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There are so many different bug tracking tools so making a shortlist of the best can be tricky. You want to detect, track, and resolve bugs in your software projects - and need the right tool for your projects and team. I've got you covered! In this post I share from my personal experience managing hundreds of software projects, using many different bug tracking platforms, and share my picks of the best bug tracking tools.

What Are Bug Tracking Tools?

Bug tracking tools are software systems designed to help identify, record, and manage bugs or issues in software projects. These tools provide a centralized platform for teams to report bugs, track their progress, assign them to the right personnel, and monitor resolutions. They're essential in software development for ensuring that bugs are efficiently dealt with, ultimately leading to more reliable and stable software products.

Bug Tracking Tool Overviews

Here are a few of the best bug tracker tools available. Read on to discover what they offer, how they differ from the others, and use cases they’re best suited for.

Best within an all-in-one observability platform

  • Free plan available
  • From $25/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.3/5

New Relic is an all-in-one observability tool that can help you monitor and debug various aspects of your stack. It centralizes your security, issues, and bug tracking in one place and allows you to keep an eye across all your tools and data sources.

In the platform, you get a complete overview of health insights at every stage of development, and every part of your stack. It provides you with code-level insights that can help you find the root cause of any bug or error. The software tracks key transactions and monitors browsing. It also performs synthetic checks in APM.

Because you can track your entire stack in one place, you can spot dependencies and interrelated issues across tools and apps. The software integrates with over 500 apps including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, and Slack. It also has an API you can use to build custom integrations.

Pricing starts at $49/user/month, and a free version is available with feature limitations.

Best for tracking bugs with Kanban boards

  • Free plan available
  • From $8.50/user/month
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Rating: 4.3/5

Shortcut is a project management platform designed to unify product and engineering teams by integrating various aspects of project management into a single experience. It offers features such as issue tracking, sprint planning, roadmaps, and goals, making it a comprehensive tool for managing software development projects.

One of the key features of Shortcut is its Kanban boards, which allow teams to visualize and manage their work. These boards support custom workflows and powerful filters, enabling teams to move through different stages. This visual representation of tasks helps in tracking progress, ensuring that bugs are addressed promptly.

The tool also offers detailed progress tracking through features like burndown charts and historic insights, which help teams monitor their progress over time and identify any roadblocks. Furthermore, Shortcut's ability to connect work to company goals through OKRs ensures that all tasks, including bug fixes, are aligned with the broader organizational objectives.

Integrations include Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Calendar, Figma, Zapier, ProductBoard, Miro, Zendesk, Notion, and Box.

Best IT service management with bug tracking tools

  • 7-day free trial
  • From $20/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4/5

Jira Service Management is an ITSM software that helps teams manage and resolve customer service requests (including bug tracking) efficiently and collaboratively.

Jira Service Management helps with bug tracking by providing a platform for capturing, tracking, and managing software defects. Users can create customized issue types and workflows to capture information about bugs, including severity, reproducibility, and impact on users. Bugs can be assigned to individual team members or groups for resolution, and Jira Service Management provides powerful visualization tools, such as agile boards and burndown charts, to help track progress and identify potential roadblocks in real-time. Jira Service Management offers a range of automation features, such as rule-based workflows and automated notifications, that can help streamline bug tracking processes and reduce the administrative burden on teams.

Jira Service Management also provides powerful visualization tools, such as agile boards and burndown charts, that enable teams to track progress and identify potential roadblocks in real-time. Teams can use Jira Service Management to capture and track requirements, manage backlogs, and coordinate development and release activities. Plus, users can create custom workflows and issue types to track release-related tasks, such as creating release notes, performing code reviews, and conducting user acceptance testing.

Key features include incident management, problem management, change management, and service request management, all of which are fully customizable to fit the unique needs of each organization. Other features include a self-service portal for end-users to submit requests and track their status, SLA tracking and reporting, automation rules for ticket routing and escalation, and integration with other tools.

Jira Service Management integrates with other Atlassian platforms as well as third-party apps like Slack, Mircosoft, Google Workspace, Zoom, AdobeXD, Invision, Figma, Gliffy, Draw.io, Balsamiq, Lucidchart, Miro, Opsgenie, Jenkins, Dynatrace, GitHub, Zendesk, Trello, Optimizely, and hundreds of others via their apps marketplace. You can also build your own using their API. 

