How to Use Jira Rovo for Free

Atlassian Rovo is the AI layer built into Jira and Confluence. It can search across your work, answer questions in chat, and run agents that draft, triage, and summarize for you.

The question I keep seeing is simple: can you use it for free?

Here's the honest answer up front. Rovo is not included on the Jira Free plan. Atlassian's own plan guide says it plainly: "Rovo AI isn't included on Free—it starts on the paid plans."

But that doesn't mean you have to pay to try it. There are a few legitimate ways to use Rovo without spending money, and a few features that don't cost anything once you have access.

In this guide, I'll cover what Rovo includes, how its credits work, every free route I could verify, and how to try it without getting a surprise bill.

[image: Is Rovo free? Free plan excludes Rovo; Standard, Premium and Enterprise include it]

What Is Atlassian Rovo?

Rovo is Atlassian's AI, built into its Cloud apps. According to Atlassian's Rovo licensing page, it includes four main pieces:

• Rovo Search: search across Jira, Confluence, and connected tools from one place
• Rovo Chat: ask questions about your work and get answers grounded in your team's data
• Agents: AI helpers that can draft, summarize, triage, and take actions on your work items
• Studio: where you build and customize your own agents

Rovo is added automatically to eligible Cloud sites, so if you're on a qualifying plan, you may already have it.

Which Plans Include Rovo?

Rovo comes with the Standard, Premium, and Enterprise Cloud plans of Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Management, and the Teamwork and Service Collections. Usage is measured in Rovo credits, which are pooled across your whole organization.

Source: How Rovo credits work on Atlassian Support.

How credits get used:

• Chat: each message you send is one billable event
• Basic actions (quick answers, basic agents): 10 credits each
• Premium actions (Think Deeper, advanced agents): variable
• Extra usage: $0.01 per credit ($10 per 1,000) once you pass your allowance

Credits reset monthly and don't roll over. Atlassian's support page also lists two dates worth knowing: the current pricing applies from August 31, 2026, and extra-usage billing for Rovo credits takes effect on December 3, 2026.

4 Ways to Use Rovo for Free

1. Start a free trial of a paid plan

This is the main route for most people. If you're on Jira Free, you can trial Standard or Premium at no cost, and Rovo comes with the trial.

According to Atlassian's licensing page, Cloud Standard can be trialed for 14 days, and Cloud Premium or Enterprise for 30 days.

My tip: pick the Premium trial. You get a longer window and a bigger credit allowance (70 per user versus 25), which makes it much easier to properly test agents instead of running out after a few chats.

2. Get a free Open Source license

If you maintain an open source project, Atlassian offers 100% off several Standard-tier Cloud products, including Jira, Confluence, and Jira Service Management. Your project needs to use a license approved by the Open Source Initiative.

Since Rovo is included with Standard Cloud plans, this is the closest thing to a permanently free Rovo. Details and eligibility are on Atlassian's licensing page.

Nonprofits and academic institutions also get discounts, though they aren't always 100% off, so check the current terms for your organization.

3. Use the features that don't consume credits

Once Rovo is on your site, not everything costs credits. Atlassian lists these as no-cost:

• Rovo Search inside Atlassian apps
• Summaries, definitions, and chart insights
• Installing and connecting the Rovo MCP Server and Teamwork Graph CLI (though some enriched calls through them do use credits)

These keep working even after your credit allowance runs out, according to Atlassian's Rovo pricing page.

4. Try beta features

Atlassian's credits documentation notes that AI features in beta don't count against your allowance unless it says otherwise. If you see a beta label on a Rovo feature, testing it won't eat into your credits.

How to Start a Trial and Get Rovo Running

Atlassian's menus change often, so treat these as the general flow rather than exact clicks.

