Is Jira free? What it actually costs in 2026

What the free tier actually includes

• —10 users maximum, on one site
• —2 GB total file storage
• —150 automation steps per month, shared by the whole subscription
• —100 emails a day across the site, notifications and automation together — then email pauses until the next day
• —Every user is an admin: the Free plan has no roles or permissions
• —Community support only, with no SLA

Where the wall is

The eleventh user. There is no gradual degradation here: you either fit inside ten seats or you move to Standard and start paying for every seat, including the ten that were free the day before. Atlassian moves a Free site that goes over ten users onto a 7-day free trial of Standard automatically, with no payment details asked.

After that: On monthly billing, Standard is $9.05 and Premium $18.30 per user per month for teams of 11 to 50 users; the per-user price falls for bigger teams ($7.91 and $14.54 at 300 users). On annual billing Atlassian prices by user band: 11–15 users pay $1,350 a year on Standard or $2,750 on Premium. So the eleventh user turns a $0 bill into about $100 a month on Standard, or $1,350 a year.

Can you self-host Jira? No longer sold

Jira Server reached end of support on 15 February 2024. Data Center replaced it, and Atlassian stopped selling Data Center to new customers on 30 March 2026 — so if your organisation never owned it, you cannot buy self-hosted Jira at any price. Existing customers can still buy new subscriptions and expansions until 30 March 2028, and Data Center reaches end of life on 28 March 2029.

Questions people ask

Can I use Jira for personal use?

Yes, within the Free plan’s limits. Atlassian offers Jira Free as “free forever for 10 users” and pitches its free plans to everyone from “a startup of one” to small teams; neither its Jira pricing page nor its Jira licensing page limits the Free plan to business use. A personal project fits as long as it stays inside the limits above: 10 users, 2 GB of files, 150 automation steps a month and 100 emails a day.

Is Jira free forever?

The Free plan is: Atlassian calls it “free forever for 10 users”, with no time limit. What is time-limited is the 7-day free trial Atlassian offers on Standard and Premium — and going over ten users on Free moves you onto the Standard trial automatically.

Can I still buy a self-hosted Jira licence?

Not as a new customer. Atlassian stopped selling Data Center to organisations that never owned it on 30 March 2026, and Jira Server has been out of support since 15 February 2024. The free routes left are Jira Cloud Free, or an open-source tracker you run on your own server — the alternatives below.

What it actually takes to run one yourself

Real RAM against the documented minimum, monthly cost, setup time, and the one thing that catches people out.

When paying is still the right call

If your organization is deep in the Atlassian ecosystem — Confluence, Jira Service Management, marketplace apps — the switching cost is real, and Jira's free 10-user cloud tier remains a fair deal for a tiny team.

What you are locked into

Projects, issues, workflows, custom fields, automation rules, and dashboards live inside Jira, and on Cloud they reside in Atlassian's environment. Jira provides exports (CSV, and JSON/backup formats) and a REST API, so data is retrievable, but migrating a mature instance to another tool generally means re-mapping workflows, fields, permissions, and automations rather than a clean one-click transfer. Teams also commonly depend on Marketplace apps and tight integration with the broader Atlassian suite, which deepens switching cost. The self-managed Data Center edition reduces cloud dependence but still ties you to Atlassian's annual licensing and pricing.

If you would rather not pay: OpenProject