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 Enterprise Architect
Buys for two hundred seats and answers for it later. Optimizes for SSO/SCIM, permissions, audit trails, certifications and a clean exit. Rejects anything that cannot survive procurement.
Jira
This judge's pick
OpenProject
Criterion by criterion
Collaboration depth
Jira
Cross-project plans ('plan and track work across multiple teams and spaces'), per-person capacity management, free non-seat guest access, approvals and granular permissions on paid plans — this is first-class department-grade planning, exactly the shape I buy for 200 seats. Dependencies as such are never named in the evidence, which is the only thing holding it off the top anchor.
OpenProject
The evidence confirms multi-user plumbing — fine-grained role-based access at individual project level and Google SSO — but not a single confirmed fact about shared planning: no assignments, no timeline, dependency or workload views, no comments, no guest access. I don't score category labels; I score evidence, and here a second user has a role but no evidenced shared planning model.
Reporting
Jira
Atlassian Analytics offers an interactive, customizable chart/dashboard builder across products and instances, backed by a Data Lake of 'fully modeled data' — a genuine custom reporting layer, not fixed status views. What the evidence does not evidence is time, budget or utilization reporting, scheduled delivery, or reliable exports, which is precisely the depth that would justify a 10.
OpenProject
The registry contains zero reporting facts — no progress, time, budget, utilization, dashboard or export capability appears anywhere on the captured pages, including the feature-bearing pricing and security pages. As far as this sheet is concerned, looking at the tool is the only reporting there is.
Integrations
Jira
Thousands of marketplace apps, a command-line interface, and a first-party MCP server wiring Jira into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code and coding agents — this is ecosystem-grade and the tool is genuinely extensible. I stop short of 10 because nothing in the evidence evidences webhooks, competitor import paths, or a complete API export, and clean exit is the first thing I check.
OpenProject
The only API in evidence is a release-version checker for self-hosters, and the Nextcloud Hub/openDesk hooks sit behind the 250-seat Corporate tier alongside Google SSO and mobile apps. No documented public product API, no webhooks, no calendar or comms integrations, no import/export paths — a handful of marquee connectors and an API covering a sliver of the product.
Onboarding effort
Jira
A free tier for 10 users with no credit card plus a sandbox for testing before touching production clears the payment-details objection, but the evidence is silent on guided setup, templates or importers, and permission settings exist only on paid plans. For 200 seats I expect the first real project to still require workflow and permission decisions a newcomer cannot judge yet — above average, not effortless.
OpenProject
Self-serve is real: a free Community tier with no seat minimum and 14-day trials on both cloud and on-prem, risk-free without cancellation. But nothing evidences guided setup, templates, defaults or importers, the cheapest paid tier demands 25 seats and Premium jumps to 100, and the self-host path presupposes infrastructure a newcomer can't judge yet — a day-one tool, not an hour-to-value one.
European sovereignty
Jira
Data residency is available ('specify where you want your data hosted in Atlassian's global cloud footprint'), but that is a selectable feature, not a contractually fixed EU-only posture — and the evidence records no sovereignty attributes, no DPA and no subprocessor list. With an Australian vendor publicly listed on NASDAQ, this is compliance-optional at best for a European procurement file: residency selectable, nothing verifiable or extraterritorial-proof.
OpenProject
OpenProject GmbH in Berlin operating under GDPR/BDSG, an Article 28 DPA signable in-app, SCCs, a named DPO, EU-only cloud residency, and a GPLv3 self-host escape hatch — this survives procurement.
Support & documentation
Jira
Support is cleanly mapped per plan with published uptime SLAs — 99.9% with 24/7 for critical issues on Premium, 99.95% with 24/7 for all issues at Enterprise — which is exactly what I need in a procurement annex. But the documentation, guides and changelog surface is entirely unevidenced, and free-tier users get community support only, so this is a support matrix, not a support ecosystem.
OpenProject
Support windows are published per tier — Mon-Fri business hours, as narrow as 9:30-4 ET on Basic — with a security contact and advisory mailing list, which is more structure than most publish. But the evidence evidences no help center, no docs of any kind, no changelog and not even a support channel type; published hours without a knowledge base does not get my two hundred users unstuck.
Pricing transparency
Jira
Free ($0, 10 users) and Premium ($14.54 per user/month) sit on the page with a monthly/annual toggle, but 'SAVE UP TO 17%' does not say which billing period the headline assumes, tax treatment is unstated, no Standard price is in evidence, and Enterprise is contact-sales billed annually only. I can estimate 200 Premium seats on a spreadsheet; I cannot determine the invoice, and that gap lands squarely on the anchor that allows a qualifying headline.
OpenProject
Every self-serve tier carries a public per-user price with seat minimums stated plainly and a worked example that reconciles ($7.25 x 25 x 12 = $2,175), so I can cost 200 seats without a sales call. Docked for unstated tax treatment, an unclarified billing period behind the monthly figure, and Corporate 'on request' withholding the integrations an enterprise buyer actually wants.
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.