A self-hosted alternative to Jira Cloud
Your data, your region, your pricing.
Windshift runs on infrastructure you choose. That gives you control over data location, upgrades, and connected AI services, but it also makes your organization responsible for operating the platform.
At a glance
The main differences in hosting, pricing, upgrades, and responsibility.
- Hosting: Windshift — Your servers, your region; Jira Cloud — Atlassian cloud regions
- Pricing model: Windshift — Free, plus predictable hosting; Pro is optional; Jira Cloud — Per-seat tiered subscription
- Usage-based fees: Windshift — None; Jira Cloud — Assets, Automation, and AI metered on top of seats
- Data ownership: Windshift — Stays on your infrastructure; Jira Cloud — Atlassian processes your data
- Feature access: Windshift — Full feature set included; Jira Cloud — Premium and Enterprise tiers for advanced features
- Release cadence: Windshift — Version-pinned, you control upgrades; Jira Cloud — Rolling updates managed by Atlassian
- Compliance: Windshift — GDPR ready, with residency under your control; Jira Cloud — Atlassian certifications, shared responsibility
- AI features: Windshift — Local or bring-your-own model; Jira Cloud — Atlassian Rovo
- AI training on your data: Windshift — Never. Your data is yours.; Jira Cloud — Opt-out: Atlassian can train AI on your content by default
- Customisation: Windshift — Open schema, open plugin system; Jira Cloud — Cloud API + Forge apps (proprietary, Atlassian-runtime only)
Control beyond hosting
How the platforms differ once you look at access, compliance, AI, and customisation.
What changes when you self-host
- You choose where the data lives and which external services the platform can reach
- Predictable cost, no per-seat math as the team grows or shrinks
- Windshift does not meter Assets, automation, or AI usage
- The open-source edition includes the complete current feature set
- Your content is never used to train AI models
You choose the boundaries
Your organization chooses the infrastructure, data location, network boundary, identity provider, database, release timing, and external services Windshift may reach. There is no separate Windshift-hosted cloud offering and no vendor-controlled upgrade window.
You also run the service
Self-hosting transfers responsibility as well as control. Plan HTTPS, backups, monitoring, secrets, capacity, and release testing. Try Windshift alongside Jira with a representative import before committing a production team.
Your teams can keep the Jira concepts they know
Windshift uses projects, work items, boards, backlogs, fields, statuses, workflows, sprints, and milestones. The migration is still a platform change, but it does not require inventing a new vocabulary for planning and delivery.