A modern Jira alternative for teams that work with AI agents

Why teams look for a Jira alternative

• The instance grew. Schemes, custom fields and permissions need an admin, and simple changes take a ticket.
• Time tracking, timesheets, client access and documentation each come from another app or product, each with its own bill.
• Clients and stakeholders need a view of the work, but giving them full accounts is expensive or too open.
• AI agents now do part of the work, and the team wants their output on the same board, with a clear point where a person signs it off.
• The company wants a provider in Switzerland or the EU and control over where the data lives.
• Data and AI control: the team wants to decide which AI models touch its work data, and to run its own models or its own mail server instead of relying on a vendor's.

What to look for in an alternative

• Import that keeps keys, hierarchy (epics, stories, sub-tasks), comments, attachments and worklogs.
• A way to run both tools side by side during the switch, not a big-bang cut-over.
• Workflows you can adapt per project without a full-time admin.
• A client view with permissions per client and per person.
• Time tracking and reports that match how you bill.
• An API and an MCP server, so your own tools and AI assistants can read and write the data.
• Clear answers on hosting, data location and who can access the data.

How Crew fits

• Tasks with types (epic, story, task, sub-task and more), a five-level hierarchy, releases and task links.
• Workflow schemes per project, from preset schemes (Simple, Development, Complex, Marketing) that you can rename, recolour and reorder.
• Boards, Gantt timeline with milestones, roadmap, resource planner and weekly planning meetings.
• Worklogs, timesheets, billing review and PDF reports. Two-way Tempo sync if you still use Tempo.
• Documents, task attachments with preview, notes and structured checklists.
• Client portal with per-client permissions and approvals.
• AI agent runs on tasks with approval gates, previews for review and a log of every step.
• REST API (v1, OpenAPI) and an MCP server, both acting with the permissions of the token owner.
• Own AI models instead of a US model API are possible (for example Qwen, Mistral AI or the Swiss AI Apertus model on Infomaniak), and email can use your own SMTP server.

• Crew vs Jira
• Client portal

How to migrate from Jira to Crew

1. Connect Crew to your Jira Cloud site with an API token.
2. Pick the Jira project and the Crew project it goes into.
3. Map Jira issue types to Crew task types, Jira statuses to the statuses of the project's workflow, and Jira users to Crew users. Crew suggests a mapping and flags conflicts.
4. Run the dry run. It shows what will be created, updated or skipped, without writing anything.
5. Import. Issues, comments, attachments, sprints, fix versions and worklogs come over; parent links are rebuilt. Re-running updates instead of duplicating.
6. Turn on sync if you want both tools in step for a while. Crew pulls changes from Jira on a schedule and on webhooks, and pushes changes made in Crew back to Jira.
7. When the team works in Crew only, switch the sync off. Crew is then the master for that project.

Worklogs that Tempo booked under its own bot account can be credited back to the real person. A report of each import run is available as CSV.

Frequently asked questions