Introduction

Various factors, such as your current and future needs, growth estimation, and support requirements, should be considered when considering the price of Jira. Whether you choose to use the Cloud or Data Center platform, it's crucial to be well-prepared according to your budget. Let's take a closer look at the different pricing plans and what to consider when planning your budget for Jira.

Cloud pricing plans

If you are using a cloud platform, you have the flexibility to choose from various plans, ranging from free to Enterprise. Let's explore all the options.

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Free plan

The Atlassian free plan is suitable for small teams of up to 10 users but has limited capabilities. Although this plan allows you to perform most of the essentials, it's important to understand its limitations.

One major limitation is storage. The total storage limit is 2GB; if you attach files to your issues, the storage can quickly fill up. When you reach your storage limit (this applies to all plans), you'll need to upgrade to a higher plan or delete content to free up storage space. Atlassian won't remove any of your data, but some actions in Jira will become restricted until you upgrade or free up storage.

To check your storage usage, follow these steps:

1. Go to admin.atlassian.com.

2. Select "Products".

3. Under "Site settings" select "Storage."

4. you'll see the amount of storage used and the amount remaining.

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For more information about storage limitations, check this formal Atlassian piece: Track storage across your organization.

The free plan also limits you to 100 automations per month. Atlassian recently changed the way they count automation rules. For more information, check Atlassian's New Billing Model: Impact on Your Automation Rules. For tips and examples, check the following article: Top Use Cases for Jira Automation Rules: Real-World Examples.

Another significant limitation is the lack of user roles and permissions. If you need one of these capabilities, you must upgrade your plan. Mail notifications are also limited. Jira's free plan limits email notifications to 100 per day; after reaching the limit, notifications will pause and resume the following day.

I recommend using the free plan if your team has up to 10 users and you have no budget. Another case where the free plan may be helpful is when you want to test a new application without disrupting the production site or using it as a training environment.

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Standard Plan

The standard plan is ideal for teams with over ten users and removes the free plan limitations.

With the standard plan, your storage limitation goes up to 250G, giving you the flexibility to save data on your Jira issues. Like the free plan, when the storage limit is reached, you'll need to upgrade to a higher plan or delete content to free up storage space.

The plan includes user roles, permissions, and the ability to grant anonymous access, allowing people outside your organization to view and create issues without logging in. It also allows external partners to see work in progress on joint projects or permits customers to submit bugs and feature requests. To learn more about how to grant anonymous access, check Allow anonymous access to projects.

Please be aware that this plan limits you to 1700 automation rule executions per month. If you exceed this limit, your automation will stop working until the end of the month. You can monitor your monthly usage of Jira automation rules by going to the automation rules page and clicking "Usage."

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The cost of the standard plan will depend on the number of users and whether you pay monthly or annually. The price per user will decrease as the number of users in your team increases.

If you choose to pay monthly, the cost per user will depend on the number of users. The more users you have, the less you will pay per user. The price ranges from $8.15 for a single user to $3.25 for the maximum permitted number of users, 50,000.

The cost will depend on the number of users and their respective tiers if you pay yearly.

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Most customers choose the standard plan, as it offers most of Jira's capabilities at a reasonable cost. However, if the standard plan's capabilities are insufficient for your needs, or you reach one of the plan limits and have the budget, upgrading to the premium plan may be a good option.

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Premium Plan

The premium plan removes limitations and includes advanced features.

Let's review the most essential features of this plan:

Automation rules:

The free plan comes with 100 monthly rule runs, while the Standard plan has 1,700 in total. Premium has 1,000 rule runs per paid user per month. One hundred users on the Premium plan would pool 100,000 rules per month for Jira.

Sandbox:

A sandbox is a secure and isolated environment that allows you to test your changes without affecting your production environment. The sandbox environment replicates your production environment, enabling you to try, train, and modify your Jira data and configurations without affecting the live environment.

By subscribing to the premium plan, you can create a sandbox environment at no extra cost.

Check this article, “Navigating the Atlassian Cloud Sandbox,” to learn more about Jira sandbox.

Advanced planning:

Advanced planning is a set of capabilities offered within a feature called Plans.