Jira Service Management costs from $21/agent/month and comes with a 7-day free trial.  

Best bug tracking tool for customization

  • 14-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $8/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

monday.com is a great for managing scrum and agile teams, and although it’s suited to a wide range of business environments, it’s often used in software development. The platform includes a bug tracking template, and they’ve made a video showing how their own teams set up the platform to track bugs.

Additionally, the platform has robust time tracking capabilities and customizable notifications and automations. This helps you focus on what’s important and track bugs and bottlenecks easily. You can create, visualize and share your roadmap to keep everyone in sync. Backlogs, dependencies, and sprint planning are available as well in a very intuitive interface.

You can create forms in the platform or integrate to other tools. Moreover, thanks to shareable boards, you can share your project with partners for feedback. With completely customizable labels in the status column (with color coding), and the multiple views, monday.com helps teams see the real status of their projects and tasks.

While monday.com doesn’t offer many features specific to bug tracking (other tools offer features like webpage markup and a more robust set of issue management features) it does let you get an overview of work in progress, capacity, and effort.

monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Best for tracking bugs visually

  • 14-day free trial
  • From $39/month
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Rating: 4.8/5

BugHerd is a visual bug tracker that sits in a virtual layer on top of your website. Once installed either through browser extension or through a one-line JavaScript tag, it enables your team and clients to report bugs and manage all the communication to resolve them directly on your site. BugHerd is hailed for being intuitive and easy to use, especially with non-developers. Project managers of teams who handle a lot of client feedback on websites love BugHerd for the simplicity in gathering feedback from multiple sources and managing it to completion. BugHerd also offers zero-project limits on all their plans.

To report a bug, users point & click on website elements, to which you can add statuses, due dates, files, comments, etc. Feedback is automatically added to a customisable Kanban-style task management board, along with essential data (OS, browser, etc). When working on a mobile-friendly website, you can log tasks and manage your workflow across mobile devices.

Overall, Bugherd’s biggest benefit is its visual simplicity and ease of use, even for non-technical folks. Its biggest drawback is found in its lack of integration with WordPress, although you can bridge the gap with Zapier. Likewise, aside from task boards and task lists, BugHerd’s reporting features are pretty slim, but I expect you’ll be able to round out its reporting functionality with some native integrations that they have in the works at this moment. You can also export data from BugHerd in CSV, XML, and JSON formats.

BugHerd costs from $39/month for 5 users. They offer a discount of 20% for annual plans and a free 14-day trial with no credit card required.

Best bug tracking tool for software development teams

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $35/month (up to 30 users)
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Rating: 4.5/5

Backlog is one of the more feature-rich tools on this list, as it’s a full-scale online project management software for developers rather than a strict bug tracking tool. Along with a suite of task management features, the platform provides a consistent way for teams to report bugs and manage code repositories. You can customize issue templates to fit your bug-reporting workflow and use subtasks to easily organize, track, and retrieve the entire history of an issue.

A main benefit of Backlog is its intuitive interface that’s easy for anyone to learn, as it isn’t solely designed for development teams. You can view each project as a Kanban board and set up custom statuses to manage the stages of bug tracking. Since you can prioritize cards with a simple drag-and-drop function, it’s convenient to create an issue right on the board and add it into the workflow where needed. Switch to the Gantt chart view, and you can see project timelines and team workloads at a glance.

Much more than a bug-capturing tool, Backlog enables pull requests, merge requests, and branches, and you have the option to use Git or SVN workflows. Overall, the platform provides well-rounded features for code review and collaboration, such as inline commenting, and the Wiki tool makes it easy to document bug-reporting procedures to keep everyone informed of changes.

Backlog also comes with a few useful pre-built integrations like Typetalk, Cacoo, Redmine, Jira Importer, iCal, email, and Google Sheets. For additional integrations, you can build your own through the API. And they have an app for both Android and iOS, so your clients and teams can access the tool from mobile devices.

Backlog costs $35/month for up to 30 users, which breaks down to less than $2 per user. They also offer a free version for up to 10 users and one project.

Best for quick bug reporting & debugging

  • Free plan available
  • From $10/user/month
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Rating: 4.6/5

Jam is a bug-tracking and reporting tool designed to assist teams in efficiently capturing and communicating issues within their software products. It provides a browser extension that enables users to report bugs with a single click, automatically capturing relevant information such as device and browser details, console logs, network logs, and reproduction steps. 

