A comparison that only makes sense once you notice both products now sell issue trackers, and only one of them also sells the repository.
TL;DR
GitHub charges for the place where code lives: Free at $0 with unlimited public and private repositories, Team at $4 per user per month, Enterprise at $21, with Codespaces at $0.18 an hour of compute. Jira charges for the system that plans the work: Free for up to 10 users, Standard at $7.91 per user on the page's example and Premium at $14.54. Buy GitHub when the pull request is the unit of collaboration; buy Jira when planning has to span teams, releases and dependencies.
GitHub's pricing page runs Free at $0 with unlimited public and private repositories, Team at $4 per user per month for advanced collaboration, and Enterprise starting at $21 per user per month for security, compliance and flexible deployment; the rates shown carry a first-twelve-months note. Compute is metered underneath: Codespaces starts at $0.18 per hour of compute and $0.07 per GB of storage, Git Large File Storage is $5 a month for 50GB of bandwidth and 50GB of storage, and a 30-day trial bundles GitHub Enterprise, Copilot and Advanced Security so the paid surface can be evaluated before a contract. Issues, project boards, milestones and pull requests cover lightweight tracking inside the same product.
Jira sells tracking and planning as the main event. Free is $0 for up to 10 users with 2GB of storage and 150 automation steps a subscription a month. Standard shows at $7.91 per user per month on the calculator's default example, with 400 automation steps per user,250GB of storage and 9/5 regional support; Premium shows at $14.54 with 750 automation steps, approval processes and cross-team planning. Atlassian's own documentation lists $9.05 and $18.30 per user for teams of 1-100 on monthly billing, so the per-user rate is a function of seats and billing cycle. Enterprise is annual only and quoted, with 1,000 automation steps per user and Atlassian Guard included. Rovo credits are bundled per tier at 25, 70 and 150 per user a month.
| Feature | GitHub | Jira |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free: $0, unlimited public and private repositories | Free: $0 for up to 10 users,2GB storage,150 automation steps a month |
| Entry paid plan | Team: $4 per user/month, advertised with a first-12-months rate | Standard: $7.91 per user/month as shown, $9.05 for teams of 1-100 on monthly billing |
| Upper paid plan | Enterprise: starting at $21 per user/month, security and compliance features | Premium: $14.54 per user/month as shown, $18.30 for teams of 1-100 on monthly billing |
| Quote-based tier | Advanced Security and enterprise agreements handled through sales | Enterprise: annual contract only, quoted through sales, with Atlassian Guard |
| Storage and compute | Codespaces from $0.18 per hour of compute and $0.07 per GB; Git LFS $5 a month for 50GB | 2GB storage on Free,250GB on Standard, higher on Premium |
| AI pricing | Copilot sold separately; a 30-day trial bundles Enterprise, Copilot and Advanced Security | Rovo credits bundled:25 per user on Standard,70 on Premium,150 on Enterprise |
| Automation and CI | Actions usage metered with compute fees on top of the plan | Automation steps pooled per user:150, 400, 750, 1,000 across tiers |
| Work tracking | Issues, project boards, milestones and pull requests tied to pull requests | Backlogs, boards, timelines, sprints, dependencies and release planning |
| Platform | Web, desktop, command line and mobile apps | Web, iOS and Android, plus Atlassian Marketplace apps |
| Offline mode | Not covered on github.com/pricing | Not covered on Atlassian's Jira pricing page |
| Billing note | Per-user monthly rates with a first-twelve-months note on the listed price | Annual billing charged by seat tier, advertised at up to 17% below monthly |
Pick GitHub if
Code-first teams get issues, boards and review in the same place the code already is, at $4 per user per month for Team, with cloud dev environments billed at $0.18 an hour when a contributor needs one. It is the cheaper of the two and the one with fewer ceremonies, at the cost of planning structure above the team level.
Pick Jira if
Organizations coordinating several teams against release dates get dependencies, approvals, release planning and permission schemes that GitHub does not attempt, at $7.91 per user per month on the page's example. The price is a function of seats and billing cycle, and automation runs on a published allowance per user.
No independent reviews were collected for this pairing: the figures come from github.com and Atlassian's Jira pricing pages, and the cards repeat only vendor-published claims.
Yes at every published tier: GitHub Team is $4 per user per month against Jira Standard at $7.91 on the page's example, and GitHub Enterprise is $21 against Jira Premium at $14.54 only when Jira's calculator sits on its default example. Jira's free plan covers ten users, which is generous, but once a team pays, GitHub's list prices are lower.
No. Jira tracks work; repositories, pull requests and CI run somewhere else, most often GitHub. The two are typically connected rather than replaced, with Jira reading commit and pull-request status.
For a single team, usually yes: issues, project boards, milestones and automations cover the basics at no extra cost. Across teams, Jira adds sprint commitments, dependency management, release planning and approval workflows that GitHub does not model.
GitHub sells Copilot as a separate product and currently offers a 30-day trial bundling Enterprise, Copilot and Advanced Security. Jira includes Rovo credits with each paid tier,25 per user on Standard,70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise, so the AI cost is folded into the seat.
Compute and storage when you use them: Codespaces from $0.18 an hour of compute plus $0.07 per GB of storage, and Git Large File Storage at $5 a month for 50GB of bandwidth and 50GB of storage. Actions usage is metered as well and sits on top of the plan.
Jira, because its free tier is limited to ten users and its structure is built for planning rather than repositories. A marketing or operations group using GitHub would be paying for code hosting it does not touch.
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