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Jira is still free for up to 10 users. Standard is $7.91 per user a month, Premium $14.54.
The complaint on Reddit is rarely the price. It is that teams use maybe 3 to 5 per cent of what Jira does and pay in configuration time for the rest.
Prices were checked against each vendor’s own pricing page on 6 September 2026.
The best Jira alternatives at a glance
The one developers keep naming, the one you already have with your repository, and the one you can host yourself.
Linear
Fast, opinionated, loved
Free / $10 a userGitHub Projects
Already in your repo
Free with GitHubRedmine
Open source, self-hosted
Free, open sourceLinear
The developer favourite
The name that comes up first in almost every thread about leaving Jira, usually with the word “fast” attached. Keyboard-driven, opinionated, and deliberately narrow: cycles, projects, issues, and very little else to configure. Basic is $10 per user a month billed yearly for unlimited issues and five teams; Business is $16. The free plan supports unlimited members, which suits a small team properly.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Unlimited members, two teams and 250 issues, including the agent platform.
GitHub Projects
You already pay for it
The cheapest credible answer, because it is already there. Issues, boards, tables, custom fields, iterations and roadmaps, all attached to the code they describe. Pull requests close issues automatically, which removes the status update nobody wants to write. It is weaker on cross-team reporting and portfolio views, which is exactly the Jira feature most teams never used.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Included with GitHub, including on free accounts, for public and private repositories.
GitLab
If you want it all in one
Repository, CI, issue tracking, epics, milestones and sprints in a single product, self-hosted or on their cloud. The argument for it is the same as against Jira in reverse: instead of connecting a tracker to a repository, you buy one thing. The free tier is unusually complete, and the self-managed edition means the whole toolchain can sit inside your network.
Free tier: Free tier: yes, including issues, boards, epics on some tiers and CI minutes.
Redmine
Old, free, still working
Two decades old and still the default answer when someone asks for a FOSS Jira. Issue tracking, Gantt charts, wikis, time tracking, per-project roles, and a plugin ecosystem that covers most gaps. It looks its age and setup is a real afternoon. In exchange there is no licence, no seat count and no vendor.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Open source, self-hosted, no per-user cost.
Plane
The modern open-source one
What Redmine would look like if it were designed this decade: cycles, modules, issue relations, a clean board and a genuinely usable interface. Self-host it or use their cloud. Younger than the alternatives, so fewer integrations, but it is the option to look at if you want open source without the 2005 interface.
Free tier: Free tier: yes. Open source and free to self-host, with a paid hosted option.
YouTrack
Powerful queries, fair pricing
JetBrains’ tracker, and the one to look at if the reason you tolerate Jira is its query language. YouTrack search is faster and more expressive, agile boards are properly configurable, and it includes time tracking and a knowledge base. Available as cloud or self-hosted, and it integrates tightly with JetBrains IDEs.
Free tier: Free tier: yes, for a small number of users, cloud or self-hosted.
| # | Tool | Best for | Free tier | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Linear | The developer favourite | Yes, 2 teams, 250 issues | Free / $10 a user monthly |
| 02 | GitHub Projects | You already pay for it | Yes, included | Free with a GitHub account |
| 03 | GitLab | If you want it all in one | Yes, generous | Free tier, paid per user |
| 04 | Redmine | Old, free, still working | Yes, fully free | Free, open source |
| 05 | Plane | The modern open-source one | Yes, self-hosted free | Free, open source, paid cloud |
| 06 | YouTrack | Powerful queries, fair pricing | Yes, small teams | Free tier, then paid per user |
Is Jira still free?
Yes, for up to ten users, and the free plan is not a token. Unlimited projects, tasks and forms, backlog, board, timeline and calendar views, reports, 150 automation steps a month and 2 GB of storage.
Above ten people, Standard is $7.91 per user a month and Premium $14.54. For a team of thirty on Standard that is about $2,848 a year.
So price alone rarely explains why people leave. In a November 2025 thread on r/webdev that ran to 268 replies, the complaint was different: the team used maybe three to five per cent of what Jira offers and felt they were paying in complexity for the rest. The most upvoted answers were GitHub Projects, Linear and “just use GitLab”.
