Atlassian raises Cloud prices every autumn, and 2026 is no exception. On October 13, 2026, list prices go up for Jira, Confluence, and most of the Cloud lineup. For a typical small team the increase is modest - roughly 7%, or well under a dollar per user per month. But this year there's a second change that matters more: from December 3, Atlassian starts charging for AI and automation usage above each plan's monthly allowance. Here's what changes, what it costs, and the two deadlines worth putting in your calendar.
What changes on October 13
Atlassian's pricing FAQ lists the products affected: Jira, Confluence, Teamwork Collection, and Jira Service Management / Service Collection on Standard, Premium, and Enterprise; Atlassian Guard Standard and Premium; Bitbucket Premium; Jira Product Discovery Standard and Premium; and the Government Cloud versions of Jira, Confluence, JSM, and Guard. Free plans are not affected, and Atlassian says Marketplace app prices are not changing as a result.
The new prices apply to new purchases, renewals, and upgrades. How they reach you depends on how you pay:
- Monthly subscriptions: any bill dated on or after October 13 uses the new price.
- Annual subscriptions: any renewal quote generated or modified on or after October 13 uses the new price. Auto-renewing annual plans billed after that date also pay the new price.
- Quotes generated before October 13 are honoured at the old price until they expire.
- Upgrading your user tier or adding a product on or after October 13 is priced at the new rates. Plan upgrades completed before then keep your existing pricing.
- Academic, nonprofit (Social Impact), Classroom, and Open Source discounts keep the same percentages.
What it costs: old vs. new prices
Atlassian has published its new price tables alongside the current ones. These are the monthly per-user prices for the smallest tier (1-100 users, or 1-15 agents for Service Collection):
| Plan | Until October 12 | From October 13 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jira Standard | $9.05 | $9.70 | +7.2% |
| Jira Premium | $18.30 | $19.60 | +7.1% |
| Confluence Standard | $6.70 | $7.15 | +6.7% |
| Confluence Premium | $13.20 | $14.10 | +6.8% |
| Service Collection (JSM) Standard, per agent | $25.00 | $26.90 | +7.6% |
| Service Collection (JSM) Premium, per agent | $57.30 | $61.60 | +7.5% |
| Teamwork Collection Standard | $15.00 | $15.00 | No change |
| Teamwork Collection Premium | $29.00 | $29.00 | No change |
Annual plans move by similar amounts. A 10-user Jira Standard subscription goes from $900 to $950 a year, Jira Premium from $1,850 to $1,950, and Confluence Standard from $680 to $720. Atlassian itself doesn't publish percentages; its partners put the range at 3-10% depending on product, plan, and size, with the steepest increases (around 10%) at very large seat counts and on Bitbucket Premium.
The third increase in three years
According to Atlassian partners, Cloud prices also rose in October 2024 (around 5% on Jira and Confluence Standard, up to 10% on Enterprise) and in October 2025 (around 5% on Standard, 7.5% on Premium). Taken together, Jira Standard now costs nearly a fifth more than it did two years ago.
The bigger change: usage billing from December 3
On September 1, Atlassian announced that several features will be metered. Each plan includes a monthly allowance, pooled across your organization. Anything above it is billed as extra usage. Billing for most meters begins December 3, 2026. Allowances reset monthly and don't roll over - including for annual customers, who get a monthly allowance rather than a yearly lump sum.
| Meter | Included (Jira Standard / Premium) | Price above allowance |
|---|---|---|
| Rovo AI credits | 25 / 70 credits per user per month | $10 per 1,000 credits |
| Automation steps | 400 / 750 steps per user per month | $0.50 per 1,000 steps |
| Assets objects | 1,000 per organization (Jira, all plans) | $0.02 per object per month |
| Bitbucket build minutes | 2,500 / 3,500 per month | $10 per 1,000 minutes |
| Customer Service Management AI agent | No allowance | $1.00 per resolution |
Automation is the meter most teams already know, and its allowance is generous on paid plans: a 10-user Jira Standard team gets 4,000 steps a month, and extra steps cost half a cent per ten. A step is each trigger, condition, or action that runs, so a rule with one trigger, one condition, and two actions uses four steps every time it fires.
Rovo, Atlassian's AI assistant, is where budgets can surprise people. Search, summaries, and definitions are free, but billable actions such as asking Rovo to draft or act on work cost 10 credits each for basic features, and premium features like Jira's coding agent use a variable number. On Standard, that leaves room for about two billable actions per user per month. Above the allowance, each basic action costs about 10 cents - small on its own, but it adds up for a team that starts using AI for real work. Free plans include no Rovo credits.
