What are the differences between Jira Software, Jira Service Desk and Jira Core

What are the differences between Jira Software, Jira Service Desk and Jira Core From Jira 7 onwards, Atlassian has split Jira into 3 different standalone products. This page compares their differences to let people know which Jira edition they need

 
Before Jira 7JiraJira + Jira Agile appJira + Jira Service Desk app
Use Cases
  • General team project collaborations
  • Change Requests
  • Workflow Approvals
  • Task Management
  • On-boarding of employees
  • Tracking of advertising campaigns
  • Bug Tracking
  • Product Management
  • Basic Software Development
  • Kanban Software Development
  • Scrum Software Development
  • IT Helpdesk
  • Helpdesk Ticketing
  • Incident Management
  • Change Management
  • Problem Management
Targeted users
  • Non technical teams
  • Business users
  • Legal teams
  • HR teams
  • Marketing teams
  • Finance teams
  • Operations teams
  • Software developers
  • Scrum Masters
  • Project Managers
  • Quality Assurance Engineers
  • Customers
  • Helpdesk Agents
  • Call Centre Managers
  • Non Technical users
Keywords
  • Tasks
  • Approvals
  • Requests
  • Forms
  • Backlogs
  • Epics
  • Sprints
  • Boards
  • Software development tool
  • Tickets
  • Queues
  • Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  • Knowledge-base integration
Bundled project templates
  • Business projects
    • Project Management
    • Process Management
    • Task Management
  • Software projects
    • Scrum software development
    • Kanban software development
    • Basic software development
  • Business projects
    • Project Management
    • Process Management
    • Task Management
  • Service Desk projects
    • IT service desk
    • Basic Service Desk
  • Business projects
    • Project Management
    • Process Management
    • Task Management
PricingBased on number of usersBased on number of usersBased on number of agents
Licensing
  • Users have access to
  • Business projects & features
  • All JIRA Software users can access Jira core features
  • Users have access
    • Software projects & features
    • Business projects & features
  • End users do not require any licenses
  • End users also have free access to Confluence KB
  • Agents do not require additional Jira Software or Jira Core licenses
  • Users have access to
    • Service Desk Projects & features
    • Business projects & features
Additional notes
  • The software specific parts are removed to make it less confusing for users
  • Release hubs
  • Integration with developer tools like BitBucket
  • Can integrate with Confluence for knowledge base
  • End users won’t be able to access JIRA Service Desk specific features since they won’t be licensed for JSD
    • editing tickets
    • transit workflow status (only with 3rd party add-ons)
    • searching
    • dashboards

Features Comparison

Things you should know

  • The 3 editions have the same look and feel to provide a consistent project experience
  • The 3 new Jira editions can be purchased separately, but they can be installed together to provide a unified Jira instance for an entire organization
  • The number of licensed users are accumulative. This means you don’t need to pay for features that are not needed by every users
  • It is still possible to customise Jira to tailor to your business needs
  • The 3 JIRA platforms are available either self-hosted or Cloud.