One standout feature is instant replay, which captures the events that happened before the bug was reported. This allows for a clearer image of the bug, which can be crucial for understanding the issue. The tool also automatically records all the steps to help replicate the issue without the manual effort.

Jam also offers a team workspace for paid plans to allow a more centralized place to collaborate and communicate about bugs. Users can adjust the permission settings to ensure the right people have access to the right information.

Aside from instant captures and bug reports with one click, Jam also offers a video and voice recording feature, so users can provide real-time explanations and context about a bug. Additionally, the tool has a JamGPT feature, which acts as an AI-debugging assistant to help teams resolve issues quickly.

Jam’s integrations include ClickUp, Jira, Linear, Notion, Figma, Sentry, Slack, GitHub, Asana, and more.

Jam's pricing starts from $10/user/month with a free plan available.

Best bug tracking tool for small and mid-size teams

  • 30 days free trial
  • From $8/month for up to 10 users
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Rating: 4.5/5

DebugMe is a visual feedback and bug tracking tool with some really useful project management features built in. It’s a simple, easy-to-learn solution with minimal features, making it a good fit for small and mid-sized teams (their enterprise plan caps out at 60 users).

The main upside of this tool is that it’s straightforward to use and not overloaded with modules and features. On the other hand, it doesn’t offer anything in the way of reporting tools—for capturing and resolving bugs, it’s great, but it doesn’t do much else (which may be exactly what you need). The pricing reflects this, and it’s one of the more affordable bug tracking tools out there at $8/month for 10 users.

DebugMe provides teams and clients with the ability to leave on-site feedback in the form of highlights, pins, blackouts, and drawings. The screen capture tool automatically records important information about the OS, resolution, browser version, plugins, etc. You can communicate through comments, change the status of a bug, get notifications based on your role, and manage tasks on the app’s Kanban board.

DebugMe comes with native integrations with Trello, Redmine, Jira, Gmail, Pivotal Tracker, Teamwork, Visual Studio Online, Outlook, and Yahoo, and you can sync with other tools through Zapier.

DebugMe costs from $8/month for 10 users, and they also offer a free plan for 2 users.

Best bug tracking tool for integrations

  • Free Trial
  • $22.95 USD per month

Founded by a MantisBT project lead, (MantisBT is a free, open source bug tracker has been around since 2000), MantisHub is a SaaS bug tracking tool that offers a powerful suite of issue management, customer support, project management, release management, and reporting features.

For the price, MantisHub provides a larger-than-average array of features—personalized dashboards, access controls for administrators, team members, and clients, customizable issue fields, notifications, comments, a built-in customer support platform, project timelines with a live activity stream, time-tracking, and plenty of graphical reporting tools.

MantisHub also touts a long list of plug-ins, along with built-in integrations with Clockify and Toggl to import MantisHub issue data directly into those time-tracking apps. MantisHub also integrates with other tools like Slack, JetBrains, and Eclipse IDEs (and your dev team can use the MantisHub API with C# and PHP client SDKs in order to integrate with the tools you’re using).

Mantis costs from $4.95/month for 5 users and 1 project.

Best bug tracking tool for reporting features

  • Free Plan
  • $4 per month

Zoho advertises their bug tracker as “simple, fast and scalable”, and they deliver on this promise. Their tool enables you to record bugs and tracks them based on severity, due date, and custom-set statuses and fields.

Zoho Bug Tracker supplies an interface that you can personalize with their configuration tools, alongside a range of useful features for time management and project management (not just bug tracking). The reporting features let you see logged and resolved bugs in addition to team progress and milestones. The timesheet feature allows your team to log their hours. Notifications and newsfeeds keep the team up to date, and you can also automate your SLAs—set rules to trigger updates in other apps when changes are made within Zoho, or trigger an automated email to a client.

Overall, Zoho has better reporting, notifications, and integrations that many other bug tracking tools, so it’s a good choice for teams who need to distribute and access data about their bugs at various points in their workflow. However, it lacks the visual appeal of tools like BugHerd which allows clients and teams to leave feedback directly on web pages and images.

Zoho Bug Tracker comes with pre-built integrations with a large assortment of 3rd party tools: Crashlytics, Zapier, Dropbox, Box, GitHub, Bitbucket, Jira, OneDrive, Google Drive. It also sync with Zoho apps like Desk, Analytics, People, Books, Invoice, Docs, Forums, and Chat.

