The 10 best bug-tracking software of 2024

If you’re still tracking bugs in a spreadsheet, you might be creating unnecessary work for your team. Bug tracking software makes it quicker and easier for you to collaborate on tasks, set up automations to reduce manual work, integrate support tickets with QA test results, and much more.

Here, we’ll break down the basics of bug-tracking software, and share our top 10 picks for bug-tracking platforms in 2024.

What is bug-tracking software?

Bug-tracking software is software that you can use to report, manage, and prioritize software bugs and problems.

Bug-tracking applications give software development and QA teams a centralized platform to collect, prioritize, assign, track, and resolve issues that they run into during software development and testing, or that their end-users uncover after the software is launched.

What are the benefits of bug tracking?

Bug tracking is absolutely essential if you want to launch glitch-free software. Here are the benefits of including this workflow in your overall development process:

• Improved product quality: Systematically tracking and resolving bugs enhances the overall quality of the software, leading to a better user experience.
• Increased efficiency: Bug tracking systems streamline the process of identifying, assigning, and resolving bugs, making teams more efficient at ironing out the issues.
• Enhanced collaboration: Centralized bug tracking tools ensure continuous communication among team members—colleagues can share updates and offer guidance to each other in complex cases.
• Real-time notifications: Using automation, it’s easy to update team members when part of the bug tracking workflow is completed, enabling the next person to check the fix or provide support.
• Workload prioritization: Implementing a robust bug tracking system ensures tasks are ranked based on the impact of each error. This prioritization allows critical issues to be addressed promptly.
• Greater accountability and transparency: Tracking systems provide clear visibility into the bug statuses and how each is progressing toward pre-defined milestones. Everyone should know what their colleagues are working on and understand if any task dependencies are causing bottlenecks.
• Advanced data and analytics: Historical bug tracking data allows teams to identify trends, recurring issues, and areas for improvement. This information is key to taking proactive measures to prevent future bugs. For example, if you discover that errors tend to creep in during certain stages of the development process, you might introduce code reviews at those specific points.

Why use software for bug tracking?

The benefit of tracking your bugs effectively should be clear:

• You create higher-quality software
• You’re able to prioritize major bugs and create a better user experience
• You improve your team’s collaboration and make sure that fewer bugs escape into production

Some development teams feel that they can handle bugs with a simple spreadsheet. However, there are some key advantages of using a purpose-built bug-tracking solution instead of Excel or Drive to manage your bugs:

• Centralized information—bug-tracking software gives you a single location for all your bug information, such as a description of the bugs, status updates, comments, and attachments.
• Guided workflows—you can use bug-tracking software to create customized workflows that match your development process, so you can make sure your bugs are handled consistently and efficiently.
• Automations—Many bug trackers include automation features, so you can cut down on repetitive tasks and send automated notifications when bugs are added or dealt with.
• Reporting—Most bug-tracking solutions also come with reporting features, which can help you keep an eye on key metrics, like how long it takes you to fix each bug.
• Integrations—Many bug-tracking tools will integrate with other development tools, like project management systems or version control software, so you avoid siloed data and make all the information easy to find.

If you’re ready to get all of these benefits, and more, why not try the bug tracking features in monday dev?

Try monday dev

What to look for in bug-tracking software

When evaluating bug-tracking software, you should be looking out for the following:

• Ease of use—QA engineers and software teams are busy, so prioritize a bug tracker with an intuitive visual interface and a quick learning curve.
• Flexibility—You need a bug tracker that will adapt easily to your team’s preferred way of working. Look for customizable fields, views, and workflows.
• Collaboration tools—The whole point of using a bug-tracking application is to foster team collaboration, so keep an eye out for features like easy commenting, tagging, notifications, and task management.
• Searchability–Look for bug-tracking software with powerful search and filtering capabilities, so your team can quickly find specific bugs based on e.g. status, priority, or assignee.
• Project management—Check that the bug tracker will let you create multiple projects, file bugs or tickets in a specific project, and run reports by project.

Who uses bug-tracking software?

