Jira vs Microsoft Project
Jira and Microsoft Project are both project management software. Jira is a commercial product from Atlassian. Microsoft Project is a commercial product from Microsoft.
Which to pick
- Pick Jira when
- A software team wants the industry-standard tracker with deep integrations and configurable workflows.
- Pick Microsoft Project when
- Professional project managers in construction, engineering or government need formal schedules and critical-path planning.
Side by side
Issue and project tracking for software and business teams with boards, backlogs, sprints, workflows and reporting.
Microsoft's scheduling software for detailed project plans with tasks, dependencies, critical path, resources and baselines.
It becomes slow and cluttered without careful administration.
Microsoft is moving web features into Planner, and the desktop app is costly and Windows-only.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service, self-hosted server and mobile app
Desktop app and cloud service
Not published (both)
Closed source, sold by Atlassian
Closed source, sold by Microsoft
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code. (both)
3.7k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
1.2k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Other comparisons
More project management tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.