Extra usage is on by default
Atlassian's usage-pricing FAQ, Rovo documentation, and Bitbucket FAQ all say extra usage is enabled by default for most organizations, although one older FAQ describes it as opt-in. Don't guess: before December 3, open Atlassian Administration, check whether extra usage is enabled for each meter, and set a limit if you want a hard ceiling. Admins are alerted at 80% and 100% of each allowance.
What a small team will actually pay
Take a 10-person team on monthly billing with Jira Standard and Confluence Standard. Before October 13 it pays $157.50 a month. From October 13 it pays $168.50 - an extra $11 a month, or $132 a year. That's real money but not a reason to migrate on its own.
The usage meters are where the bill becomes less predictable. If that team uses Rovo heavily - say 20 billable actions per person per month - it consumes 2,000 credits against an allowance of 250 (Jira) plus 250 (Confluence), leaving about 1,500 credits billed at $15 a month. Automation is unlikely to cost anything extra on paid plans. The team on the Free plan is in a different position: Jira Free includes just 150 automation steps per month for the whole site, which a single busy four-step rule can use up in under 40 runs.
Two deadlines to act on
- Before October 13 - lock in today's price. Monthly customers can request an annual quote at current prices. Payment must arrive before the quote expires, and the quote can't be extended beyond November 11, 2026. Annual customers within 90 days of renewal can also renew early at the current price.
- Before October 13 - finish planned upgrades. If you were going to move to Premium or add users anyway, upgrades completed before the change keep your current pricing.
- Before December 3 - check the extra-usage settings. Review each meter in Atlassian Administration, decide where extra usage should be allowed, and set limits. Only the exhausted meter pauses when a limit is hit - but automation events that occur while rules are paused won't re-run later.
- Before December 3 - audit your automation rules. Remove duplicate or unused rules, and combine rules that fire on the same trigger. On Free plans, this decides whether your automations keep running all month.
- After December 3 - watch the first two invoices. The usage dashboard shows 90 days of history, a forecast, and a CSV export. Use real numbers to decide on usage packs or limits.
Should you switch from Jira?
For most teams, the October increase alone isn't worth a migration. Moving years of issues, workflows, and integrations costs far more than $1 per user per month. The right reasons to look elsewhere are different: you use Jira mostly as a task tracker rather than for software delivery, your non-technical teams struggle with it, or the new usage meters make your costs hard to predict.
If you do look, compare prices in the same terms - most alternatives quote per user per month billed annually, while some charge a flat fee per workspace. Prices below were checked on each vendor's official pricing page in October 2026:
| Tool | Paid plans from | Worth a look if... |
|---|---|---|
| monday dev | $9 / $12 / $20 per seat (annual), min. 3 seats | You want sprints and boards that non-technical teams can also use |
| ClickUp | Under $10 per user (annual) on the entry plan | You want tasks, docs, and sprints in one tool; sprints are on every plan |
| Asana | $10.99 / $24.99 per user (annual) | Your work is cross-functional projects rather than engineering tickets |
| Wrike | $10 / $25 per user (annual only) | You need resource planning and reporting across many projects |
| Backlog | $35 / $100 / $175 per month, flat | You want issues, Git, and a wiki with a flat price instead of per-user fees |
| GitLab | $29 per user (annual) | You want issues, code, and CI/CD on one platform instead of Jira plus Bitbucket |
Two of these have official Jira migration paths worth knowing about: monday dev documents a migration through its Jira integration, and Backlog offers a Jira Cloud importer (still in beta, with limits on custom fields and history). For a side-by-side view of the general project management options, see our ClickUp vs monday.com and Backlog vs ClickUp comparisons.
Whatever you decide, the practical advice is the same: lock in pricing before October 13 if you're on a monthly plan, and set your usage limits before December 3. All Atlassian prices here were verified against Atlassian's published price tables and documentation on October 9, 2026.
- From October 13, 2026 PT, Atlassian Cloud list prices rise for Jira, Confluence, Service Collection (JSM), Guard, Bitbucket Premium, and Jira Product Discovery - for new purchases, renewals, upgrades, and monthly bills.
- For a small team the increase is about 7%: Jira Standard goes from $9.05 to $9.70 per user per month, Confluence Standard from $6.70 to $7.15.
- The bigger change starts December 3: Atlassian begins billing Rovo AI credits, automation steps, Assets objects, and Bitbucket usage beyond each plan's allowance - and extra usage is switched on by default for most organizations.
- Before October 13, monthly customers can lock today's prices with an annual quote (it can't be extended past November 11). Before December 3, every admin should check the extra-usage settings.
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