Bug-tracking software is typically when you’re building or testing software, so it’s primarily used by:

• Software developers, to view assigned issues, track progress, and update the status of bugs as they work on resolving them.
• Software testers and Quality Assurance (QA) engineers, to log bug reports (including steps to reproduce the issue and/or screenshots), track bugs, and collaborate with developers to verify that bugs are fixed.
• Project managers, to prioritize bugs, allocate tasks, and track the team’s overall progress
• Product owners or product managers, to monitor the status of reported bugs, prioritize bug fixes based on business impact, and make decisions about release timelines.
• Customer Support teams, to manage customer-reported issues.

Top 10 bug-tracking software options

Here are our picks for the top bug-tracking applications currently available on the market:

1. monday dev

Best for: Product and development teams who need a visual, flexible bug tracker

monday dev is a product development solution with exceptional bug-tracking tools.  It lets you plan your product roadmap, oversee and monitor sprints, speed up development, and empower your team to exceed their goals.

monday dev key features

• Native integrations with the rest of the development stack, including Github, Gitlab, and Figma
• Sprint management—manage sprint ceremonies, track story points and monitor your progress in the same place 
• Easy bug tracking—effectively report, track, and assign bugs 
• Feature requests—integrate user requests and bugs in the same platform 
• Sprint retrospectives—structure feedback for continuous process improvements
• Agile reporting tools 
• Product roadmapping—map your product vision and, share it with stakeholders

Pros

• Easy to use, easy to set up, and with great customer support
• Powerful collaboration tools to help your testing team move faster
• Intuitive, visual interface
• Top-rated customer support

monday dev cons

• No forever free version
• Can have a learning curve

monday dev pricing

• Basic: From $9/seat/month (billed annually, minimum 3 seats at $27/month)
• Standard: From $12/seat/month (billed annually, minimum 3 seats at $36/month)
• Pro: From $20/seat/month (billed annually, minimum 3 seats at $60/month)
• Enterprise: Contact monday.com for a custom quote

2. Jira

Best for:  DevOps teams

Jira is an Agile development and issue-tracking platform launched by Atlassian in 2002. Features include sprint planning, bug tracking, and collaboration tools.

Jira key features

• Bug tracking and reporting
• Scrum & Kanban views
• Extensive integrations, including GitHub

Jira pros

• Excellent task management and issue-tracking functionality
• Established solution with flexible set-up
• Handy automation features

Jira cons

• Can have a steep learning curve
• Specifically designed for Scrum teams

Jira pricing

• Free—for teams of up to 10, 2 GB file storage limit
• Standard—from $8.15/user/month (billed annually, for up to 50,000 users)
• Premium—from $16/user/month (billed annually)
• Enterprise—from $141,000/year (available only on annual billing, for a minimum of 801 users)

see Jira pricing for more detail as well as Jira alternatives and monday vs Jira for a thorough comparison

3. ClickUp

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Best for: Teams that need extensive customization

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management platform that you can set up to use as a bug-tracking solution.

ClickUp key features

• Flexible views
• Custom intake forms
• Automated workflows

ClickUp pros

• Comprehensive free plan
• 24/7 customer support
• Extremely customizable for any workflow

ClickUp cons

• Steep learning curve
• Workflow configurations take time to set up
• Performance may be slow

ClickUp pricing

• Free—for individuals
• Unlimited—from $7/member/mo
• Business—from $12/member/mo
• Enterprise—Price available on application

Learn more in our ClickUp pricing guide.

4. GitHub

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Best for: Development teams who want to collaborate on coding and track bugs in the same place

GitHub is an open-source platform that developers can use to manage code repositories, track issues and bugs, share knowledge, and collaborate on DevOps projects.

GitHub pros

• Great for version control
• Work with unlimited collaborators
• Robust documentation

GitHub cons

• Requires technical knowledge
• Challenging for non-tech users

GitHub pricing

• Free forever for unlimited public and private repositories
• Team: From $4 per user/mo
• Enterprise: From $21 per user/mo

5. Asana

Best for: Teams that need a bug tracker that’s also a versatile task management tool.

Asana is a task management tool that you can use to track bugs and collaborate with your team. It has a user-friendly interface, so it’s easy for you to manage, assign, and track bugs efficiently.

