Top 4 Jira alternatives – The newest and brightest of Agile development

Jira is most probably the number one choice software for agile development. And with all the good reasons. But no one is perfect and neither is Jira. Its fatal flaw? Pricing! Let’s have a look at some worthy and, most importantly, less costly alternatives to Jira.
Ugh… the agile development topic again! Does it ever get old? No, I don’t think so!
And when you think of agile development, what’s the first thing that pops up in your head? Jira, of course!
Jira Software, developed by Atlassian, has been the number one choice among software development tools used by agile teams for quite some time now. And with all the good reasons. Jira is simply great! Not only does it provide great development and project management experience, but also offer a whole range of other tools like handling things such as documentation, help desk, and more.
We have to be realistic, though. There is a huge drawback with Jira and that is pricing. We all love you Jira; we truly do. But you ‘re simply too expensive.
I am not going to get into much detail on this since this is not the focus of this article, but you can have a look at the Jira pricing list here.
And why should you invest that much money when you can have cheaper or even free alternatives? Allow me to present you with some alternatives that, I believe, can hold a candle to Jira and, most importantly, at a much lower, or even no cost.
The new, yet much decorated, kid
First things first. I will start this list with the newest addition to the agile development platforms that is Codegiant.
Just a few months old, Codegiant is an award-winning issue tracking, git repo hosting, continuous integration and documentation platform.
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This young platform has already been decorated with Great User Experience Award and Rising Star of 2018 Award from CompareCamp.

Source: CompareCamp
Key features
- Continuous integration – CI/CD pipelines on a dedicated server
- Documentation – publishable documentation
- Git repositories – private git code management
- Issue tracker – simple yet powerful issue tracking
Pricing
- Free up to 5 users
- Monthly payment
- Annual subscription
Open source delight
OpenProject is a powerful and easy-to-use open source project management software. And guess what; it’s free!
This Jira alternative gives you the ability to improve the individual, as well as team productivity, create more workable roadmaps and plans, execute plans and schedules efficiently, and deliver high-quality results within schedule and, most importantly, budget.
This one is also an award-winning platform! OpenProject received the Great User Experience 2017 award and Rising Star 2016 award by FinancesOnline.

Source: FinancesOnline
Key features
- Project planning and scheduling
- Product roadmap and release planning
- Task management and team collaboration
- Agile and Scrum
- Accessibility mode
- Time tracking, cost reporting, and budgeting
- Bug tracking
Pricing
- Community – free
- Cloud – Fixed price for >= 200 members
- Enterprise – Fixed price for >= 200 members
Too cute for words
Crocagile is a clean and easy-to-use agile project management platform that offers collaboration and gamification features. Not to mention that it is ridiculously sweet and cute!
Its branding and layout will steal your heart! Just pay a visit to the official web page and you’ll get what I’m talking about! I mean, look at this:

Source: Crocagile
But Crocagile is not just about looks; it’s about brains too! In addition to its amazingly playful and easy-to-use interface, Crocagile offers a ton of standout and handy features.
Key features
- Custom workflows
- Kanban boards
- Storyboards
- Custom fields
- File sharing
- Personal dashboard
- Files & docs
- Wallposts & chat
- Reports
Pricing
- Small teams (5 users) – monthly prices
- Growing teams (15 users) – monthly prices
Time to get serious
Last but not least on my list is SprintGround.
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SprintGround is a project management tool designed to increase the efficiency of software and web development projects. This tool aims to improve team productivity, support critical decision-making, and provide effective and efficient means of control and monitoring.
Key features
- Task management – Store your ideas and manage your tasks. Prioritize, categorize, order, filter and search tasks.
- Issue & bug tracking – Allow your customers to report issues & bugs so you can deliver higher quality software.
- Time tracking – Track time spent on development and automatically calculate release dates based on time estimations.
- Development progress tracking – How much work is done? How much is remaining? Are you on schedule? When will you finish?
- Collaborate real-time – See what others are working on. Assign and discuss tasks. Centralize communication.
- Organize ideas & feedback – Track bugs and issues. Capture ideas, suggestions, questions and feature requests.
Pricing
- Free up to 3 users
- Starter (8 users) – monthly prices
- Business (20 users) – monthly prices
- Enterprise (21+ users) – monthly prices
asap
Interesting VSTS didn’t make the list
Hi Scott. This was not intentional, there are plenty of alternatives that haven’t been mentioned. Thank you for your comment though, you are absolutely right.
Ah, the first thing you think of in Agile development is not any tool. It’s the principles and values behind the agile Manifesto, not a tool. And even when you do consider tools, jira is actually the cheapest of the major players at least in the US. I’m not sure where you got your facts from, but starting off with the title that is number one is actually based on the fact that it is the cheapest.
Hi Dwayne. That’s 100% correct, the Manifesto (https://jaxenter.com/the-agile-manifesto-what-it-means-to-us-today-117391.html) is the most important. The rest is the author’s opinion.
Good comment Dwayne. We built Crocagile for exactly that reason. Tools shouldn’t box you into one flavor of agile, they should be flexible enough to respond to changes in your interpretation of what it means to be agile. We wanted to be different, so we focus on listening to our customers and pivoting our direction like a true agile org should :)
Thank you for adding Crocagile!
Has anyone looked at the Pipelines tool from Puppet?
I like actiTIME. It’s not a full project management software, but it is a super nice time tracking tool. actiTIME is well made and it shows in its interfaces and functionality. Here’s the link to it: https://www.actitime.com/about-actitime