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Aside from the free plan, Jira Work Management pricing starts at $5 per user per month, but this can change as you start adding large amounts of users to the plan.
| Price | Users | Storage | Support | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | | ||||
Jira Work Management Free | Jira Work Management Standard | ||||
Free | $5 per user per month | ||||
10 | 10,000 | ||||
2 GB | 250 GB | ||||
Community | Business hours |
This is not to be confused with the Jira software itself. When looking at Jira's main software, there are two kinds of pricing plans: cloud-based options (starting at $7 per user per month), where companies use Atlassian's online service, or self-hosted licensing. Most smaller and mid-sized companies are likely to be satisfied with the cloud services option, since there is no extra worry about managing your own hardware. For larger companies, however, Jira's server and data center options are likely to be ideal given the control they offer.
Jira is a popular name in project management. Developed by the online services company Atlassian, Jira began life mostly as a tool for managing software development projects, but has since expanded into more general usage. Jira uses the Kanban (or board) visual interface, where projects are managed by moving index cards across categories on a digital cork board. The software-specific version is called Jira Software, while the more general project management option is known as Jira Core.
Jira's pricing can get a little complex, but let's take a look at all the various options on offer. We'll be discussing Jira Pricing throughout this article. But, to ensure you don't miss out on the best price possible, be sure to check our comparison table of the Best Project Management Software Deals, below.
| Price | Verdict | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BEST FREE  | BEST OVERALL  | BEST FOR SPREADSHEETS  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |  |  |  |  |
ClickUp | monday | Smartsheet | Wrike | Teamwork | Celoxis | Backlog | Trello | Basecamp | Jira | Asana | Zoho Projects | Workfront | Microsoft Project |
| $25/mo | Free, or $35/30 users/mo | $5/user/mo | $99/unlimited users/mo | $10/10 users/mo | Free | Not available | $30/user/mo | |||||
Slick, simple software with a powerful core, plus a genuinely impressive free tier for individuals, and great value plans for teams. | A great task management system due to strong customizablity and support team, with a generous Free Trial period. | A great tool for spreadsheet-natives, which can take your Excel-based task planning to the next level, and there's a free trial, too. | A feature-rich service with a plain interface that's easy to learn, and has a free tier option to try. | A management tool with a complex functionality. | A good value platform that's ideal for managing projects across growing teams | Modern, professional software with a simple approach and cheap plans, and a great choice for teamwork tracking. | A fairly-priced, stripped-down option best for small teams. | A feature-rich software with a pricing scheme best for mid-sized teams. | All-around great software, thanks to ease of use and a scalable pricing scheme. | A simple project management platform with a strong feature set and an impressive free tier. | A solid project management solution with an attractive free tier for small teams | An enterprise solution aimed at large companies. | A pricey service best for companies invested in Microsoft. |
Jira Pricing Plans
Jira offers two pricing plan options. The first is Cloud, where you sign up for Jira just as you would for any other online service, such as Dropbox or Google Docs. Then, there's the self-hosted Data Center option, designed for enterprises with teams of 500 or more.
- Jira Cloud starts from $500 per month
- Jira Data Center starts from $12,000 per year
Both pricing options have some pretty clear use cases.
Jira Cloud is the online managed option, where companies don't have to worry about maintaining a server or protecting their data. They can just login when they need access to the product, and there it is. This also means that when new features are added to Jira, they automatically come to your subscription.
Jira Cloud also works seamlessly with Atlassian's mobile app, Jira Cloud. This is an ideal service for small and mid-sized companies, who may not have the technical chops – or even the will – to host their own server.
Data Center is intended for enterprises only, with annual subscriptions for a minimum of 500 users. This option adds some key enterprise-level features, including SAML 2.0, disaster recovery, project archiving, and compatibility with AWS. Jira Data Center is only available for Jira Software, and not the more general Jira Core project management software.
Jira Cost Per User
Jira's prices are all on a per-user basis, which is standard for business software. Jira Cloud allows you to input as many users as you'd like to get a per-user cost. This cost scales downwards, meaning the more users you have, the lower the per-user cost – another common approach for business software.
