The leans split by criterion, so we declare no overall winner. Jira holds the higher means on integrations (8.5 vs 3.2), collaboration depth (7.7 vs 2.2), reporting (7.2 vs 0.0), onboarding effort (6.5 vs 5.2) and support documentation (4.3 vs 3.0): six judges lean Jira on the first three, five on the last two, one tie apiece. OpenProject takes sovereignty (6.8 vs 3.0) and pricing transparency (6.7 vs 5.3), six judges leaning OpenProject on both. Pricing transparency rests on per-user prices, printed seat minimums and a worked $2,175/year example; sovereignty on German jurisdiction, EU-only data residency and EU-only subprocessor exposure. The benches split internally too: Jira's sovereignty runs 2 to 4; OpenProject's onboarding effort runs 4 to 6 and support documentation 2 to 4. Per-judge weighted totals favor Jira each time, from 4.8 vs 4.7 for the data protection officer to 6.7 vs 3.5 for the integrator.
Choose Jira if
You wire AI coding assistants and editors into planning: the Rovo MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code, and integrations runs 8.5 vs 3.2 with six judges leaning Jira.
You need cross-project plans, per-person capacity management, approvals and free guest access without a seat — collaboration depth runs 7.7 vs 2.2, six judges to zero.
You need built-in analytics: Atlassian Analytics and a fully modeled Data Lake, where reporting runs 7.2 vs 0.0 with six judges leaning Jira.
You are a team of 10 or fewer starting free: Jira is free forever for 10 users with no credit card, and onboarding effort runs 6.5 vs 5.2 with five judges leaning Jira and one tie.
You must choose your hosting region: Jira's data residency attribute reads EU optional and its verdict credits customer-selectable data residency across Atlassian's global cloud footprint; OpenProject's attribute reads EU-only.
Choose OpenProject if
You need EU sovereignty terms: jurisdiction Germany, EU-only data residency and EU-only subprocessor exposure on record — sovereignty runs 6.8 vs 3.0 with six judges leaning OpenProject.
You must budget before talking to sales: per-user prices, printed 25/100/250 seat minimums and a worked $2,175/year example; pricing transparency runs 6.7 vs 5.3, six judges to zero, while Jira's verdict notes a missing Standard price.
Your procurement needs GDPR paperwork before signing: a named German DPO, an Article 28 DPA signable in the cloud, and SCCs.
You want self-hosting as a full exit from the vendor's cloud, from OpenProject GmbH of Berlin under GPLv3.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Bootstrapper
Pays with their own card. Optimizes for price/value at 3 seats and at 30, a usable free tier, and a price page that answers instead of qualifying. Rejects hidden seat minimums and "contact sales".
Jira
This judge's pick
OpenProject
Criterion by criterion
Collaboration depth
Jira
Cross-project Plans, capacity management, free guest access and workflow approvals are all on the page — that's first-class team planning. But there's not one word about dependencies, and permission settings are 'only available on paid plans', so I stop short of the top anchor.
OpenProject
Fine-grained role-based access at individual project level tells me a second user has a defined place in a shared project, but the evidence evidences nothing about assignments, shared timelines, dependencies, workload or guest access. That clears rubric level 0 and stalls well short of 3.
Reporting
Jira
Atlassian Analytics with a low-to-no-code dashboard editor plus a Data Lake across products is genuinely cross-project and customizable. The evidence is silent on time, budget and utilization reporting and on any export path, so I can't take the last steps.
OpenProject
Not one fact on this sheet evidences a report, dashboard, time view, budget view or any export — even the pricing page's plan-by-plan feature list never mentions reporting. Silence scores as absence: nothing beyond looking at the tool itself.
Integrations
Jira
'Thousands of integrations and apps', a CLI, an MCP server wiring Jira into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code, and third-party coding agents — that's an ecosystem-grade, extensible platform. No public REST API, webhook or competitor-import evidence appears in the evidence, which caps it.
OpenProject
Google SSO and iOS/Android apps exist, but the only native integrations named — Nextcloud Hub and openDesk — are locked behind the 250-minimum-seat Corporate tier, and the one documented API merely checks for new release versions on self-hosted installs. A handful of marquee hooks, no public product API or webhooks in evidence.
Onboarding effort
Jira
Free forever for 10 users, no credit card, guests without a paid seat — my 3-seat team starts at zero cost with zero friction. The evidence never mentions templates, guided setup or importers, so I won't credit the 'first project within the hour with importers' anchor.
OpenProject
The free Community edition has no seat minimum and the 14-day trials are 'risk-free without cancellation', which reads as no card up front. But nothing evidences guided setup, templates or importers, and the genuinely free route is self-hosting — sysadmin work, not signup — so first real value lands somewhere inside a day, not an hour.
European sovereignty
Jira
Data residency is available ('specify where you want your data hosted'), but Atlassian is a Sydney company listed on NASDAQ — ownership sits outside Europe. No DPA, GDPR language or subprocessor list anywhere in the evidence, so this is selectable hosting over substance.
OpenProject
Berlin-based GmbH, GDPR/BDSG baseline, an Article 28 DPA signable inside the product, EU-hosted Enterprise Cloud, and self-hosting as a full escape hatch. But 'all sub-processors are based in the EU' is vendor marketing, and the privacy policy itself names Google Firebase, hCaptcha (Delaware) and InnoCraft (New Zealand) — documented extraterritorial exposure that keeps this below the clean 8.
Support & documentation
Jira
Support is cleanly tiered — community-only on Free, local business hours on Standard, 24/7 with uptime SLAs from Premium up — so paying fixes your problems but free users are on their own. The evidence says nothing at all about a help center, docs or changelog, which for a tool this deep is a real gap.
OpenProject
Credit where due: every paid tier publishes its business-hours window right on the pricing page, and there's a security contact plus an advisory mailing list. But not a single fact evidences a help center, documentation, chat or SLA, and the free Community tier I'd actually run at 3 seats shows no support hours at all.
Pricing transparency
Jira
Free ($0, 10 users) and Premium ($14.54/user/month) are priced on the page with a monthly/annual toggle and honest free-tier limits — at 3 seats I pay nothing and at 30 the math is easy. But 'SAVE UP TO 17%' is the vague kind of discount, tax treatment is never stated, Standard's number never appears in this evidence, and Enterprise is annual-only contact sales.
OpenProject
The page answers instead of qualifying: every self-serve tier priced per user, seat minimums (25/100/250) printed rather than buried, a worked $2,175 example, discounts and free trials stated. Docked because Corporate is 'on request', tax treatment and monthly-vs-annual billing are never stated, and the 25-seat floor means my 3-seat team's cheapest paid reality is 25 users — disclosed, but still a value cliff.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Jira
OpenProject
Legal entity
Not determined
Incorporated in DE
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.