Pragma vs Jira
Jira tracks the work. Pragma keeps the reason.
Pragma keeps one typed graph that says what every task is for, bills flat per organization however many people join, and treats your agents as first-class clients. Jira is the most configurable issue tracker on the market — and for a large organization with a service desk and a decade of process baked into it, that configurability is what you are paying for.
Where Pragma wins
- The chain, not the hierarchy. Every task answers a requirement, every requirement answers a deliverable. Work that answers nothing is flagged, and a requirement cannot close while open work still answers it.
- Analysis instead of reporting. Dependencies are real edges, so critical path, impact of a slip and "what can start now" are computed, not assembled in a dashboard.
- A bill that does not punish inclusion. €0, €29 or €149 flat per organization, and contractors or clients join as free puppets instead of paid seats.
- Agents that are not an add-on. 80+ MCP tools behind OAuth 2.1, unlimited connected apps on every plan, agent activity never metered.
- European by construction. Application, database and files in eu-west-1, a French operator, a signed DPA — not a residency option you negotiate.
- Still on your own servers. On-premise deployment on Enterprise, for the organizations whose Jira Data Center reaches end of life in 2029.
What Jira does better
- Ecosystem. The Marketplace has an app for nearly everything, and most vendors you buy from already integrate with it.
- Configurability at depth. Screens per issue type and per transition, field and permission schemes, arbitrary validators and post-functions, and JQL as a query language.
- Service management. Jira Service Management is a real ITSM product, sold and operated alongside Jira.
Side by side
Jira data last checked on September 26th, 2026. Sources: pricing, Data Center end of life.
| Pragma | Jira | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat, per organization. €0 Starter, €29 Team, €149 Business — the bill does not move when someone joins. | Per user, per month, on every paid plan. Each new person is a new line on the invoice. |
| Free plan | 5 members, 5 puppets, 3 projects, 200 work items — no time limit, no card. | Up to 10 users, 2 GB storage, 150 automation steps a month. |
| People who only do the work | Puppets: assignable, time-tracked people without accounts or seats. Free on every plan. | Everyone you assign work to is a licensed user. |
| Why work exists | Typed graph: a task answers a requirement, a requirement answers a deliverable. Orphans and gaps are detected. | Epics, stories and subtasks, plus issue links. Hierarchy is strong; the chain up to a promised deliverable is convention, not structure. |
| Workflow configuration | Your own states and transitions, scoped to the whole organization, to a project or to a domain, and optionally to a single item type — with conditions (required field, nothing blocking, every response resolved) and typed post-actions: assign, tag, due date, estimate, webhook. | Screens, field schemes, permission schemes, validators and post-functions, plus Marketplace apps to script whatever is left. |
| Analysis on the plan | Critical path, impact analysis, bottlenecks, cycles and unschedulable-plan detection, computed from real dependency edges. | Advanced Roadmaps on Premium and above covers cross-team planning and dependency views. |
| AI agents | 80+ MCP tools behind OAuth 2.1, including the whole analysis layer. Unlimited connected apps on every plan, agent activity never metered. | Official Atlassian MCP server covering Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management and Bitbucket, over OAuth 2.1 or API tokens. |
| Ecosystem | One product, one graph. Integrations through MCP and the API. | The Atlassian Marketplace — thousands of apps, and an integration for nearly anything you already run. |
| Hosting | EU only: application, database and files in AWS eu-west-1 (Ireland), EU-region analytics and email. | Multiple regions, with data residency options on paid plans. |
| On your own servers | On-premise deployment on Enterprise. | Data Center, the self-managed edition, closed to new customers on 30 March 2026 and reaches end of life on 28 March 2029. |
Choose Pragma if…
…your problem is not tracking tickets but knowing what they are for, and you want that answer computed rather than reconstructed in a meeting. Or if you run AI agents on your plan and want them working the same graph as your team, under your consent, on the record, without a per-seat bill deciding who gets to participate. Or if you run Jira Data Center because your plans must stay on your own servers, and want that to hold after 2029.
Stay on Jira if you run a service desk alongside delivery, need configuration deeper than states, conditions and post-actions reach, depend on Marketplace apps, or your procurement requires certifications we do not hold yet — our security page lists exactly where we stand. Those are real reasons, and no copy on this page changes them.
See the graph on your own plan.
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