Best Sprint Planning Software (2026): Top 10 Compared

Jira is Atlassian's work tracking product for software teams and the reference point for many Scrum processes. Sprint planning happens on the backlog screen of a Scrum space. Teams create a sprint, drag ranked work items into it or move the divider to include several at once, then start the sprint with a name, start and end dates and an optional sprint goal. Further sprints can be planned in the backlog while one is active.

Atlassian's documentation notes that adding or removing items from an active sprint counts as a scope change and shows in reports such as the burndown chart. Teams that split work across streams can enable parallel sprints. Team-managed spaces let a team switch the sprint feature on or off and offer a Confluence retrospective page when a sprint is completed.

The free plan covers up to 10 users. Standard adds Rovo search, chat and agents, and Premium adds cross-team planning and dependency management. The pricing page calculates a per-user figure from the team size entered, so buyers should enter their own head count.

Linear is an issue tracker for product and engineering teams. Its equivalent of a sprint is the cycle, a time-boxed period in which a team works through a pre-defined set of issues. Once cycles are enabled in team settings, Linear creates upcoming cycles automatically on a repeating schedule. Teams choose a duration of one to eight weeks, a starting day of the week and how many future cycles to create, up to 15.

An optional cooldown can follow each cycle to give the team time for planning and technical debt; issues cannot be assigned to a cooldown. Linear's documentation states that cycles are not tied to releases, which differs from Scrum processes that align a sprint with a version.

The free plan includes unlimited members, two teams and 250 issues. Basic raises the team limit to five and removes the issue cap. Business adds unlimited teams, private teams and guests, triage intelligence and Linear Insights. Enterprise adds SAML, SCIM and invoice billing.

Zenhub is a project management layer for teams that keep their work in GitHub. It reads GitHub issues and adds a hierarchy of objectives, projects, epics, tasks and sub-tasks, along with boards, roadmaps and reports. A browser extension shows Zenhub inside the GitHub interface.

The pricing table lists automated sprint planning, planning poker, estimates, sprint reports, a velocity report and sprint insights on every plan, including Free. Teams adds AI suggested labels and an AI sprint review, while Enterprise adds AI acceptance criteria, workspace automations and advanced reporting. Integrations with GitHub and Slack are on all plans; Figma, Loom and Miro integrations are on Enterprise.

Plan limits are the main difference between tiers. Free allows two connected repositories and 250 issues, Teams 50 repositories and 5,000 issues, and Enterprise removes the caps and connects up to 10 GitHub organisations. Enterprise also offers self-hosted deployment. The homepage now promotes Thor, an AI product that turns conversations into tracked work.

Shortcut is a project management tool built for software teams, organised around stories, epics, objectives and docs. Sprints are called iterations. An iteration is a time-boxed period with start and end dates, and its state moves between unstarted, started and done automatically according to those dates.

The iterations page lets teams create iterations, add stories and drag stories between them. An iteration can include stories from several epics, teams and workflows, and each iteration has a detail page with a burndown chart and a cumulative flow diagram. Shortcut's documentation suggests including the squad name in iteration names so that organisations running many teams can filter the list.

The free plan covers up to 10 users and includes Kanban views, a roadmap, reports, iterations, docs and GitHub, Slack and Figma integrations. Team adds work-in-progress limits, multiple workflows and automations. Business adds multiple workspaces for sandboxing, objectives and key results and advanced reports. Shortcut also offers an MCP server and an AI agent named Korey.

Taiga is an open-source agile project management tool for cross-functional teams. Its Scrum module provides a backlog, sprint planning with epics and sub-tasks, estimation and sprint boards, and its Kanban module adds swimlanes, work-in-progress limits and multiple workflows. Teams can switch a project between Scrum and Kanban.

The product is available in three forms. The hosted cloud has a free tier and three paid plans, all with unlimited users. Taiga Private Cloud is a dedicated instance managed by Taiga Cloud Services, and an on-premise option adds installation and priority support with a service level agreement. The open-source code can also be installed and run independently.

Cloud plans differ mainly by project count, storage and support. Free allows one public and one private project with 10 MB of storage. Enthusiast allows five of each with 100 MB, Basic offers unlimited projects with 500 MB, and Premium unlimited projects with 3 GB and premium support. Teams that store many attachments should check the storage caps.