Zoho Bug Tracker costs from about $3/user/month billed annually. Also has a freemium plan for upto 3 users for 2 projects

The Best Bug Tracking Tools Comparison Chart

The chart below provides a basic summary of the top bug tracking software included in this review. Get a snapshot of each tool’s pricing, trials, and overall quality score. Then, read detailed reviews below.

Tools Price
New Relic From $25/user/month (billed annually)
Shortcut From $8.50/user/month
Jira Service Management From $20/user/month (billed annually)
monday.com From $8/user/month (billed annually)
BugHerd From $39/month
Backlog From $35/month (up to 30 users)
Jam From $10/user/month
DebugMe From $8/month for up to 10 users
MantisHub $22.95 USD per month
Zoho BugTracker $4 per month
Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

Compare Software

Other Options

Here are some other tools that did not make it to the top list but are still worth your consideration.

How I Picked The Best Bug Tracking Tools

I looked for defect trackers that met all or most of these key criteria:

User Interface

Put simply, bug tracking software should look and feel great to use. The last thing you want is your bug tracking tool to look, well, buggy!

Usability

The tool should make it easy to log a bug, ping associated team members, pull reports, store information, and perform follow-ups, among other common features.

Integrations

integrates with common project management tools, directly exports data into and generates notifications within those tools in order to help you manage your bug tracking from a single place.

Value for Price

A good bug-tracking tool should have transparent, flexible pricing. Your price per user can vary greatly between less than $1.00 per user per month to $15.00 per user per month. As a ballpark figure, an average bug tracking tool price per user is around $3.00-$5.00 per user per month.

Bug Tracking Tools FAQs

Find answers to common questions other people ask about this topic.

What is the difference between bug and issue?

Very quickly, I want to go over the definition of a bug. This is because bugs go by a few different names—what one team calls a bug, other teams might call an issue, error, defect, ticket, fault, problem, or incident. To pick a bug-tracking tool that fits your use case, you first need to have a clear idea of what exactly you consider to be a bug. Having a clear idea will help you choose a tool that does what you want it to do.

In general, people make a distinction between the concept of a bug and an issue (or use your own terms—maybe you use “defect” and “issue”, etc). Find a simple explanation below:

A bug is generally considered to be a defect (a flaw, mistake, error) in the codebase. As such, the solution involves steps like isolating and reproducing the bug and changing the codebase. To fix a bug, developers need information pertaining to its environment, operating system, browser version, etc (here’s a more in-depth definition of software bug).

An issue is generally considered to span a much broader range of potential shortcomings in a project or product—it’s not necessarily related to a problem with your code. Depending on your organization, an issue could be a customer complaint ticket generated through a report from the end user, an entry on the “requested features” list, a problem someone’s identified with your hardware configuration, or a concern from the design team regarding the user interface.

What are key features of bug tracking tools?

Some of the top software issue tracking tools on the market also supply functionality like prioritization logic (helps automatically determine which bugs to fix, in what order, and how long it’ll take). In addition to being a simple bug capturing tools, some also supply performance measures designed to give insight to management for maintaining schedules and coordinating work across teams. However, in this review, I focus on reviewing tools based on the core bug-tracking tool criteria listed above.

  • On-site feedback: enables clients or team members to annotate, highlight, pin, or otherwise leave feedback to identify and describe a bug directly on the site. This is useful because it provides context that makes it easy to understand the issue they’re referring to.
  • Reporting: at the very least, provides a task list or overview with a record of issues and all of their associated statuses, labels, assignees, etc.
  • Issue status: provides the ability to set and change an issue’s status. Some of the better tools also have some level of automation—when an issue’s status changes, it sends automatic alerts to certain users or it automatically updates the issue in the task board.
  • Notifications: offers either in-app notifications (basic) or notifications within third party apps (even better) when a bug is reported, assigned, resolved, commented on, etc. The better tools allow you to customize your notifications and/or receive tailored notifications according to your user role (admin, developer, client, etc.)

What's the difference between bug and issue tracking tools?

In some cases, it’s fine to use “bug tracking tools” and “issue tracking tools” interchangeably, but in some cases, it makes sense to distinguish between them. This is because, for some organizations, issue management really does operate on an entirely different lifecycle from bug tracking. Issue management might be completely focused on the cycle of solving end-user complaints, requests, and questions—it may involve fixing a software defect, but it doesn’t always have to, and its main tasks might fall under the responsibility of a department that’s not your dev team.

