Jira vs Plane
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — Jira is from $8/user/mo, Plane is free tier available.
- How to start: Jira is from $8/user/mo, Plane is free tier available.
- Where they differ: only Jira has mobile app and only Plane has open source / self-hostable; both offer public api and sso (saml).
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What Jira is
Jira is the industry standard for professional software teams worldwide using Agile methodologies. Built by Atlassian, it flawlessly tracks every step of the software lifecycle (planning, coding, testing, release). It offers deep tools for Scrum and Kanban and is unmatched in bug tracking and workflow customization. For a professional engineering team, Jira is not just an option—it is a necessity for managing complex builds.
What Plane is
Plane is open-source project management with issues, cycles and modules, available self-hosted or cloud. Self-hosting puts issue history and roadmaps inside your own network, which is the deciding factor for teams that cannot use a hosted tracker. Being younger than the incumbents, it has fewer integrations, and that is the gap to weigh.
Side by side
What Jira is built to do
- Scrum & Kanban
- World-class tools for sprint planning and backlog management.
- Advanced Roadmaps
- Plan future projects and team capacity over the long term.
- JQL Querying
- Search through thousands of tasks by writing your own custom queries.
- Automation Engine
- Trigger task updates based on developer actions like pushing code.
What Plane is built to do
- Issues, cycles and modules
- Organises work into sprints and larger delivery modules.
- Self-hosted option
- Runs on your own infrastructure with the same feature set as cloud.
- Open-source codebase
- Allows inspection and modification rather than only configuration.
Choose Jira if
- Software Engineers, Product Owners, and QA Teams.
Choose Plane if
- Teams that want issue tracking without a per-seat bill or third-party hosting.
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
Jira: pros & cons
- Dev Focused: Offers the exact workflows and terminology that engineers need.
- Infinite Customization: Define exactly what every button and status does in detail.
- Advanced Reporting: The best in the market for burndown charts and velocity tracking.
- Ecosystem: Works as a unified system with Bitbucket, GitHub, and Confluence.
- Difficult Setup: Configuring initial settings can require a dedicated 'Jira Admin.'
- Complex UI: Can be intimidating and confusing for non-technical team members.
- Speed: Page loads can be slow for massive enterprise-level projects.
Plane: pros & cons
- Open source and self-hostable
- Familiar issue and cycle model
- No per-seat licence when self-hosted
- Younger and less polished than commercial rivals
- Self-hosting is your responsibility
- Smaller integration ecosystem
Our verdict on Jira
The world's most powerful tool for managing professional software development processes.
Our verdict on Plane
The open-source answer to Linear and Jira. Expect rough edges in exchange for control.