Jira is Atlassian's issue tracker and it is priced as a standalone product. The Jira pricing page lists a free plan for up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage, community support and 150 automation steps a month; Standard at $7.91 per user/month with 400 automation steps per user, 250 GB of storage and 9/5 regional support; Premium at $14.54 per user/month with 750 automation steps, advanced planning and dependency management; and Enterprise as a quote, available only on annual subscriptions. A monthly/annual toggle advertises savings of up to 17%. Atlassian also prices monthly subscriptions on a progressive per-user scale - its licensing page works an example of $8.60 a user for the first 100 seats, $7.30 for seats 101-250 and $6.10 for 251-450 - so the per-seat number you see is a starting point, not a flat rate.
TL;DR
GitLab sells a DevSecOps platform in which issue tracking is a feature: Free at $0 with 5 users per top-level group, Premium at $29 per user/month billed annually with 10,000 compute minutes and 500 GiB of storage, Ultimate quoted on request. Jira sells issue tracking as the product: Free for up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage and community support, Standard at $7.91 per user/month, Premium at $14.54 per user/month, Enterprise quoted. Pick GitLab when planning should sit next to the pipeline; pick Jira when you want a tracker that connects to whatever you build with, including GitHub.
GitLab folds planning into the platform. Free is $0 per user/month with 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes and 10 GiB of storage, and includes issues, boards and CI/CD. Premium is $29 per user/month billed annually, brings unlimited licensed users, 10,000 compute minutes, 500 GiB, team project management and $12 of GitLab Credits per user/month. Ultimate has no public price - the page says 'Get custom pricing' - and adds unlimited guest users, 50,000 compute minutes and portfolio-level planning; the separate Enterprise Agile Planning add-on is $15 per user/month for people who do not need a developer licence.
This is a scope comparison rather than a feature shootout. Jira connects to any CI/CD you choose, including GitLab's, and its automation and workflow rules are deeper than GitLab's issue tracker on the lower tiers. GitLab answers by making the tracker free the moment you have the platform, so a five-person team planning and building in one place pays nothing for planning and $29 a seat only when it needs the wider release tooling. The question is whether your planning tool should be neutral or native.
| Feature | GitLab | Jira |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0: 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes, 10 GiB storage | $0: up to 10 users, 2 GB storage, community support |
| Entry paid plan | Premium: $29 per user/month billed annually | Standard: $7.91 per user/month |
| Top published plan | Ultimate: quoted, 50,000 compute minutes and unlimited guest users | Premium: $14.54 per user/month |
| Storage included | 10 GiB on Free, 500 GiB on Premium and Ultimate | 2 GB on Free, 250 GB on Standard |
| Automation limits | CI/CD pipelines are a product feature, not a step counter | 150 steps a month on Free, 400 per user on Standard, 750 per user on Premium |
| Build and deploy | Included from the free tier: CI/CD, runners, containers, security scans | Not included; integrates with separate CI/CD vendors |
| Non-developer seats | Enterprise Agile Planning add-on at $15 per user/month; unlimited guests on Ultimate | Every user counts as a seat, priced by tier |
| Billing model | Per user/month on an annual commitment; usage add-ons priced openly | Per user with a monthly/annual toggle advertised at up to 17% off, plus progressive seat bands on monthly plans |
Pick GitLab if
If your team already builds and deploys in GitLab, paying for a second planning tool is hard to justify: issues, boards, merge requests and pipelines share one permission model and one audit trail, and the free tier covers a five-person group outright. You give up Jira's deeper workflow configuration, custom fields and the enormous marketplace of add-ons, and you accept that Ultimate's price is a conversation rather than a number.
Pick Jira if
Jira is cheaper than GitLab Premium by seat, free for twice as many users, and it does not care whether your code sits in GitHub, GitLab or somewhere internal. That independence is the whole argument: you can standardise planning across teams that use different stacks. The cost shows up as a second vendor - build, test and deploy still belong to someone else, and the per-seat rate you start with is only the first band of Atlassian's monthly pricing.
No independent ratings, review scores or user quotes were collected for this pair; nothing on this page is drawn from reviews. Prices were read on 2026-10-15 from about.gitlab.com/pricing and from the indexed text of atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing, whose rendered page returned only a title to our fetcher, cross-checked with Atlassian's own cloud licensing page for the progressive seat bands.
For many teams, yes: GitLab includes issues, boards, merge requests and CI/CD in the same product, and Premium at $29 per user/month billed annually covers both planning and release tooling. Teams that need deep workflow configuration, extensive custom fields or integrations with non-Atlassian and non-GitLab tooling usually keep Jira and connect it to their pipeline instead.
Jira. Standard at $7.91 per user/month is about $79 a month for 10 people, against GitLab Premium at $29 per user/month, about $290 a month billed annually. On free tiers the comparison flips: Jira's free plan holds up to 10 users while GitLab's free tier stops at 5 users per top-level group.
GitLab's free tier gives 5 users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes a month, 10 GiB of storage and full CI/CD. Jira's free tier gives up to 10 users, 2 GB of storage, community support and 150 automation steps a month, with no build or deploy capability of its own.
No. GitLab's pricing page displays 'Get custom pricing' for Ultimate and lists what is included - 50,000 compute minutes a month, unlimited guest users, $24 of included GitLab Credits per user/month - without a rate. Enterprise Agile Planning, which gives non-developers a seat at $15 per user/month, is quoted separately.
Not on monthly subscriptions. Atlassian's licensing page describes a progressive per-user scale and works an example for Jira Cloud Standard at 450 seats: $8.60 a user for seats 1-100, $7.30 for seats 101-250 and $6.10 for seats 251-450, averaging $7.06. Annual subscriptions and the pricing page's own calculator give the rate most buyers see first.
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