1. Create or sign in to a Jira Cloud site. If you don't have one, sign up for Jira Free first. It supports up to 10 users with no time limit.
2. Start a Premium trial. From your site's billing or plan settings, choose to try Premium (30 days) or Standard (14 days). You can also start from the Jira pricing page.
3. Confirm Rovo is on. Rovo is added automatically to eligible Cloud sites. Look for Rovo Search and Chat in the top navigation. If it's missing, check with your org admin, since AI features can be switched off at the organization level.
4. Bring in real work. Create a project with real or realistic tickets and a few Confluence pages. Rovo is only as useful as the context it can see.
5. Test the four pieces. Run a few searches, ask Chat about your project, try a built-in agent on a ticket, and build one simple agent in Studio.
6. Decide before the trial ends. Either downgrade back to Free or move to a paid plan on purpose. Don't let it roll over by accident.

Making the Trial Count (Without a Surprise Bill)

Spend your credits on what you'll actually use

With 70 credits per user on Premium and basic agent actions costing 10 credits each, a single user can run about seven basic agent actions a month on their own. Because credits are pooled, a small team stretches further, but it's still easy to burn through them on idle experiments.

Use free features first (Search, summaries) and save credits for agents and chat on real tasks.

Set a spending cap

According to Atlassian, extra usage is on by default. Once you pass your allowance, features keep running and you're billed at $0.01 per credit, up to the spending cap your admin sets.

If you only want to test for free:

• Set a low spending cap, or turn extra usage off
• Watch for the alerts Atlassian sends at 80% and 100% of your allowance

With extra usage off, credit-consuming features simply pause until your allowance resets.

Use a test site

If you're evaluating Rovo for a company, try it on a separate test site first. Turning Rovo on applies it to the whole site, and some security teams want to review AI access before it touches production data.

Know what you're signing up for

If Rovo becomes part of your workflow, you'll eventually be on a paid plan. Go in knowing the real cost is the plan price plus any extra credits, not just the subscription.

The Free Alternative: Bring Your Own AI Agent to Jira

If what you really want is AI working on your Jira tickets, Rovo isn't the only way to get there.

Atlassian runs a Rovo MCP server that lets external AI tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and VS Code read and update your Jira and Confluence data. Atlassian's docs state that installing and connecting it doesn't consume Rovo credits, and that single-product lookups and writes are free. According to Sharkly's guide, the MCP server also works on Jira Free sites, with a shared limit of 500 calls per hour.

That means a team on Jira Free can connect a coding agent like Claude Code or Codex and let it pick up tickets, without a Rovo subscription. Keep in mind that the agent itself may still need its own paid plan or API key.

Where Sharkly fits

Connecting an agent to Jira solves access. It doesn't solve coordination. The MCP server lets an agent read and update tickets during a session, but it doesn't track which agent owns which issue, or who reviewed the result.

That's where Sharkly comes in. It's a shared workspace where people and AI coding agents work from the same task board, with a Jira integration that keeps both sides in sync:

• Link a Jira project to a Sharkly Space, with two-way sync or Jira-to-Sharkly only
• Map comments, statuses, labels, and assignees across both tools
• Import issue history and Sprint data so agents start with context
• Assign a task to an agent, which runs your own coding tool on your own machine, with results syncing back to Jira
• Run agents in parallel in isolated worktrees, with human review before work is accepted

Sharkly says it's free for organizations of up to 5 people, and agents don't use seats. Paid plans start at $7 per person per month, billed yearly.

It's not a replacement for Rovo's built-in search and chat. It's a different approach: instead of Atlassian's AI inside Jira, you bring your own agents and manage them alongside your team. For small engineering teams on Jira Free, that can be the more practical free path.

A couple of gotchas from Sharkly's own setup notes: installing Jira webhooks requires a Jira admin, and status sync can fail if your Jira workflow can't reach the mapped status in one step.

Final Thoughts

So, can you use Jira Rovo for free? Yes, but not forever on the Free plan.

The realistic options are:

• A 30-day Premium trial for most teams who want to evaluate it properly
• An Open Source license if you maintain an eligible open source project
• No-credit features like Rovo Search and summaries once you have access
• Beta features, which don't count against your allowance
• Your own AI agents connected to Jira, coordinated with a tool like Sharkly, if you'd rather skip Rovo entirely

Start with the Premium trial, test it on real work, set a spending cap, and decide on purpose before the trial ends. That way you'll know whether Rovo earns its place before you pay for it.