Why Choose TestRail Over Zephyr?

When Cardinal Peak ran into limitations with Zephyr for Jira—around the lack of flexibility, customization, and specificity when dealing with test case management—they turned to TestRail.
Comparison Page Header
For teams that are based in Jira and don’t run a lot of tests during each testing cycle, Zephyr for Jira offers a great bolt-on for your Jira products. Most teams that do sustained testing and QA, however, realize that they need a tool that’s actually purpose-built for test management like TestRail. If you’re looking to understand the differences between TestRail and Zephyr, you’ve come to the right place.

Compare TestRail vs. Zephyr

TestRail
Zephyr Squad
Zephyr Scale
Zephyr Enterprise
Create, View, Edit, and Clone Test Cases
Test case coverage and requirements traceability
Dedicated testing platform
Integrates with Jira
Uses Jira issues for test cases and executions
Faster performance and intuitive UI
Ability to use a single test case repository for multiple Jira projects
Per-project configuration
Ability to lock test results
Role-based access controls for testing artifacts
Limited to Jira Roles
Limited to Jira Roles
Pay for all Jira users
Quick and easy to scale
Price
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$
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Why users love TestRail

  • TestRail is purpose-built for testing

  • TestRail integrates with Jira, without using Jira issues or causing performance issues

  • TestRail is fast and easy to use, making it easy to organize your testing and onboard new team members

  • TestRail gives you the ability to customize your QA processes to fit your specific testing workflows and easily integrate with your tech stack using TestRail’s extensive API, webhooks, or the TestRail CLI

  • TestRail gives you complete control over your testing processes with the ability to lock historical test execution from future changes, control user permissions through role-based security settings, and build test case review and approval workflows

  • TestRail scales with your organization, allowing you to manage thousands of test cases and millions of test executions across a single TestRail instance without slowing down

  • TestRail meets most security requirements set forth by users’ IT departments like SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, multi-factor authentication, and single sign-on

TestRail Testing Dashboard
TestRail Automation Test Run

“TestRail empowers our QA testing team to efficiently manage test cases, plans, and runs in alignment with development sprints, execute tests and track the results that matter most — all in the same place.”

Pablo Maurin, Director of QA Engineering, Cardinal Peak

Pablo Maurin

Director of QA Engineering
Cardinal Peak

Top reasons why teams choose TestRail

Why choose TestRail over Zephyr Squad or Scale

  • TestRail is purpose-built for testing and not a Jira add-on

  • TestRail has better performance and a more intuitive UI so that you can complete more work in less time

  • TestRail does not require paying for each user in your Jira instance

  • TestRail is a more scalable solution with flexible and customizable workflows 

  • TestRail has a variety of flexible reporting templates (overview of test summaries, burndown, test coverage, test traceability, workload per team/team member, etc.)

  • TestRail can integrate with almost any defect or requirements tracker and test automation framework

TestRail vs.  Zephyr Squad

Zephyr Squad is a test management solution inside Jira. This Jira add-on is built for small Agile teams that focus mainly on test design, execution, and test automation. With Zephyr Squad, there are limitations such as lack of flexibility, customization, and specificity when dealing with test case management.

TestRail vs. Zephyr Scale

Zephyr Scale is still a Jira add-on, but it is slightly more scalable than Zephyr Squad. It’s built for mid-size growing Agile teams and offers more advanced test planning, reporting and reusability features. The central issues users tend to flag with Scale are long page load times, which also affects Jira users outside of the Jira add-on. Along with that, reporting can be somewhat limited and comments need to be manually rewritten when creating a defect making the QA process redundant at times.

Why choose TestRail Enterprise over Zephyr Enterprise

  • TestRail was originally designed as a standalone tool, whereas Zephyr Enterprise was built as a workaround for teams with more complex requirements

  • TestRail Enterprise is less expensive than Zephyr Enterprise, allowing you to better allocate resources and drive more value to your end users

  • TestRail Enterprise is easy to integrate with dozens of tools and automations through an extensive API, webhooks, and the TestRail CLI

  • TestRail Entreprise has flexible organization of test cases within the repository and ease of reuse. Zephyr Enterprise, on the other hand, makes it cumbersome to move and reuse tests

  • TestRail Enterprise keeps the speed and performance when integrated with Jira and other defect/requirements tracker, contrary to Zephyr Enterprise 

TestRail Enterprise vs. Zephyr Enterprise

Unlike Zephyr Squad or Zephyr Scale, Zephyr Enterprise is not an app bolted on to your Jira instance. However, there are some crucial differentiators between TestRail Enterprise and Zephyr Enterprise around overall usability, performance, and integrations that make TestRail Enterprise a better solution that meets the needs of larger organizations with enterprise-level features and support.

Quality engineered for Enterprise

Compatible with security and compliance regulations but flexible enough to integrate with any workflow or tech stack. Customizable to fit any sized organization at any scale. TestRail is the only choice for enterprises looking to seriously elevate software testing.

Get total
control over
your testing

“TestRail is a great all-in-one tool for managing test repositories, creating test plans, tracking test execution progress, monitoring automation coverage, and generating insightful reports.”

Amrathraj Nayak

Engineer Manager - QA

Get total
control over
your testing

“When it comes down to preparing our test suites and test cases, we save 20% of our time using TestRail because we can create test cases and test suites faster with intuitive UI/UX.”

Jiří Malý

Senior Software Tester

Get total
control over
your testing

“TestRail improves our collaboration, efficacy, and application quality, which in turn provides the best customer experience.”

Kelli Jordan

Director of QA

Get total
control over
your testing

“TestRail enables us to deliver consistent product quality and communicate the state of testing in simple terms to management and executives.”

Moira Tuffs

Software QA Manager

Build quality processes and release with confidence