Comparison · figures checked 1 October 2026
Zephyr alternatives, and why most Jira teams should stay
Zephyr is a Jira app, so the question is not really Zephyr against another tool. It is whether your testing belongs inside Jira at all. Here is how to tell, and what a separate board gives you and takes away.
Every fact about Zephyr below was read off SmartBear's own Zephyr page and the Atlassian Marketplace listing on 1 October 2026. Marketplace pricing depends on your Jira site, so follow the links before you plan around it.
| Tool | Free tier | Seats when free | The limit that bites | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| qarunbook | Yes | Up to 5 | A separate board, not issues inside Jira; no versioned case library, and it does not run automated tests. Paid plans are flat per workspace | People who test but do not live in Jira, working one plan on web, Android and iOS with fixes retested |
| Zephyr | No | — | Billed on every Jira user on the site, not on who tests; only useful if your work is already in Jira | Jira-native teams who want tests, automation and reporting beside their issues |
| Xray | No | — | The same Marketplace billing on your Jira user count | Jira-native teams who want every test to be a Jira issue |
| Qase | Yes | Up to 4 | 2 projects, 30-day test history on the free plan; paid plans are per user | Teams leaving Jira's orbit who still want a full TCMS and automation results from CI |
| TestRail | No | — | Trial only, then per user | QA groups that need case versioning, approvals and deep reporting outside Jira |
What Zephyr is now
SmartBear sells Zephyr as a Jira-native test management and automation platform: you plan, run, track and report on tests inside Jira, next to the stories and bugs they belong to. The Marketplace app is now called Zephyr – Test Management and Automation for Jira, and SmartBear's page describes it in editions, Essential, Standard and Advanced, with automation features growing as you go up. It lists no-code automation, record and playback, test step suggestions and integration with BDD and CI/CD tools. There is a free trial through the Marketplace. Sources: smartbear.com/test-management/zephyr and the Zephyr listing.
How it is billed
Like every Jira Cloud app, Zephyr is bought through the Atlassian Marketplace and priced on the user tier of your Jira site, not on how many people open the test tool. For a small site that is cheap. For a large one, everybody with a Jira licence counts, including the people who will never run a test. That is usually the reason people go looking for an alternative, and it is worth checking the listing's pricing tab for your own user count before deciding it is a problem. Source: the Zephyr listing.
When you should stay
If your team already plans, builds and ships in Jira, stay. Tests that are linked to Jira issues give you traceability from a requirement to a test to a bug without anybody keeping two tools in step, and a separate board is a second place to look. If automated tests produce most of your results, stay too: Zephyr takes automation and CI results, and qarunbook does not run automated tests or ingest their reports at all. The same goes for Xray, which is the other Jira-native choice. If the issue is Zephyr itself rather than Jira, compare it with Xray before you compare it with anything on the outside.
When a separate tool makes sense
- The people testing are not Jira users. Clients, founders, support staff and contract testers who would otherwise need a Jira seat to record a result.
- The testing is manual and acceptance testing, a pass through the app on real devices before a release or a client sign-off, rather than a library of cases run on every build.
- You test the same app on web, iOS and Android, and need to see that a check passes on one and fails on another without three copies of it.
- You are an agency or a small team without Jira, for whom adding Jira to test is the bigger cost.
What qarunbook is
A workspace for manual and acceptance testing, free to start. You bring a plan, as markdown, Excel or CSV, and it becomes a board of checks across the platforms you named, so each check records its result per platform. Issues sit on the check that found them, and marking an issue fixed sends its check back for a retest instead of quietly passing it. For an app that is already live, an app can run as bug tracking instead: issues without a check, with a priority, an assignee and a fix that someone confirms.
It ships a remote MCP server, so an assistant such as Claude Code or Cursor can read what is failing, work the checks it can drive and record results under its own name. See the QA MCP server guide. Pricing is flat per workspace, never per seat, with a free plan for two apps and five teammates, and a REST API from the Team plan up. Sources: qarunbook pricing and the API docs.
What qarunbook is not
- Inside Jira. It is a separate board. Issues are not Jira issues, and there is no Jira sync.
- A test automation tool. It does not run automated tests and has no JUnit or XML ingestion. Results are recorded by a person, by an AI over MCP, or one at a time through the API.
- A versioned case library. Checks belong to an app's plan, with no version history, review or approval.
- A reporting tool across releases. It reports on the pass in front of you, not trends or coverage over time.
What moving actually involves
You do not have to move everything. Keep Zephyr for the automated suites and the Jira traceability, and take only the manual passes elsewhere: export the cases people still run by hand, cut them to the steps a person performs, and give that file to qarunbook when you add an app. AI reads it into sections and checks, whatever its layout, and you review every check before it is saved. History stays in Jira, which is where people will look for it anyway. If you are weighing several tools, the free tools comparison covers the rest.