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 Integrator
Lives in the API docs before the product tour. Optimizes for webhooks, import/export and a tool that plays well in a stack. Rejects closed ecosystems and CSV-only exits.
Jira
This judge's pick
OpenProject
Criterion by criterion
Collaboration depth
Jira
Team-level planning is first-class: cross-project plans, per-person capacity management, free guests that don't burn a seat, and approval gates in workflow. I dock it from 9-10 because dependency handling is nowhere evidenced and permission settings live behind paid plans, so the small-team edge needs the paid model to work fully.
OpenProject
The only multi-user evidence in the registry is fine-grained role-based access at individual project level — real scaffolding, but nothing on assignments, comments, shared timelines, dependencies, workload or guest access. Everything above a shared-project floor is unevidenced, so I cannot go higher than the floor.
Reporting
Jira
Atlassian Analytics promises customizable cross-product dashboards and the Data Lake a fully modeled dataset, with capacity planning alongside — genuine cross-project depth. But the evidence never shows an export path (CSV or otherwise), no time/budget reporting, no scheduled delivery, and no confirmed API access to the metrics, which for me caps it below the 8 anchor.
OpenProject
The registry contains no reporting, dashboard, time-tracking, budget or export fact of any kind — the entire evidenced product surface is permissions, sessions and 2FA, and the only API on the evidence checks whether a new version exists. Absence is the whole answer; that's a 0.
Integrations
Jira
Thousands of apps, a first-party CLI, and MCP surfaces into Cursor, Claude, ChatGPT and VS Code is real stack citizenship — the AI extensibility alone is ahead of the field. But the registry is silent on webhooks and a documented public API, shows no automation-platform or competitor-import coverage, and evidences no exit path at all, so I can't call it ecosystem-grade on this record.
OpenProject
The evidenced native catalogue is two corporate-gated integrations (Nextcloud Hub via OIDC, openDesk) plus Google SSO and mobile apps, and the sole 'API' is a version-check endpoint — solidly rubric level 3. I nudge to 4 only because GPLv3 with code public on GitHub means the ecosystem cannot be closed: no product API, webhooks or import paths are evidenced, but the source itself is the integration surface and the exit.
Onboarding effort
Jira
A free tier for 10 users with no credit card and defaults that work out of the box gets a team started fast, and the sandbox softens later changes. I stop short of 8 because guided setup, templates, and — my real test — importers that pull existing work in are completely unevidenced.
OpenProject
There is a genuine self-serve path — a free Community edition with no minimum and a 14-day 'risk-free without cancellation' trial — but nothing evidences guided setup, templates or importers, and the cheapest paid plan carries a 25-user minimum, which is real friction for exactly the small team this criterion is about.
European sovereignty
Jira
The evidence carries no sovereignty attributes at all: an Australian vendor listed on NASDAQ, no DPA, no GDPR language, no subprocessor list on record. The only lever is configurable residency somewhere in Atlassian's 'global cloud footprint', which is selection, not contractual EU-only hosting.
OpenProject
The on-premises option under GPLv3 means full sovereignty is achievable by self-hosting, which keeps this at 7 rather than lower.
Support & documentation
Jira
Support is cleanly tiered and honestly published — community-only on Free, 9/5 regional on Standard, 24/7 on Premium and Enterprise, with uptime SLAs of 99.9/99.95%. But the evidence says nothing about documentation, help center, or changelog quality, and free-plan users are left to a forum, so I sit just below the anchor that requires real docs plus ungated help.
OpenProject
No documentation surface is evidenced anywhere in the registry — no help center, no changelog, nothing I could point an integration engineer at — and support is business-hours-only, tier-gated (Basic gets the shortest window) with no channel stated. The security@ address and an advisory mailing list are the one healthy signal, which keeps me just above 0.
Pricing transparency
Jira
Free ($0, 10 users) and Premium ($14.54/user/month) are on the page with a monthly/annual toggle — decent. But 'save up to 17%' is fuzzy about which billing mode the headline reflects, tax treatment is unstated, no Standard price appears anywhere in the registry, and Enterprise is annual-only behind contact sales, so a buyer still can't compute their true invoice end to end.
OpenProject
Unusually open: every tier's per-user price sits on the page with seat minimums stated up front rather than in fine print (25/25/100/250), the BIM add-on is priced, discounts are named, and there's a worked example totalling $2,175 for 25 users over a year. What blocks rubric level 8 is that billing-period treatment (annual vs monthly) and taxes are never stated, and Corporate is quote-only.
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.