Confluence is a documentation and knowledge management platform designed for creating, organizing, and sharing content across teams, while Jira is a project and issue tracking tool built for agile development and workflow management. They serve complementary purposes and are often used together in enterprise environments.
Confluence vs Jira — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Choose Confluence if your primary need is centralizing knowledge, creating team wikis, documenting processes, and sharing information asynchronously across the organization. Choose Jira if you're managing software development, running sprints, tracking bugs and tasks, or need real-time workflow automation and agile project management. Most successful teams use both together—Jira for work tracking and Confluence for documentation.
Atlassian's enterprise wiki and collaboration platform for documentation and knowledge management.
Purpose-built issue tracking and project management platform for software development teams
Structured comparison data for Confluence vs Jira with 258 attributes.
Learning Curve (1-5 scale, lower is better)
Starting Price per User/Month (Annual Billing)
Total Cost of Ownership (50 Users, Annual)
Advanced Agile Features (Sprint Velocity Tracking)
Confluence vs Jira — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Confluence vs Jira.
Yes, and they work exceptionally well together. Jira and Confluence are both Atlassian products and integrate natively. You can embed Jira issues in Confluence pages using macros, link issues to documentation, and pull Jira data directly into Confluence for comprehensive project visibility. Most enterprise teams use both for complementary purposes.
Which tool should a non-technical team use?
Confluence is significantly better for non-technical teams. Its intuitive WYSIWYG editor, minimal learning curve, and focus on documentation make it accessible to all skill levels. Jira's agile workflow, custom fields, and automation features are designed for development teams and can overwhelm non-technical users. Non-technical teams can use Confluence for knowledge sharing and Jira only if they have dedicated project management needs.
Can Confluence replace project management tools?
Confluence cannot effectively replace Jira or dedicated project management tools. While Confluence excels at documentation and knowledge sharing, it lacks task tracking, sprint planning, workflow automation, and reporting capabilities essential for project management. It's designed to complement project management tools, not replace them.
What's the difference in customer support between the two?
Both offer similar support tiers: Community (free, forums only), Standard (email support, 24-48 hour response), and Premium (phone/email, 1-hour response). Jira tends to have more extensive third-party support resources due to its dominance in software development, while Confluence has strong documentation for knowledge management use cases. Both platforms have active user communities.
How do these tools handle large organizations with 1,000+ employees?
Both scale well to large enterprises. Confluence typically organizes content through spaces (departments/teams) and advanced permission controls. Jira handles large organizations through multiple projects, permission schemes, and enterprise automation. Large organizations typically use both: Jira for centralized issue/sprint tracking and Confluence as the organizational knowledge base. Both offer enterprise plans with SLA guarantees and dedicated support.