Plans, which are included with Jira Software Premium, let you combine issues from boards, projects, and filters to create an all-encompassing plan that spans multiple teams or your entire organization. You can use this plan to estimate release dates for cross-team projects, answer staffing and resource questions, or map out your organization's yearly goals.

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Check the following Atlassian documentation, “Advanced planning guide in Jira,” to learn more about advanced planning in Jira.

Project archiving:

Archive projects and their associated issues when they're no longer active to keep projects tidy, helping ensure everyone on your team has the most updated information.

Read “Archive a project in Jira cloud” to learn more about achieving a project.

The premium plan has additional features like admin insights, which give you visibility and a better understanding of your product usage, and a release track that controls release tracks, which allows you to know when and how to release changes to users. It also offers a one-hour or less response time for critical issues from the Cloud support team and 99.9% uptime SLA.

The cost of the premium plan, however, is significantly higher than the standard plan.

If you choose to pay monthly, the cost per user will depend on the number of users you have, just like the standard plan. The more users you have, the less you will pay per user. The price ranges from $16 for a single user (compared to $8.15 in the standard plan) to $5.55 (compared to $3.25 in the standard plan) for the maximum permitted number of users, 50,000.

If you choose to pay yearly, the cost will depend on the number of users and will be divided into different tiers, like in the standard plan.

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I recommend this plan if you have more than one team and would like to use one of the advanced features that the premium plan suggests.

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Enterprise Plan

The enterprise plan is fit for companies with at least 800 users. It brings additional features such as advanced analytics, scale, and security for enterprises. This plan does not have automation limitations - you can execute your automation without a limit.

The enterprise plan offers Atlassian Analytics, which gives you cross-product insight. It allows you to collect data from more Atlassian products into a Data Lake and present it in one view.

Check “Atlassian Analytics Overview” to learn about Atlassian Analytics.

Enterprise plan support includes a dedicated phone number, quicker response time, a 99.95% uptime SLA, and more. The table below compares the support plans.

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Logically, the cost of this plan is higher than the premium plan. It does not offer the option for monthly payments but only provides annual payments divided into tiers, similar to the other plans:

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I recommend this plan if you need one of the suggested features and have the budget and commitment to a yearly payment plan.

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Data Center Pricing

If you have to save your Jira on-premise, then a Data Center is the only option available.

The cost of  Data Center is less flexible than that of Cloud. There are no monthly options, only tiers starting at 500 users.

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One additional expense to consider is the cost of IT, which includes maintaining production and backup servers and upgrading Jira versions.

If you plan to move to the cloud, you can find all the needed details, including the planning preparations, timeline, preventing downtime, and the different methods you can use for the migration. Compare Cloud migration methods.

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Apps pricing

Whether you are a Cloud or Data Center customer, you should consider the apps’ cost.

Atlassian Marketplace offers more than 5,000 apps to enhance Jira's capabilities, making it challenging to choose the right one.

Check “How to choose the best app from Atlassian Marketplace” for instructions and tips on choosing the right app for your needs, and “Exploring the Atlassian Marketplace: Top Jira Apps of 2023” to explore the best apps for 2023.

The pricing of the apps depends on the hosting platform, either the Data Center or the cloud, and the number of users. Please note that adding new users to Jira may impact the cost of Jira itself and all the installed apps. Each app manages its own cost tiers, so it is necessary to be aware of the cost changes brought by the apps.

I recommend keeping a separate budget for new apps in case new needs arise. You may need to purchase a new app during the year to add more capabilities to Jira.

Summary

Jira's pricing depends on several parameters. If you choose on-premise hosting with a Data Center version, you may only pay annually with a minimum of 500 users. On the other hand, if you choose the cloud option, you have more flexibility with monthly or annual payments and four different plans - Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise, each with its limitations, pricing list, and unique features.

When planning your budget, keep in mind the cost of apps. If you plan to add more users, you will also have to pay more for the apps.

Check the Atlassian Pricing formal page to explore the updated pricing, a simulator to get the exact payment for your number of users, and the Atlassian Marketplace to check the apps' cost.