You know it’s the right decision, but having to leave Jira may not feel like good news at first. Just like switching jobs, you will learn a lot in the process, and get the chance not just to recreate what you had in a different environment, but to improve it.
OpenProject is better than Jira, in many ways. There, we said it, and we know that’s a bold statement. For many organizations, fundamental differences around data sovereignty, open source and self-hosting may already make it the better choice. And in other areas, we deliberately do things differently – and, yes, often better.
Why you may have to switch from Jira
Maybe Jira worked perfectly well for your organization. Your teams know how to use it, your processes have grown around it, and you have invested time in configuring it to fit the way you work. And yet, you may find yourself looking for a Jira alternative. At first, maybe not because you want to, but because you have to.
One obvious reason is hosting: Atlassian has announced the end of life of its Data Center products for March 28, 2029. If your organization needs to run its project management software on its own infrastructure, moving to Jira Cloud may simply not be an option.
There may be other reasons, too: data sovereignty requirements, an open source strategy or less dependency on a single software vendor.
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And yes, price matters too. Cost may be another reason to reconsider your current setup. You can check our OpenProject pricing to see what this would mean for your organization. But when choosing project management software, price is only one part of the decision.
Having good reasons to leave doesn’t necessarily make switching easier, though. Just like when changing jobs, you may have good reasons to leave and still feel reluctant to give up a familiar environment. After all, getting used to something new takes time.
The same is true for a software migration. There will be data to migrate, processes that work differently and people who need time to adjust. To make the first part easier, the OpenProject Jira Migrator guides you through importing your Jira data into OpenProject.
So, if you’re making that effort anyway, it’s worth thinking about what you want to get out of it. If you’re looking for a more detailed side-by-side overview, see our OpenProject vs. Jira comparison.
OpenProject isn’t Jira – and that’s the point
When changing jobs, would you really look for an exact copy of your old one? – Probably not. There will be things you want to keep, but also things you hope will be better. The same is worth considering when replacing Jira.
A migration from Jira to OpenProject is not always a one-to-one process. Some concepts translate quite naturally, while others may require a different setup or approach.
We don’t develop OpenProject to rebuild Jira feature by feature. We look at what organizations need to manage their projects, try to understand where existing solutions fall short and, where we can, find a better way to address these needs.
So, don’t just ask what you need to replace. Ask what you want to improve. That’s where the reasons why you have to leave Jira start to become reasons why you may want to choose OpenProject.
Why you may want to switch to OpenProject
So far, we’ve mostly talked about reasons that may push you away from Jira. Now let’s look at the other side: What might pull you towards OpenProject?
Stay in control with open source and self-hosting
If self-hosting is the reason you started looking for a Jira alternative, OpenProject can give you more than a temporary answer to a hosting problem.
OpenProject is open source under the GNU GPLv3 license. You can inspect the source code, modify it and run OpenProject on your own infrastructure. With the Enterprise on-premises edition, organizations also get professional support while keeping their OpenProject environment on their own infrastructure.
This gives you control not only over where your data is stored, but also over the software you rely on. You are less dependent on a single vendor’s hosting strategy and can make decisions based on your own requirements.
Questions around control over your data are becoming even more relevant with AI. Atlassian’s new AI data contribution policy took effect on August 17, 2026, raising new questions for organizations about how much control they have over their data and the direction their software vendor is taking.
For organizations with strict requirements around data sovereignty, this may be what brought you to OpenProject in the first place. With OpenProject, you have the choice to self-host and retain direct control over your data and infrastructure.
Manage more than individual issues and tasks
Managing a product or project is about more than tracking individual issues and tasks. Product teams work with user stories, epics, bugs, sprints and releases, and need to understand how this work connects to larger initiatives. At the same time, organizations need to see dependencies, timelines and risks beyond an individual team’s backlog.
OpenProject is built around this broader view. Work packages can represent different types of work and be structured in flexible hierarchies, while Gantt charts, milestones and dependencies add planning perspectives around the same data. Project phases and phase gates can be used where organizations need consistent lifecycles and governance across initiatives.
Project and product management doesn’t stop at the project boundary: OpenProject lets you structure projects in hierarchies and bring them together in portfolios and programs. Work packages can reference and depend on work packages in other projects, making it possible to plan and collaborate across project boundaries.
A product team may work with user stories, backlogs, sprints and boards, while product or program leads need to understand dependencies across teams and initiatives. Management may need a portfolio-level view. These perspectives can remain connected in the same environment.
Combine classical, agile and hybrid project management
OpenProject supports classical, agile and hybrid project management in one platform. Teams can work with agile boards and backlogs while project managers use Gantt charts, dependencies, project phases and other planning tools around the same project data.
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We use OpenProject to build OpenProject, too. Our Development teams work agile, together with Product and QA, and use OpenProject to plan and manage much of our own product development. Features, bugs, user stories, epics and other work are managed as work packages, while Backlogs, Boards, Roadmaps and other views help teams plan their work at different levels. Most of this product development is publicly visible in our OpenProject Community as part of our open source approach.
Here’s one example of how OpenProject is designed around the way teams actually work: In OpenProject Backlogs, you can organize your product backlog in buckets and view a sprint and the product backlog next to each other, making it easier to move work between them while keeping both in view.