If you have just 10 team members, then Jira Core Cloud costs a flat $10 per month. If you have more users than that, you'll pay the equivalent of $5 per user, per month for teams of 100 or less. For teams with between 100 and 200 members, Jira Core Cloud scales down slowly from $5 to $4.25, depending on the exact number of seats required.
The Jira Data Center license for enterprises only offers preset user packages. It starts at 1-10 users for $20,400 per year. Data Center remains at $24 per user, per year until you get past 10,000 people, when the price finally starts to go down. By the time enterprises reach the highest option of more than 50,000 users, they’ll be charged $9 per user, per year for Jira.
Pros
- Very simple interface that's easy to use
- Lots of helpful integrations
- Scalable pricing structure - the more users you have, the more you save
Cons
- Missing more advanced project management features
- Integrations can be confusing
- Monthly rates are very expensive
Jira Cloud Costs
Jira Cloud's pricing gives you access to Jira Core or Jira Software. Both offer Kanban-style interfaces, with three basic categories for managing your project: To Do, In Progress, and Done. Tasks also support basics like attachments, subtasks, and the ability to link issues to create a task dependency structure.
Jira Cloud is ideal for small and mid-sized teams that aren't interested in managing their own servers. Jira Cloud with Jira Core is free for up to 10 users. After that, you must pay per-user pricing – one hundred users on Jira Core, for example, will cost $500 per month.
Anyone looking to add additional services – such as Confluence, Atlassian's supplementary service that adds document creation to your project management software – will have to pay fees as well. Confluence Cloud pricing currently costs $500 per month for 100 users.
Jira Cloud Tiers
For the major features for the free Jira Cloud tier, you're given 10 users, 2GB of file storage, Scrum and Kanban boards, agile reporting and custom workflows, as well as community customer support,
When going up one level to the Standard tier, you'll be paying around $7 per user per month. This includes everything on the free tier, as well as project roles and advanced permissions. You also get a total of 20,000 users and 250GB of storage.
Finally, the Premium tier ($14 per user per month) will give you everything in the Standard plan, as well as project archiving, admin insights, a sandbox, and unlimited storage, as well at 24/7 premium support lines.
Jira Data Centers Costs
Now we're at the Enterprise level, where the pricing starts to get serious. The big deal with Data Center is that it provides the features which large businesses typically need under a self-hosted option. The idea here is that an enterprise would put Jira in its own cloud, or an enterprise-grade managed cloud.
Jira Data Center boasts a number of added features, including optimizations for Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure cloud deployments; support for SAML 2.0 to manage single sign-on; project archiving to improve performance; and disaster recovery supported by Atlassian.
Pricing options range from the minimum 500 users to more than 50,000, and are charged on an annual basis. The basic 500 user option costs $20,400 annually, while the very top option is $450,000 per year.
Verdict: Should You Pay For Jira?
If you're looking for a simple project management solution, then paying for Jira is a smart choice, especially if you run a team of engineers or tech-workers. However, due to Jira's steep price, it can also pay to look around. After all, a team of just 150 people will cost $1,000 a month to use Jira on the most basic level, and it only goes up from there
For example, for fans of the Jira interface, a better option could well be Atlassian's Trello. This has a similar look and feel to Jira, but is friendlier to non-technical types – and even has a free tier for individuals and small teams. You can see our Jira vs Trello guide for more on how the two stack up.
If you're looking for a self-hosted option, however, Jira is the better option. Anyone who needs to run project management software on their own server (or group of servers) would find themselves well served.
You also only get 2GB of file storage, and you'll have to rely on community support. The free plan might be enough for a tiny company, but you'll need to pay more to really enjoy what Jira can offer.
Jira does offer time tracking. When creating a task, you can specify a time estimate dictated by how long you think it will take. Three colored bars will then show you this time estimate, the time that has so far been put into the task, and the estimated time remaining.
However, some tech-savvy individuals have created an open source app that allows you to use Jira as a desktop client. Keep in mind, this is not officially sanctioned by Jira, so while there haven't been any major reports of mishaps or problems, it's certainly something to be used at your own caution.
Jira does indeed allow you to use markdown on larger text fields. This can be helpful for anyone looking to emphasise certain parts of what they're writing.
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