface is easy to navigate."
"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."
"Integration with Visual Studio (VS): I have used other software management solutions with VS, but TFS is the best at the moment."
"As far as queries are concerned, creating, grading, or customizing the queries as a primary requirement is very easy to do."
"TFS's best features include user-friendly test management, bug reporting, and ID assignment."
"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."
"It has integration with test automation tools."
"It has a very intuitive user experience."
"Zephyr Enterprise is a stable solution."
"We use the solution for test case management."
"Zephyr really improves the testing of the product on many levels - planning, test case creation, automation goals, test reporting, and verification of the testing."
"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."
"It has a very intuitive user experience."
 

Cons

"Agile metrics/reporting (if you compare it to JIRA's functionality), as well as more/better customizable widgets to create richer dashboards."
"We encounter issues with backups."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
"The test management interface is not very handy."
"Not all of the functionality, which is exposed by the command line interface (tf.exe) is available in the Visual Studio GUI."
"The interface can be improved and made more user-friendly."
"Technical support is a challenge. It is a pain to get anything from Microsoft done."
"They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers."
"The solution is not really stable. Sometimes in the past, some pages wouldn't load due to issues."
"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."
"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."
"The reporting, and the ability to reorganize the test repository, which are a little stifling. There is definitely room for improvement there."
"Zephyr Enterprise needs to redesign the reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a yearly licensing fee that needs to be paid."
"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."
"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."
"It is pretty expensive compared to other project management tools."
"I wouldn't say that this tool is cheap or expensive but in the middle."
"On a scale where ten is the highest and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's licensing cost at one on a scale of one to ten."
"TFS is more competitively priced than some other solutions."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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
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.
891,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.