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Pealboard and Jira Software

Jira does more than Pealboard, and it keeps your work in a database of its own. Pealboard keeps none of it. The item you open is the GitHub issue your engineers already have open.

Which one fits your team?

Jira Software is a better fit if…

Your work does not live in GitHub Issues, or your engineers would rather it did not.
You want to design your own workflow, with custom states, transitions, conditions and validators.
You want a no-code rule builder rather than a small fixed set of behaviors.
You are already on Atlassian and want one login, one marketplace and one bill.

Pealboard is a better fit if…

Your engineers keep working in GitHub. There is nothing new for them to learn and nothing to keep in step.
Product and support staff can read and triage the same work without opening a developer tool.
Customers, partners and staff without a GitHub account can send requests and follow them in a portal.
You pay for the few people who read and triage. Engineers never sign in and are never counted.

What Jira Software offers

Every line below comes from Jira Software’s own pages. Each footnote names the page and the date we read it.

Jira ships dozens of ready-made templates, including Scrum, Kanban, bug tracking, DevOps and business templates.^[3]
Automation is a no-code rule builder for if-this-then-that rules, with single-project, multi-project and global rules. It is included at no extra cost on every plan, and how often it may run is set by plan.^[2]
The run limits are 150 automation steps per subscription per month on Free, and 400, 750 and 1,000 steps per user per month on Standard, Premium and Enterprise.^[5]
The feature pages confirm board, list, timeline and calendar views.^[1]
Jira advertises "Rich APIs" and 3,000-plus integrations in the Atlassian Marketplace.^[1]
SAML single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and audit logs are not part of a Jira plan. They are sold as Atlassian Guard, a separate product that sits across Atlassian Cloud.^[4]
Atlassian does offer a customer portal, in Jira Service Management. It shares a new request with the reporter’s customer organization by default, groups customers by email domain, and maps several internal workflow states onto one status name for the customer.^[7]
Jira is free for 10 users. Standard is $9.05 per user per month, or $900 a year for a team of up to 10 ($7.50 per user per month). Premium is $18.30 per user per month, or $1,850 a year for up to 10 ($15.42). The per-user rate falls as the team grows. Enterprise is priced by sales, from 801 users.^[5]
Atlassian Guard, which carries single sign-on and SCIM, is included with Jira Enterprise and is a separate subscription on every other tier.^[5]

Side by side

Pealboard	Jira Software
The work item is the GitHub issue. There is nothing to import when you start, and nothing to move out later.	Every general work-management tool in this research stores the work item in its own database. A team already in GitHub Issues has to keep two systems in step, or move off GitHub.^[6]
You pay for the members who sign in. Engineers stay in GitHub, never sign in, and are never counted.	Every product in this research needs a paid seat for every participant, engineers included.^[6]
Someone with no GitHub account sends a request in a portal and follows it there. The request is a GitHub issue.	Jira Service Management’s portal writes into Jira, not into GitHub. Its request-to-issue mapping assumes Jira is the internal tracker.^[7]
Four fixed behaviors: notifications, derived status, the portal label, and adding a new issue to a project. There is no rule builder.	A no-code rule builder with single-project, multi-project and global rules. It is on every plan, and how often it may run is set by plan.^[2]
Two prices, $10 and $20 per member per month, the same for a team of 3 and a team of 300. Engineers and portal customers are never counted.	Standard is $9.05 and Premium $18.30 per user per month at 10 users, with the rate falling as the team grows; every user who touches Jira is a user. Enterprise pricing starts at 801 users and comes from sales.^[5]

What we could not check

We could not confirm these details on Jira Software’s own pages, so we make no claim about them either way.

Jira’s object model, its filtering and saved views, bulk edit, global search, keyboard shortcuts, mobile apps, and import and export. The feature pages that would confirm them returned 404.
Which of the Jira tiers below Enterprise carry audit logs. The pricing page lists them; which columns are ticked could not be read from it.

What Pealboard leaves to GitHub

Pealboard adds no estimation model and no workflow engine. Iteration planning is GitHub’s own Iteration field. The board is a layout over a GitHub Project’s Status field, not a new process for your engineers to learn.

GitHub offers no way to author project workflows through its API. A workflow engine on top of GitHub would have to keep its own copy of the truth, and then GitHub would no longer be the one place your work lives. If a workflow engine is what you need, Jira is the better answer.

Try it on your own repositories

The Free plan connects three repositories and needs no card. Nothing is imported. Nothing in GitHub changes.

Start free

More comparisons

Sources

atlassian.com/software/jira/features — the feature list, the confirmed views, "Rich APIs" and "3000+ integrations available in the Atlassian Marketplace". Fetched 2026-09-09.
atlassian.com/software/jira/features/automation — "Automation is a no-code rule builder that enables customers to build if-this-then-that-rules"; single-project, multi-project and global rules; "included at no extra cost" on every plan, with execution limits set by plan. Fetched 2026-09-09.
atlassian.com/software/jira/templates — "dozens of ready-made templates" — Scrum, Kanban, bug tracking, DevOps and business templates. Fetched 2026-09-09.
atlassian.com/software/jira/premium — SAML SSO, SCIM and audit logs are sold as Atlassian Guard, a separate product layered across Atlassian Cloud, not bundled into a Jira plan. Fetched 2026-09-09.
atlassian.com/software/jira/pricing — read in a browser with the team size set to 10 users, after the 2026-09-09 fetches returned no prices (the page draws them with a client-side widget): Free for 10 users; Standard $9.05 per user per month, or $900 a year for the 1–10 user tier; Premium $18.30, or $1,850 a year; Enterprise priced from 801 users. Automation: 150 steps per subscription per month on Free, 400, 750 and 1,000 per user on the paid tiers. Atlassian Guard is included on Enterprise only. Recorded in platform/research/category-and-table-stakes.md §4a. Fetched 2026-09-14.
platform/research/category-and-table-stakes.md §3.2 — the report's own synthesis across the ten general work-management tools it examined. Fetched 2026-09-09.
platform/research/portals-and-feedback-tools.md §2 — Jira Service Management's customer portal: request sharing with the reporter's customer organization, domain grouping, and the customer-facing status mapping. Fetched 2026-09-09.

Our notes are in platform/research/category-and-table-stakes.md and platform/research/portals-and-feedback-tools.md. Jira Software is a trademark of its owner. Pealboard is not affiliated with it.