Comparison · figures checked 23 September 2026
Qase alternatives, and whether any of them are open source
People leave Qase for one of two reasons: the free plan runs out at four people, or the paid plan starts at five seats. Here is what Qase costs today, what replaces it, and the honest answer on open source.
Every figure below was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 23 September 2026. Pricing moves, so follow the links before you plan around a number.
| Tool | Free tier | Seats when free | The limit that bites | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qarunbook | Yes | Unlimited | A runbook, not a TCMS: no versioned case library, no automation results, no exports | A team that needs everyone working one plan on web, Android and iOS, with fixes retested |
| Qase | Yes | Up to 4 | 2 projects, 500 MB, 2 active runs, 5,000 API results a month, 30-day test history | Four people who want a real TCMS and send automation results in from CI |
| Testiny | Yes | Up to 3 | 1,000 items in total across cases, plans and runs; no CSV or Excel export while free | Three people who want something modern and intend to stay small |
| Kiwi TCMS | Yes, open source | Unlimited | GPL-2.0, and you host it, patch it and back it up yourself | Teams who need the source, or whose data cannot leave their own servers |
| TestRail | No | — | 30-day trial, then $22 per user per month billed annually, and Essentials stops at five users | QA groups that need case versioning, approvals and deep reporting |
What Qase costs now
The free plan is real and permanent: $0, up to four full users, two projects, 500 MB of storage, two active test runs, 5,000 API results a month and a 30-day test history. Qase describes it as being for students, hobbyists, educators and non-profits learning the basics of a test management system, which is a fair description of where it stops. Custom fields, test case review, integrations, requirements management, dashboards and reports, role-based access, single sign-on and webhooks are all paid.
Teams is $35 per user per month billed annually, $42 monthly, with a five-user minimum, which makes the smallest paid workspace $2,100 a year. Collaborator seats are $10 per user per month. Enterprise is quoted. Source: qase.io/pricing.
Is Qase open source?
No. Its reporters are: the packages that push results from your test framework into a run are open source, and the docs say so plainly. The product itself is proprietary and hosted, and its pricing page makes no mention of a self-hosted or on-premise edition. If what you need is the source and your own server, the answer on this page is Kiwi TCMS, which is GPL-2.0 and built to be self-hosted. qarunbook is not open source either. It is free and hosted, which is a different thing, and worth being clear about if you arrived here searching for a Qase open source alternative. Sources: docs.qase.io and github.com/kiwitcms/Kiwi.
When you should stay
If automated tests produce most of your results, stay. Qase's reporters cover Playwright, Cypress, pytest, JUnit, TestNG, WebdriverIO, Cucumber and most of the rest, so a CI run lands in a test run without anybody typing. Nothing free on this page does that, and qarunbook does not do it at all. The same goes for the TCMS shape itself, a reusable case library with suites, shared steps and a run built from a selection. If four seats and two projects fit you, the free plan also includes MCP server access, so an assistant can work it.
What qarunbook is
A free shared runbook for a testing pass. You import a plan as markdown and it becomes a board of checks across the platforms you named, so a check can pass on web and fail on iOS without a second spreadsheet. Testers are unlimited, and every result carries the name of the person who recorded it. Issues are written in the tester's own words rather than squeezed into a form, and marking an issue fixed sends its check back for a retest instead of quietly passing it. Status is derived from what happened, not stored and edited.
It ships a remote MCP server as well, so Claude, Cursor or Codex can read what is failing, work the checks it can drive, and record results under its own name. See the QA MCP server guide.
What qarunbook is not
- A versioned case library. Checks belong to an app's plan. There is no shared repository of cases with version history, review and approval.
- Somewhere automation results land. 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. This is the gap Qase fills best.
- A reporting tool. It tells you the state of this pass. No trends across releases, no coverage analytics.
- Jira-native. It is a separate board, not issues inside Jira.
- An export. There is no CSV or Excel export of results today.
What moving actually involves
The manual half moves easily and the automated half does not move at all. Take the suites people still run by hand, cut them to the steps a person performs, and paste that into Import a plan as markdown: headings become sections, list items become checks, and you name the platforms once. Keep your CI pointed at Qase, or at your CI's own report, because there is nowhere here for those results to go. History does not travel either, so if the last 30 days of runs matter, read them before the workspace goes quiet.