This also extends to larger agile and product organizations. OpenProject can be configured for frameworks such as SAFe, connecting different levels of agile planning with tools such as Backlogs, Boards and Gantt charts.
The point is not to decide whether classical or agile project management is better. It’s to let teams use the approach that fits their work while still keeping an overview across the organization.
Keep more of your project management connected
Project management involves more than planning work. Teams discuss decisions in meetings, document knowledge, track time and costs, and need to understand whether the right people are available to do the work. In OpenProject, many of these activities are part of the same platform and remain connected to the project itself.
Meeting management
Take meetings as an example. You can prepare an agenda, document outcomes and decisions, link work packages to agenda items and create follow-up work directly from a meeting. The meeting does not become a separate place where decisions are documented and then disconnected from the actual work.
Knowledge management
The same idea extends to project documentation. OpenProject includes both an integrated Wiki and Documents, so teams can create and maintain project knowledge alongside their work. In Jira, comparable documentation capabilities are provided through Confluence, which can be connected to Jira through its Docs feature.
Resource management and team planning
Resource management is another example: OpenProject connects resource planning with project data, people, skills, working hours and availability. This helps organizations understand not only what work is planned, but also whether the right capacity is available to deliver it.
Jira teams looking for comparable capacity and resource planning capabilities may use Marketplace apps such as BigPicture or Tempo Capacity Planner. In OpenProject, resource management is integrated into the project management platform.
Time, costs and budgets
Project controlling can stay connected to project execution, too. OpenProject includes time tracking, labor and unit costs, project budgets, and time and cost reporting. Time and costs can be associated directly with work packages and projects, keeping planning, execution and controlling within the same project management environment.
Features you may not know you’re missing: Baseline comparison and more
We’ve looked at fairly fundamental differences. But sometimes it’s a much smaller feature that makes you wonder how you worked without it before. During a Jira migration, you’ll probably ask more than once: Can OpenProject do this like Jira? Sometimes, we’d like to turn that question around: Can Jira do this like OpenProject?
Here are some features that might surprise Jira users:
- Flexible work package tables can be configured, filtered, grouped and displayed as hierarchies, giving you different views of the same project data.
- Baseline comparison lets you compare the current state of your work packages with an earlier point in time and immediately see what has changed.
- Different board types let you organize work by status, assignee, version, subproject, parent-child relationships or freely defined columns.
- Hierarchical custom fields let you structure selectable values across multiple levels instead of limiting them to a flat list.
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These are just a few examples, and there are many more worth looking at. A proper feature comparison deserves more detail than we can fit into this article, so we’re preparing a separate one. We’ll put the features on the table and look at what Jira users can continue to do with OpenProject, where OpenProject takes things further and which features might surprise you. Stay tuned!
Baseline comparison is especially worth showing in action: A project plan rarely stays exactly as it was initially planned. Dates move, durations change and work gets rescheduled. With Baseline comparison, changes become immediately visible compared with an earlier point in time. Watch a short introduction of OpenProject’s Baseline comparison on YouTube.
So, is OpenProject better than Jira?
Let’s come back to the main question. Is OpenProject better than Jira at absolutely everything? No. Jira has capabilities that OpenProject doesn’t offer, and its Marketplace provides a large ecosystem of specialized apps. Depending on your requirements, some of these may be important to you.
“Better” doesn’t have to mean having a longer feature list. For organizations that value open source software, self-hosting and data sovereignty, integrated project management, or the ability to combine different ways of working in one platform, OpenProject takes an approach that may simply be the better fit. And if you have to reconsider Jira anyway, this is a good opportunity to find out.
Choosing a different tool also means accepting some differences. Some Jira concepts will map quite naturally to OpenProject, others won’t. Some workflows may need to change instead of being recreated exactly as they were before. And some features will surprise you in a good way.
Changing jobs rarely feels comfortable while you’re doing it, even if you know it’s the right decision. But looking back a year or two later, the effort it took may feel much less important than what you gained from the move. The same can be true for changing the software you work with every day.
At a glance: Where OpenProject is better than Jira
| Benefit | OpenProject approach | Why it matters when switching from Jira |
|---|---|---|
| Control and independence | Open source, long-term on-premises hosting and data sovereignty | Keep control over your software, infrastructure and data without depending on a cloud-only strategy. |
| Integrated project management in one platform | Planning, execution, collaboration, resources and controlling are closely connected | Keep more of your project management in one place, with less need to integrate and manage additional apps. |
| Flexibility in how teams work | Classical, agile and hybrid ways of working with the same project data | Let teams use the approach that fits their work without losing the overall view. |
| Visibility and governance across projects | Project hierarchies, portfolios, programs, cross-project dependencies and project lifecycles | Understand dependencies, standardize how projects are managed and keep an overview of larger initiatives. |
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Of course, these four points are not the whole story. There are many more reasons why OpenProject may be the better fit for your organization, including individual features that we’ll take a closer look at in our next article. But as you compare the two platforms, keep in mind that “better” is about more than a feature checklist. It is also about how you want to work, how much control you want to keep, and what you expect from the software you rely on.
You may have started looking for a Jira alternative because you have to switch. We hope we’ve given you a few good reasons why you may actually want to choose OpenProject. Please reach out if you have any questions.
