Xray vs Qase
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
From $10 per month flat for up to 10 users ($100/year)
PaidFrom $35 per user/month (Teams, billed annually; $42 monthly)
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Priced through the Atlassian Marketplace by Jira user tier. Above the 10-user flat tier it works out around $6.07/user/month (e.g. $7,280/year for 100 users) and falls to roughly $3/user/month by 500 users. It bills for every Jira user, not just testers.
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.
Free tier
30-day trial via Atlassian Marketplace.
Free plan aimed at students, hobbyists and non-profits: 2 projects, 500 MB storage, 30-day history.
Open source
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Category standard
Xblend / Xpand IT · since 2014
Established
Qase · since 2018
Strengths
- Complete requirement-to-test-to-defect traceability without leaving Jira.
- No second tool for the team to learn or license separately.
- Strong BDD support with Gherkin scenarios stored as Jira issues.
- 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.
Limitations
- Inherits Jira's performance characteristics; large test executions are slow.
- Billing per Jira user means non-QA staff inflate the cost.
- Test case authoring in Jira issue screens is clumsy compared to purpose-built editors.
- 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.
Best for
Organisations standardised on Jira that want a single system of record.
Startups and mid-market teams that find TestRail overpriced and dated.
All of these integrate with: Jira, Jenkins.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.