Comparison · figures checked 23 September 2026
Free test case management tools, and what the free tier actually gives you
Half of the tools sold as free test case management have no free tier at all — they have a trial and then a bill. Here is what each vendor's own pricing page said today.
Of the twelve tools below, six have a free tier you can keep using and six do not. Every figure here was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 23 September 2026, and each tool's name in the table links to the page it came from. Pricing moves, so check the link before you plan around a number.
The useful question is not whether a free tier exists but which limit you reach first. On most of these it is seats — three or four people — and it arrives about a week after the tool starts being useful. On the open source ones there is no limit at all, and the cost is that somebody has to run a server.
| Tool | Free tier | Seats when free | The limit that bites | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qarunbook | Yes | Unlimited | It is a runbook, not a full TCMS: no versioned case library, no automation results, no exports | A team that needs everyone working the same plan on web, Android and iOS, with fixes retested |
| Qase | Yes | Up to 4 | 2 projects, 500 MB, 30-day test history, 2 active runs; integrations and custom fields are paid | Four people who want a proper TCMS shape and can live inside two projects |
| Testiny | Yes | Up to 3 | 1,000 items in total across cases, plans, runs and executions; 5 GB, 1 MB per upload | Three people who want a clean modern tool and intend to stay small |
| Tuskr | Yes | Up to 5 | 5 projects, 1,000 test cases, 1 GB, 100 runs per project, and zero API calls per hour | The most generous conventional free tier, if you never need the API |
| Kiwi TCMS | Yes, open source | Unlimited | You run it, patch it and back it up; support is what you buy, not the software | Teams that must self-host, and have somebody to keep it running |
| TestLink | Yes, open source | Unlimited | 1.9.20 is the last of the 1.9.x line; an old PHP application to install and maintain | Teams already running it who have no reason to move |
| TestRail | No | — | 30-day trial, then from $22 per user per month billed annually | Established QA groups that need deep reporting and case versioning |
| Testmo | No | — | Trial only; Team is $59 a month with 5 users included | Teams that want manual, exploratory and automation results in one place |
| TestCollab | No | — | 14-day trial; the $29 tier still caps you at 200 test cases | Teams that want its workflow and will buy the unlimited tier |
| PractiTest | No | — | Trial only; sold in packs of 10 testers, from $5,640 a year | Larger, often regulated QA organisations buying a year at a time |
| Xray | No | — | $10 a month for a Jira site of up to 10 users, then billed on your Jira user count | Jira-native teams who want every test to be a Jira issue |
| Zephyr | No | — | $10 a month for a Jira site of up to 10 users, then billed on your Jira user count | Jira-native teams, with Jira's own reporting around it |
Qase
Qase has a genuine free-forever plan: $0 per user, up to four full seats, two projects, 500 MB of storage, two active test runs and 5,000 API results a month, with a 30-day test history. Its own page describes the plan as being for students, hobbyists, educators and non-profits, which is a fair description of where it stops. Custom fields, dashboards, reports, test case review and all of the integrations sit on the paid tier, which is $35 per user per month billed annually. Source: qase.io/pricing.
Testiny
Testiny's free plan takes three users and caps you at 1,000 items in total — test cases, plans, runs and executions all counted together — with 5 GB of storage and a 1 MB limit on any single upload. That combined cap is the thing to understand: a project with 300 cases run three times has used its allowance. Custom fields, unlimited history, per-step results, CSV and Excel export, webhooks and automation are paid, starting at $18.50 per user per month. Source: testiny.io/pricing.
Tuskr
Tuskr has the most generous conventional free tier here: five users, five projects, 1,000 test cases, 1 GB of file space, 100 runs and 20 test plans per project. The catch is in the small print rather than the headline — the free plan is listed at zero API calls per hour, with no webhooks, no audit trail, no two-factor authentication and no single sign-on. So it is a good free tool for five people working by hand, and no use at all if anything needs to talk to it. Paid plans start at $90 per user per year with a five-user minimum. Source: tuskr.app/pricing.
Kiwi TCMS
Kiwi TCMS is the answer when the data cannot leave your own servers. The source is GPL-2.0 and you can run it yourself, for any number of users, without paying anybody. The subscriptions on its site — from $35 a month — buy tagged builds, a private add-on repository and billing support, not the software; the $35 tier explicitly does not include technical support. The real cost is a server, upgrades and somebody who owns both. Sources: github.com/kiwitcms/Kiwi and kiwitcms.org.
