Jira and Smartsheet compete for the same budget line but not the same desk. Jira's page lists unlimited goals, work items, spaces and forms across Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise, with automation written as a quota: 150 steps a month on Free, 400 per user on Standard, 750 on Premium, 1,000 on Enterprise, and Rovo credits rising from 25 to 70 to 150 per user across those tiers. Smartsheet's page is built around sheets, views and portfolio rollups — Gantt, table, board and calendar views, rich formulas, conversational AI features, unlimited sheets, forms and reports on the Pro plan, then timeline view, workload tracking, admin controls and unlimited automations on Business.
TL;DR
Jira tracks work as issues inside projects; Smartsheet tracks it as rows in a spreadsheet that grew up. Jira's Free plan covers 10 users with 2 GB of storage and 150 automation steps a month, and Standard bills $8.60 per user for seats 1 to 100 on monthly billing. Smartsheet's Pro plan is $12 per member per month billed monthly or $9 billed yearly, capped at 1 to 10 members with unlimited free contributors, and Business is $24 or $19 for 3 or more members with unlimited guests. Pick Jira for engineering delivery, pick Smartsheet for portfolio and program reporting where the grid is the interface everyone already knows.
The pricing structures are the interesting part. Jira charges for everyone who can use the site: Free stops at 10 users, and Cloud Standard bills progressively, documented by Atlassian at $8.60 per user for seats 1 to 100, $7.30 for 101 to 250 and $6.10 above that on monthly billing, with annual subscriptions sold in user tiers advertised at up to 17% cheaper. Smartsheet charges for members and gives the rest of the company a free ride: Pro is $12 per member per month billed monthly or $9 billed yearly for 1 to 10 members with unlimited free contributors, Business is $24 monthly or $19 yearly for 3 or more members with unlimited guests and contributors, and Enterprise is quoted rather than listed. A 10-person team therefore reads very differently on the two bills.
Both platforms then sell the layer above the plan. Smartsheet's page lists add-ons separately: Data Shuttle from $100 a month and Dynamic View from $125 a month, alongside a 30-day free trial with no credit card, and it points out that over 85% of the Fortune 500 use it somewhere in the business. Jira's extras are structural rather than à la carte — sandbox and release tracks arrive at Premium, Atlassian Guard for single sign-on is a separate subscription unless you are on Enterprise, and documentation still lives in Confluence as a second line item.
| Feature | Jira | Smartsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0 up to 10 users: 2 GB storage, community support, 150 automation steps/month | No permanent free plan listed; 30-day free trial with no credit card required |
| Entry paid plan | Cloud Standard at $8.60 per user for seats 1-100 (monthly billing example from Atlassian) | Pro: $12 per member/month billed monthly, $9 billed yearly, 1-10 members |
| Mid plan | Standard adds 250 GB storage, audit logs, business-hours support, 400 automation steps/user | Business: $24 per member/month billed monthly, $19 billed yearly, 3+ members required |
| Top plan | Premium and Enterprise: unlimited storage, sandbox, release tracks, 99.95% SLA, up to 150 sites | Enterprise on quoted pricing with centralized admin and portfolio controls |
| Who pays | Every user of the Atlassian site counts against the seat | Members pay; unlimited free contributors on Pro and unlimited guests on Business |
| Automation quota | 150 steps/month Free, 400/user Standard, 750/user Premium, 1,000/user Enterprise | 250 automations per month on Pro, unlimited automations on Business |
| Planning views | Board, list, timeline, calendar, summary, roadmap and cross-project dependencies (Premium) | Gantt, table, board and calendar views; timeline view and workload tracking on Business |
| Reporting | Reports and insights per project, with portfolio rollups in Premium | Portfolio visibility, dashboards and dependency reporting as the core product |
| Add-ons | Atlassian Guard for SSO/SCIM priced separately unless Enterprise | Data Shuttle from $100/month, Dynamic View from $125/month |
| AI | Rovo credits per user: 25 Free, 70 Standard, 150 Premium | Conversational AI features on Pro; AI enrichment and portfolio intelligence marketed on the page |
Pick Jira if
Issue states, sprint history, per-user automation budgets, audit logs, sandbox and an uptime commitment are all priced into the plan ladder: free for 10 users, $8.60 per user for the first hundred seats on Standard, then Premium for the tooling a release train needs. Non-engineering stakeholders who only want to see status will find it heavy, and Confluence remains a second invoice.
Pick Smartsheet if
At $12 per member monthly or $9 yearly on Pro, with unlimited free contributors and a 30-day trial, Smartsheet lets anyone outside the paying group read and edit without a seat — which is why it survives next to Jira in the same account. Watch the extras: Business needs three members, automations beyond 250 a month move you up a tier, and Data Shuttle or Dynamic View each cost more than a Pro seat.
Figures come from atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing, Atlassian's cloud licensing documentation, smartsheet.com/pricing and Smartsheet's trial FAQ, all read in October 2026. No independent review scores or user sentiment were collected for either product, so none are quoted.
Jira can be free — its Free plan covers up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage. Smartsheet's Pro plan is $12 per member per month billed monthly or $9 billed yearly for 1 to 10 members, so five members cost $60 a month monthly or $45 billed yearly. Jira only becomes a paid line when the eleventh user arrives.
No. Members pay and contributors do not: Pro includes unlimited free contributors and Business includes unlimited guests and contributors. Jira's model is the opposite — anyone who can use the Atlassian site consumes a seat, with Free stopping at 10 users.
It can hold sprints as rows with dates and owners, and it reports dependencies well, but it has no native issue states, velocity charts or release tracks. Those live in Jira, where automation is metered in steps per user and Premium adds sandbox and release tracking.
Cloud Standard bills per user: Atlassian's documentation gives $8.60 for seats 1 to 100, $7.30 for seats 101 to 250 and $6.10 above 251 on monthly billing. Annual subscriptions are sold in fixed user tiers advertised at up to 17% below monthly, so the average rate per head falls as the team grows but the invoice moves in steps.
Smartsheet lists Data Shuttle from $100 a month and Dynamic View from $125 a month as separate line items. Jira's equivalents are structural: Atlassian Guard for single sign-on and directory sync is a separate subscription on lower tiers, and Confluence for documentation is billed alongside the Jira seat.
Smartsheet advertises a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, and you can move between plans at any time. Jira lets Free sites try Standard for 14 days and Premium for 30 days, after which the site settles onto a paid plan unless it is switched back.
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