A Jira alternative for software teams
Your tracker knows what is being built. It has never once known whether Wednesday has room for it.
Why software teams use Jira
Jira is the standard, and for a team above a certain size it does a job almost nothing else does properly. Leaving it is rarely the right call.
Where it stops
It answers what is being built and never what your Tuesday contains, and it needs somebody to administer it before it fits.
The week software teams actually have
The board is honest and the sprint is not, because the sprint was estimated in points and lived in hours nobody counted. Two of those hours went to a review that arrived on Tuesday, three to an incident, and the rest to meetings that were scheduled around nothing in particular. At standup everyone says they are close.
Points are not hours and the sprint knows it
Estimating in points and planning in a tool with no calendar means the commitment is made without ever looking at how much of the week was already gone.
In UnaTask: Put the work on real hours before you commit to it, so the plan fails on Monday when it is cheap rather than on Friday when it is a conversation.
Review time is real and nobody schedules it
Reviews are the work that has no ticket. They arrive, they take an hour, and they are never in the plan, which is why the plan is always wrong by the same amount.
In UnaTask: Link the pull request to the task, see its status and checks on the task, and give the review an actual block instead of hoping.
Half the work belongs to people without a GitHub login
Design, copy, support and the person who has to tell the customer are all on the critical path and none of them are in the tracker.
In UnaTask: One place where engineering work and everything around it sit on the same calendar, without asking anyone to learn a tracker.
The dependency was known and still surprised everybody
Somebody knew the API had to land before the client work started. It was in a thread.
In UnaTask: Dependencies on a timeline, so what is waiting on what is a picture rather than a memory.
On the things software teams asked about
| What it does | Jira | UnaTask |
|---|---|---|
| Time blocking on a calendar | No | Core |
| Dependencies and a timeline | Core | Yes. Dependencies with a timeline that shows what is waiting on what. |
| See who has room | Yes | Core |
| Pull requests linked to work | Yes | Yes |
| A free plan | Yes | Yes |
What it costs
For a team of 5, billed yearly, Jira is about $480 a year and UnaTask is €480 plus VAT. The two are quoted in different currencies, so we have not subtracted one from the other.
Jira: Free up to 10 users. Roughly $8 Standard and $15 Premium per user per month on annual billing.
Common questions
Why do software teams use Jira?
Jira is the standard, and for a team above a certain size it does a job almost nothing else does properly. Leaving it is rarely the right call.
Where does Jira stop working for software teams?
It answers what is being built and never what your Tuesday contains, and it needs somebody to administer it before it fits.
Should we leave Jira?
Not necessarily, and we would rather say so. Keep Jira if more than a handful of engineers ship on it and you need reporting that satisfies an audit. Move if the missing piece is the week itself: hours on a calendar, for everyone, before the work is promised.
Do I have to leave my issue tracker?
No, and we would not suggest it. UnaTask imports GitHub Issues as tasks and links pull requests with their status and an on merge action. Plenty of teams keep the tracker for the record and use UnaTask to plan the week around it.
Does it do sprints and burndown?
No. If burndown and velocity are what you need, a tool built for agile reporting will serve you better and we would rather say so. UnaTask is about when the work happens.
Jira details checked 2 August 2026.