Jira Free Plan Limits: 10 Users, 2 GB, 150 Automation Steps
Four numbers define the free tier, and the one that bites first is rarely the one people plan around.
On this page
Jira's free tier is more generous than its reputation suggests and more constrained than its headline number implies. Four figures define it:
| Limit | Free plan |
|---|---|
| Users | Up to 10 |
| File storage | 2 GB |
| Automation | 150 steps per subscription |
| Support | Community support |
Ten users is not usually what stops you
Everyone plans around the user count, because it is the number on the pricing page and the one that is easy to count.
In practice, 2 GB of file storage runs out first for most teams, and it does so quietly.
Jira issues are mostly text, and text is almost free. What consumes storage is everything people attach to issues: screenshots of the bug, screen recordings of the reproduction, exported logs, design files from the ticket that started the work.
A team doing proper bug reports — the kind where someone attaches a thirty-second screen capture — can get through two gigabytes in a few months without anyone adding a single user.
So if you are evaluating whether free Jira will work, do not count your people. Estimate your attachments.
Steps, not runs
The automation figure is the one most likely to be misread, and the wording is precise: 150 steps per subscription.
A rule is not a step. A rule that, when a ticket moves to Done, assigns it, posts a comment and updates a field is performing three steps every single time it fires.
So "150" does not mean 150 automations, and it does not mean 150 rule triggers. Three moderately useful rules on a busy board will consume the allowance considerably faster than the number suggests.
This is the Atlassian pattern generally — bound the resource rather than the account — and it shows up again in the export ceiling below.
Community support is the real tier difference
It is tempting to skim past this, and it is probably the most consequential line in the table.
Free plans get community support. There is no ticket, no SLA, no named escalation. When something is broken on a Monday morning and a team cannot work, your route is a forum post and the goodwill of strangers.
For a side project or an internal board, that is entirely fine. For anything that a business runs on, the question "what do we do when it breaks" has an uncomfortable answer, and it is worth answering before rather than during.
The limit that decides whether you can leave
One constraint matters more than all of the above and does not appear on the plan comparison at all.
Jira Cloud exports up to 10,000 work items per CSV export from the Issue Navigator, and the ceiling is not configurable. Atlassian publishes workarounds — batching with JQL, the Sheets and Excel integrations — rather than a way to raise it.
For a free-tier team of ten that will never be a problem. For anyone who grew on a paid plan and is now considering their options, it is the number that decides how hard leaving is, and it is scored in full in our Jira exit report at 22 out of 30.
The deeper issue flagged there is worth repeating: a CSV cannot represent the relationships between issues. Epics, sub-tasks and issue links survive only as reference columns, so an export gives you your tickets and not the structure between them.
What is not documented
The plan comparison states the limits and does not describe what happens when you cross them.
Does an eleventh user get blocked, or does the plan change? Does hitting 2 GB stop attachments, stop issue creation, or something else? Do automations simply stop firing at step 151?
None of that is answered by the source we checked, so we have not invented answers. The practical posture is to stay comfortably under rather than to discover the behaviour at the boundary during a release week.
Who the free plan genuinely suits
A team of up to ten, doing text-heavy issue tracking, with modest automation and no dependency on vendor support — which describes a great many small software teams, and it is a real product rather than a demo.
The pressure points are attachments and support, in that order. Both are predictable, and both are easier to plan for than to react to.
For how Jira's constraints compare with Asana's ten collaborators, Trello's ten boards and Notion's thousand blocks, see what each project tool does when you stop paying.
Questions people ask
How many users can you have on Jira free?
Up to 10. That is the headline constraint and the one most teams plan around, though in practice the 2 GB storage limit usually bites first because attachments accumulate much faster than people join.
What is the Jira free storage limit?
2 GB of file storage. Issue text barely registers against that - it is screenshots, logs, design files and video attachments that consume it. A team doing bug reports with screen recordings can clear 2 GB in months.
How many automation runs do you get on Jira free?
Atlassian documents 150 steps per subscription. The important word is steps rather than rules: a single rule that performs several actions consumes several steps each time it fires, so a small number of busy rules can use the allowance quickly.
What happens if you exceed the Jira free plan limits?
The plan comparison page we checked does not say. It states the limits without describing the consequence of passing them, so we have not guessed - test it on a project you do not depend on, or plan to stay comfortably underneath.
Can you get support on the Jira free plan?
Community support only. For a team running something that matters on Jira, the absence of a ticketed support channel is a bigger practical difference than any individual feature - when something breaks, your escalation path is a forum post.
Where this information comes from
Product details change often. Each item below links to the primary source we checked, so you can confirm anything that matters to your decision.
Spotted something out of date or incorrect? Tell us and we will fix it.