TestLink
TestLink is GPL-2.0 and free to download and self-host, and it is still the tool a lot of teams inherited. Its own site lists 1.9.20 "Raijin" as the stable release, and the project says 1.9.20 is the last version of the 1.9.x family. If you already run it and it works, that is a reasonable place to be. It is a harder thing to choose in 2026 than to keep. Source: testlink.org.
TestRail
TestRail has no free plan — it has a 30-day trial on every plan with no card required. Essentials is $22 per user per month billed annually and caps at five users; Professional is $38 and Enterprise $78, with on-premise requiring at least ten seats and a twelve-month contract. It belongs on this page because it is what people are usually comparing against: if you need case versioning, approvals and reporting that a director will read, TestRail does that better than anything free here, and it is worth the money to the teams that need it. Source: testrail.com/pricing.
Testmo
Testmo has no free tier either, only a trial. Team is $59 a month with five users included, Business $249 with fifteen, Enterprise $599 with twenty-five. What it is unusually good at is holding manual test runs, exploratory sessions and automation results from CI in one place, so if your problem is that automated results live in one tool and manual ones in another, it is the honest recommendation. Source: testmo.com/pricing.
TestCollab
No free plan, and a 14-day trial. The thing worth knowing before you trial it is that the entry tier is not unlimited: Premium, at $29 per user per month billed yearly, caps at 200 test cases, 300 plans and runs, and 1 GB of files. Unlimited starts at Elite, $39 per user per month. Source: testcollab.com/pricing.
PractiTest
No free plan, and it is not priced for small teams. The Team plan is sold as a ten-tester licence pack at $5,640 for twelve months, which works out at $47 per user per month; Corporate needs a minimum of ten licences and a yearly commitment. It is aimed at larger QA organisations with requirements traceability and audit obligations, and searching for a free tool is not how you end up there. Source: practitest.com/pricing.
Xray and Zephyr
Both are Jira apps, and both are billed through the Atlassian Marketplace on the number of Atlassian product users on your site rather than the number of people who open the test tool. Marketplace vendors are allowed to set the 1–10 user tier to $0, and some do; neither of these has. Their listings both price the first tier at $10 a month, or $100 a year, for a site of up to ten Jira users, rising with the Jira user tier from there.
That is cheap rather than free, and for a team that already lives in Jira it is usually the right answer anyway: tests become Jira issues, traceability to requirements comes for free, and nobody has to keep a second tool in step with the first. Sources: the Xray listing and the Zephyr listing on the Atlassian Marketplace.
qarunbook
qarunbook is the tool this page is published on, so treat the rest of this section with the scepticism it has earned. It is free with unlimited testers, unlimited apps and unlimited checks. It is a runbook rather than a test case management system: you import a plan as markdown, it becomes a board of checks across whatever platforms you named, each result carries the name of the person who recorded it, and marking an issue fixed sends the check back for a retest instead of quietly passing it.
It also ships a remote MCP server, so Claude, Cursor or Codex can read what is failing, work the checks it can drive itself, and record results under its own name. The honest caveat on the price: it is free while it is new, and the commitment on the pricing section is that if paid plans arrive for larger teams there will still be a free one.
When qarunbook is the wrong choice
Unlimited seats is the only dimension on which it beats everything above. On several others it loses outright, and it is cheaper for both of us if you find that out now:
- You need a reusable, versioned case library. Checks in qarunbook belong to an app's plan. There is no shared repository of cases with version history, review and approval. TestRail and Qase are built around exactly that.
- Automated tests produce your results. There is no JUnit or XML ingestion and no CI integration — results are recorded one at a time, by a person or by an AI over MCP. Testmo and Qase take automation results properly.
- Somebody wants reporting across releases. qarunbook tells you the state of this pass. It does not give you trends, coverage analytics or a reporting centre. TestRail and Testmo do.
- Everything already lives in Jira. A separate board is a second place to look. Xray or Zephyr will beat it for a Jira-native team, and $10 a month is not the obstacle.
- The data cannot leave your servers. qarunbook is hosted, with no self-hosted option. Kiwi TCMS is the answer to that question.
- You need exports. There is no CSV or Excel export of results today. If a client or an auditor expects a spreadsheet at the end of every cycle, that matters more than seat count.
How to choose in one paragraph
If you must self-host, it is Kiwi TCMS. If you live in Jira, pay the $10 and use Xray or Zephyr. If you need a real case library, reporting and approvals, budget for TestRail and stop looking at free tiers. If your problem is simply that more than four people need to work through a build together and record what they found — which is the problem most people have when they search for this — the seat caps above are the thing that will bite you, and that is the one qarunbook does not have.