Qase vs Zephyr Scale

From $35 per user/month (Teams, billed annually; $42 monthly)

From $10 per month flat for up to 10 users ($100/year)

The old Startup tier is gone — it is now Free, Teams and Enterprise. Read-only collaborator seats are $10 each, which keeps the cost down where many people only need to see results.

Like Xray, priced per Jira user via the Marketplace, so it bills every Jira user rather than just testers. Beyond the 10-user flat tier expect about $5.68/user/month (e.g. $6,810/year for 100 users), dropping with volume. Zephyr Squad is a cheaper, lighter sibling product.

Free plan aimed at students, hobbyists and non-profits: 2 projects, 500 MB storage, 30-day history.

30-day trial.

Established

Qase · since 2018

Widely used

SmartBear · since 2016

• Fast, modern interface that testers actually enjoy using.
• Excellent first-party reporters for Playwright, Cypress, pytest and others.
• Free tier makes evaluation and small-team use realistic.

• Purpose-built case repository with parameterisation and shared steps that scale better than issue-based storage.
• Cross-project reporting for programme-level quality visibility.
• Version history on test cases, which matters for audit.

• Smaller vendor than Idera or SmartBear; enterprise procurement may push back.
• Fewer enterprise compliance features than the incumbents.
• Jira integration is good but not Jira-native.

• Two similarly named products (Squad and Scale) cause genuine purchasing confusion.
• Still bound to Jira's performance envelope.
• Per-Jira-user pricing again inflates cost for large organisations.

Startups and mid-market teams that find TestRail overpriced and dated.

Larger Jira organisations with test libraries big enough that reuse matters.