YouTrack is JetBrains' project management and issue tracking product. Sprints sit on agile boards, where a sprint is the set of active issues shown as cards. Sprints are switched on in the board settings, and a board can then use scheduled sprints with start and end dates or unscheduled sprints that reset the board whenever priorities change.

Scheduled sprints suit Scrum teams that compare progress on the burndown chart from sprint to sprint. A single unscheduled sprint lets a board run in a Kanban style. YouTrack identifies the current sprint automatically from the unfinished sprints on a board, and the current sprint can be referenced in search queries to build reports that follow it.

Sprints have a name, goal and schedule, and they can be edited, archived, restored or deleted. On version-based boards, sprints are linked to a version field and changes synchronise with that field. YouTrack Cloud is free for up to 10 users, and the per-user price for larger teams decreases with volume on both monthly and annual terms.

Azure Boards is the work tracking service in Microsoft's Azure DevOps. It provides backlogs, Kanban boards, Scrum boards, dashboards and custom reporting, and connects to Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines and GitHub repositories so that commits and pull requests link to work items.

Microsoft's sprint tutorial describes planning from the product backlog. A team administrator first defines iteration paths, which act as sprints, and assigns them to the team. Product owners and developers then drag backlog items onto a sprint in the planning pane or bulk-update several items at once. Contributors need at least Basic access to add or modify work items. Microsoft also notes AI assistance through the Azure DevOps MCP Server.

Azure Boards is not sold alone on the pricing page; it is included in the Basic user licence, which also covers repositories, the free Pipelines allowance and Artifacts storage. The first five users are free. Teams that also need manual and exploratory testing buy the Basic + Test Plans licence.

GitLab is a DevSecOps platform that combines source control, CI/CD, security testing and planning. Its sprint feature is the iteration: a time-boxed period, usually one to three weeks, that groups issues. Iterations belong to groups and are organised into iteration cadences, and dates within a cadence cannot overlap.

GitLab's documentation suggests using milestones for program increments of eight to twelve weeks and iterations for two-week sprints, so the same issue can sit in both. Iterations support velocity and volatility metrics, and GitLab publishes a tutorial on running Scrum with these features. Because planning lives beside merge requests and pipelines, teams can trace an issue from sprint to deployment in one product.

Iterations are listed for the Premium and Ultimate tiers on GitLab.com, Self-Managed and Dedicated. Premium adds team project management and 10,000 compute minutes a month. Ultimate adds portfolio management, value stream management and application security testing, and is priced through sales.

GitHub Projects is the planning tool built into GitHub. A project is a table, board or roadmap of issues and pull requests, and teams add fields to it. The iteration field associates items with repeating blocks of time, which is how teams run sprints in GitHub.

According to GitHub's documentation, an iteration can be any length, can include breaks, and can be renamed or re-dated individually. Creating the field generates three iterations automatically, and more can be added in project settings. Views can group by iteration to show the balance of upcoming work, filter on the current, previous or next iteration, and display items on a timeline in the roadmap layout.

Projects suits teams that want sprint planning without leaving the code host. It does not include planning poker, velocity charts or capacity planning as named features, so teams usually build estimates with custom number fields and charts. Issues and Projects are part of the Free plan; Team and Enterprise add code review controls, security and administration.

Zoho Sprints is the agile planning product in Zoho's application suite. Every plan, including Free, lists unlimited work items, unlimited sprint cycles, Scrum and Kanban boards and agile reports and dashboards. Data can be imported from Jira, and paid plans add import from Azure DevOps and Trello.

Starter adds epic management, timesheets, global timers, swimlanes, meetings and an estimation planner where team members vote on story points. It also adds connections to AI tools and source code management integrations. Elite adds client and vendor portals, custom roles and permissions and checklists. Premier adds release management, work-in-progress settings, custom layouts, webhooks and sprint capacity planning. Enterprise adds objectives and key results, budget and expense management and test case management.

Pricing is per user, with annual and monthly rates and lower rates for large teams. Starter is sold annually only and is limited to 12 to 100 users. The pricing page displays prices in several currencies.