Jira alternatives compared
Cheapest paid tier and what the free tier really allows, checked against each vendor’s own page on 6 September 2026.
The question to answer before you look at tools
Is your tracker for the engineers, or for the people asking engineers what is happening?
Jira is unusual in trying to serve both, which is where the configuration burden comes from. Custom fields, permission schemes and workflows exist because someone in another department needed a report.
If the tracker is for the team doing the work, Linear, GitHub Projects or Plane will feel like relief. They are opinionated, fast, and there is almost nothing to configure.
If it is for portfolio reporting across departments, be careful. That is the part Jira genuinely does well, and the lighter tools do not replace it. Moving anyway means someone rebuilds those reports by hand, and they will not thank you.
Answer that first and the shortlist writes itself.
Open source is a real option here
Unusually for this category, the free software answers are mature rather than aspirational.
Redmine has been running production teams since 2006. Plane is the modern equivalent. GitLab self-managed puts repository, CI and tracker on your own infrastructure. All three remove per-seat cost entirely.
What self-hosting costs instead is attention: backups, upgrades, and someone who owns it. For a team with infrastructure people that is a rounding error. For a team of six without them, a $10 seat is cheaper than an outage.
Agile or waterfall, and does the tool decide?
People ask whether Jira is agile or waterfall. The honest answer is that it is neither: it will model both, and it will model a broken process just as faithfully as a good one.
Every tool on this page can run Scrum, Kanban or something in between. None of them will fix a process where estimates are treated as commitments or where the backlog is a wish list nobody grooms.
The UK Government Digital Service publishes its delivery guidance openly, written by teams who ship rather than vendors who sell. It is a better place to start than any tool comparison, including this one.
How we test and price these tools
Every price here was read from the vendor’s own pricing page in a browser on 6 September 2026, not copied from another round-up. Where pricing is billed yearly at the advertised rate, we say so.
For issue trackers we compare what the free tier caps: users, issues or teams. We also check whether an export carries issue history, comments and links, because that is what makes a migration reversible. Tools that only export a flat CSV are noted as such.
We read current Reddit threads for each tool, so the views here are from this year and last. No vendor pays for a place on this list.
Jira alternatives FAQs
Taken from Google’s results and current threads on Reddit.
How we test01 Is Jira still free?
Yes, for up to ten users, with unlimited projects and tasks, all the main views, reports, 150 automation steps a month and 2 GB of storage. Above ten people, Standard is $7.91 per user a month and Premium is $14.54.
02 What is the best free Jira alternative?
GitHub Projects if your code is already on GitHub, because it is included at no cost and issues close from pull requests. Linear free supports unlimited members with two teams and 250 issues. For no limits at all, self-host Redmine or Plane.
03 What is the best open-source, self-hosted Jira alternative?
Plane for a modern interface, Redmine if you want something proven that has been running teams since 2006, and GitLab if you want repository, CI and issue tracking in one self-managed product. All three remove per-seat costs.
04 Is Linear better than Jira?
For a single product team, most developers say yes: it is faster, keyboard-driven and has almost nothing to configure. For portfolio reporting across many departments, no. Linear is deliberately narrow, which is the point and also the limitation.
05 Is Jira agile or waterfall?
Neither. It models Scrum, Kanban and traditional plans equally well, which is why it needs so much configuration. The methodology comes from your team, not the tool, and no tracker will fix a process where the backlog is never groomed.
06 Is there a Microsoft alternative to Jira?
Azure DevOps Boards, which is included with Azure DevOps and free for small teams. It is closer to Jira in capability than Microsoft Planner and integrates with Azure Pipelines and Repos. Worth checking first if your organisation is already on Microsoft infrastructure.
07 Can I move my Jira history to another tool?
Partly. Most tools import issues, comments and basic fields from a CSV or a Jira export. What tends to break is issue links, custom field configurations, sprint history and attachments. Export before you cancel, and keep the Jira instance read-only for a period rather than deleting it.
Browse every alternatives guide, or start with the dev tools category.