Asana pros

• User-friendly and easy to integrate into your existing tech stack
• Convenient if you’re already using it in other departments
• Can use to monitor connected sprints

Asana cons

• Built for task management, not specifically bug management
• More expensive than other competitors to Jira
• Geared for task rather than product management

Asana key features

• Done-for-you bug tracking template
• Custom fields
• Automatic notifications
• Bug tracking form

Asana pricing

• Personal–Asana’s free plan is for individuals or small teams
• Starter–From $10.99/user/mo
• Advanced–From $24.99/user/mo
• Enterprise and Enterprise +–Available on request

Check out our guide to Asana pricing to learn more.

6. BugHerd

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Best for: Teams working on website testing and development

BugHerd is a bug-tracking tool that lets you spot bugs and pin feedback directly onto your web pages.

BugHerd key features

• Add markup to web page elements
• Kanban-style board to track feedback
• Visual point-and-click bug flagging

BugHerd pros

• Easy to use, even by non-technical users
• Visual, on-the-spot bug flagging
• Integrations with Slack, GitHub, and WordPress

BugHerd cons

• Only for web design
• Limited native integrations
• No free forever pricing plan

BugHerd pricing

• Standard—$33/mo
• Studio—$58/mo
• Premium—$109/mo
• Deluxe—$191/mo
• Enterprise—Available on request
• Additional seats—$6.60/user/mo

7. Bugzilla

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Best for: Teams working in highly complex software environments

Bugzilla is a free, open-source bug-tracking software used by large tech companies like Mozilla and RedHat to handle complex development projects.

Bugzilla key features

• Advanced search
• Milestone tracking
• Track issues based on products and components

Bugzilla pros

• Free forever
• Powerful bug search capabilities
• Easy to scale across large development projects

Bugzilla cons

• Not useful for task management, only bug management
• Interface not particularly user-friendly
• Not a lot of support (it’s a free tool)

Bugzilla pricing

• Open source, free forever

8. Redmine

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Best for: Technical DevOps teams who need advanced tracking capabilities.

Redmine is an open-source tool that gives software developers advanced bug-tracking features.

Redmine key features

• Project wikis and forums to keep essential DevOps data streamlined
• Time tracking and Gantt charts
• Role-based access control for team collaboration

Redmine pros

• Manage bugs across multiple projects
• Dynamic issue-tracking system
• Open source, free forever

Redmine cons

• Support is forum-based only
• For technical users only

Redmine pricing

• Free

9. GitLab

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Best for: DevSecOps teams who need a comprehensive solution.

GitLab is an integrated software lifecycle management suite. It includes bug-tracking software, along with project planning, source code management, and CI/CD tools.

GitLab key features

• Integrated CI/CD
• Automated DevOps tools
• Extensive integrations

GitLab pros

• A comprehensive suite of development tools
• Extensive security features
• AI and automation features

GitLab cons

• High learning curve
• Interface isn’t particularly user-friendly
• May be too complex and comprehensive for small teams

GitLab pricing

• Free
• Premium–$29/user/month
• Ultimate–Price available on request

10. MantisBT

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Best for: Teams that need an easy-to-use issue tracker with a simple interface

MantisBT is a free, open-source bug tracker with a very straightforward, user-friendly interface.

MantisBT key features

• Custom fields
• Email notifications
• Easy-to-use reporting

MantisBT pros

• Free and open-source
• User-friendly interface
• Can handle bugs from multiple projects

MantisBT cons

• May lack advanced features
• Interface is not very visually appealing
• Limited integrations

MantisBT pricing

• Free

How monday dev can help with bug tracking

If you’re looking for a user-friendly, highly visual way to track your bugs, look no further than monday dev. With our bugs queue board, you get:

• Centralized issue tracking, to keep an eye of any bugs, whether they’re being reported by customers, developers or QA testers
• Automations, to save you time and ensure no bug slips through the cracks by automatically turning support tickets into tasks that notify specific people.
• Collaboration abilities, so your team can come together to work on bugs more efficiently
• Powerful reporting features that make it easy to identify trends, spot opportunities for efficiency gains, and optimize your teams’ time-to-fix metrics.

Help your dev team out with our easy bug-tracking tools. Get started today!