Simply keep in mind that when you’re looking at bug/issue tracking tools, you might simply want a tool to report and fix bugs (a defect tracker)—or you might want something that falls under the bigger umbrella of issue tracking. Broader issue management tools will generally offer more reporting and management features, along with a greater variety of user roles to capture input from and enable collaboration between customer service, project management, IT, design, etc, comprising an entire issue management system.

What do bug tracking tools do?

Whether you call them defect tracking tools or bug reporting tools, these tools are designed to bring bugs to your attention in a systematic way, providing as much environment data about bug as possible so it’s easier to isolate, backtrace, categorize, prioritize, and fix. Most defect trackers also provide features to help your teams unify and streamline the communication/collaboration that’s part of the bug fixing process.

In many cases, bug capturing tools are designed to serve a narrower purpose (record and track bugs), and they integrate with task management systems that allow you to perform the surrounding planning and management tasks. Other tools offer a more complete suite of software project management features. I’ve included both types of bug software in this review.

What are the benefits of bug tracking tools?

  • Supply a common, simple interface for sharing files and communication about bugs
  • Provide notifications and records to help your team pace, track, and estimate bug-related work
  • Provide a searchable database of bugs your dev team can reference in the future
  • Automate manual tasks associated with capturing bugs and updating issues

Benefits of bug tracking tools

And finally, because bugs are an inevitable part of the software development process, bug tracking tools aren’t a nice-to-have—they serve a critical function in that process.

 

Is Jira a bug tracking tool?

Yes. Jira, a tool developed by Atlassian, began as a software development tool, but it’s now used for bug tracking, issue management, and as a project management software.

Learn how to do resource planning with Jira.

Bug Tracking Tools Buyer's Guide

First and foremost, the great thing about choosing a bug tracking tool is that almost all of them are low-risk—they’re simple tools that are easy to access and get the feel for in free trials. Overall, they’re a low-risk, lightweight investment that doesn’t impact much of your existing infrastructure.

Even so, you can save yourself the hassle of going through a string of different bug tracking tools by asking yourself these important qualifying questions for choosing the right one:

What Do You Need It For?

Bug tracking tools are designed for a few different use case scenarios. Find the right fit here:

  • If you need to find errors and bugs throughout your development cycle, look to developer-focused tools like Rollbar.
  • If you need a tool for clients to give your teams feedback. Bugherd, DebugMe, Marker, and Bugyard are great visual tools that are easy for clients to learn and use.
  • If you’re looking for something that helps you manage user feedback and provide customer support on top of simple issue tracking, look at tools like MantisHub or DoneDone.

What’s Your Team Size?

Before you fall in love with a tool, check into how many users it supports. While some tools can support an enterprise level team, a lot of bug trackers are really designed for small or mid-sized teams and they have a limit on the maximum number of users. Tools like Backlog, Zoho Bug Tracker, and DoneDone are great for large, distributed teams. Tools like DebugMe and Bugyard are designed for small and mid-sized teams.

How Many Projects Do You Need To Test?

A lot of tools price their plans according to active projects along with users, so you should consider how many projects you’ll need to test. Tools that offer unlimited projects like Bugherd, Backlog, Zoho Bug Tracker, DoneDone, Bugyard, and Marker.io are good for teams with lots of projects.

How Would It Fit Into Your Workflow And Current Toolset?

Most bug-tracking tools aren’t designed as stand-alone tools. In fact, several tools on this list, like DebugMe, Bugyard, and Marker.io offer minimal features beyond simple bug capture and tracking, so it’s a good idea to check out the project management tools they integrate with (Trello, Slack, and Jira are common ones) and see if those are a fit for your workflow. If you’re not already using those additional project tools, how would adopting it affect your workflow, budget, etc?

On the other hand, a few tools do provide additional functionality for tracking and analyzing your projects, tasks, and time. These include Backlog, DoneDone, Rollbar, and MantisHub —good options if you’re not heavily invested in other projects, tasks, and time management tools.

bug tracking tools logos list

What Do You Think?

Do you have experience with any of these tools? What main features do you think they should include? Share your insight with our community below.

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Ben Aston
By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. I'm a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut!