The right Tempo Structure alternative depends on what your team uses Structure for. If it is cross-project hierarchy and roll ups for a few hundred issues, Plans in Jira Premium often covers it with no extra app. If it is Gantt charts with baselines, BigPicture or BigGantt from Appfire compete directly. If it is scaled agile planning across many teams, Jira Align or Atlassian Focus is the category. If the real gap is deciding which initiatives get funded, no hierarchy tool does that job.
Structure is a good product, and plenty of teams should keep it. The reason this question comes up is usually a renewal quote, a Jira Cloud migration, or a PMO that realizes it has built a beautiful spreadsheet of everything it is doing without ever agreeing on what it should stop doing.
Key takeaways
- Structure by Tempo came from ALM Works, which Tempo acquired in December 2021. It is sold on the Atlassian Marketplace in Standard and Advanced editions; Advanced adds Gantt charts, scheduling, baselines and milestones.
- Like every Marketplace app, it is priced on the full Jira user tier of the site, not on the people who open it. That is the number that grows at renewal.
- Jira Plans, included in Jira Premium and Enterprise on Cloud, replaces Structure for many cross-team roadmaps. It does not offer Structure's flexible custom hierarchies and formula columns.
- No Jira hierarchy app scores, ranks and funds a portfolio against capacity by role. That is a separate decision layer, and many PMOs run it above Jira.
What is Tempo Structure?
Tempo Structure is a Jira app that arranges issues from any number of projects into a custom hierarchy shown as a spreadsheet-style grid, with rolled up progress, sums and formula columns. It reads Jira data live inside Jira, so a PMO can build a portfolio, program or initiative view without exporting anything. Tempo markets it as Structure PPM for portfolio management.
Its strength is flexibility. You can group epics under initiatives that do not exist as an issue type, pull in issues by JQL, add calculated columns for remaining effort or budget, and give each audience its own view. Tempo says a single structure on Jira Cloud holds up to 30,000 items, with larger limits on Data Center. Teams that need a hierarchy Jira itself will not model tend to love it.
Its limits are the flip side of the same design. Structure shows what exists in Jira. It does not hold proposals that are not yet issues, does not score them on shared criteria, and does not tell you where the money or the people run out. Those are portfolio decisions, and the grid only records the result.
How much does Tempo Structure cost?
Structure by Tempo is priced per user per month on the Atlassian Marketplace, and the tier is set by the total number of users on your Jira site, not by how many people use Structure. Standard is the lower edition and Advanced, which includes Gantt, costs more. Very small sites pay little; the bill climbs as the Jira instance grows.
That licensing rule matters more than the per-user price. A company with 600 Jira users and a PMO of eight pays for 600. It is the same for BigPicture and every other Marketplace app, so the fair comparison is the annual quote divided by the people who open the app every week. Check the live calculator on the Marketplace listing, because Tempo, like Appfire this July, revises its price tables.
| Cost driver | What changes the bill | What to check before renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Jira user tier | Every licensed Jira user, including people who never open Structure | Your user count in twelve months, not today |
| Edition | Moving from Standard to Advanced for Gantt and baselines | Whether anyone uses the Gantt view weekly |
| Hosting | Separate price tables for Cloud and Data Center | Your Data Center end date and the Cloud tier price |
| Overlap | Paying for Jira Premium and Structure at the same time | Which Structure views Plans could already produce |
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What is the alternative to Structure in Jira?
The main alternatives to Structure in Jira are Plans in Jira Premium, BigPicture or BigGantt from Appfire, Jira Align and Atlassian Focus for enterprise agile planning, and a portfolio decision tool that sits above Jira. Which one fits depends on the job Structure is doing for you today, so start with that list instead of a vendor ranking.
| Alternative | Owner | Best when you use Structure for | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plans in Jira Premium | Atlassian | Cross-team timelines, a hierarchy above epics, team capacity | Free-form hierarchies, formula columns, JQL-built views |
| BigPicture | Appfire | Gantt, scope, risk and resource modules in one app | Structure's lighter spreadsheet feel and custom grouping |
| BigGantt | Appfire | Gantt scheduling with dependencies only | Roll ups across a custom hierarchy |
| Jira Align | Atlassian | Scaled agile portfolios across many teams and value streams | Simplicity; it is an enterprise rollout, not an app install |
| Atlassian Focus | Atlassian | Linking strategy, funding and work across Jira | The detailed issue grid PMOs build in Structure |
| A portfolio decision workspace | Independent vendors, including us | Ranking, funding and capacity decisions before work hits Jira | Live issue-level tracking, which stays in Jira |
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We have a fuller write-up of the BigPicture side in BigPicture Jira alternatives and pricing, and of the enterprise agile option in Jira Align alternatives. If your organization is weighing every Jira-native route at once, the Jira portfolio management software comparison lays them side by side.
Is Jira Plans the same as Structure?
No. Jira Plans and Structure overlap on cross-project views but differ in design. Plans is Atlassian's planning feature in Jira Premium and Enterprise, built around a fixed hierarchy, a timeline, dependencies and team capacity. Structure is a third-party app built around a flexible grid where you define the hierarchy, columns and formulas yourself, including levels Jira does not have.
In practice the deciding questions are short. Do you need a hierarchy level that Jira cannot model as an issue type? Do people rely on calculated columns, such as remaining budget per initiative? Do executives read the grid rather than a timeline? Three yes answers mean Structure is earning its place. Three no answers, on a Premium site, mean you are probably paying twice for the same view.
| Need | Jira Plans | Structure by Tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-project timeline | Yes, core feature | Yes, with the Gantt in Advanced |
| Custom hierarchy levels | Configurable levels above epic | Any grouping, including non-issue levels |
| Formula and sum columns | Limited | Core feature |
| Team capacity | Yes, by team and sprint | Through effort columns and Tempo apps |
| Extra license | Included with Premium and Enterprise | Marketplace app on the full user tier |
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Does Structure work on Jira Cloud?
Yes. Structure by Tempo is sold for Jira Cloud as well as Data Center, with separate price tables. The Cloud version has had to work within Atlassian's Cloud app framework, so teams migrating from Data Center should rebuild their most important structures in a Cloud trial first and check that every formula column, automation rule and view they depend on behaves the same before they commit.
A migration is the moment most PMOs rethink the whole stack. You are already moving data, retraining users and repricing every app. Ask, for each structure you plan to migrate, who opened it last month and what decision it fed. The ones nobody can answer for are not worth carrying into Cloud.
Where a hierarchy tool stops and a portfolio decision starts
Here is the pattern we see most often in Jira shops. Structure, Plans or BigPicture shows 140 initiatives, neatly rolled up and color coded. The steering group still approves new work every month, the teams still carry more than they can finish, and nobody can say which twenty initiatives would be cut if the budget dropped by a fifth. The hierarchy is accurate. It is just answering a different question.
That question has three parts, and none of them lives naturally in Jira issues:
- Ranking. Every proposal, including ones not yet in Jira, scored on the same weighted criteria, so the order is agreed rather than argued.
- Funding line. Cumulative cost down the ranked list, with a clear mark where the budget runs out.
- Capacity by role. Demand from the funded list against the people you actually have, month by month, so the shortfall shows up before approval and not in sprint four.
Deciding which epics deserve a place in the hierarchy at all often starts with evidence from customers, and if your product teams pull that from support tickets and usage data, a product analytics tool that unifies feedback and usage belongs upstream of the portfolio review. Downstream, the decision itself needs a home. Our project prioritization tool holds the scoring model and funding line, keeps Jira as the system of record for delivery, and exports the ranked list to Excel or CSV. It is the same split we describe for monday.com portfolio management and agile portfolio management tools: delivery stays where teams work, the funding decision moves to one place.
How to choose before the renewal
Run this in one afternoon with your Jira admin and one PMO lead, using real usage numbers.
| If this is true | Then |
|---|---|
| You are on Jira Premium and use Structure mainly for a cross-project timeline | Pilot Plans for one quarter and drop Structure if nobody misses it |
| Formula columns and custom hierarchies feed monthly reporting | Keep Structure, and price Standard against Advanced honestly |
| You need Gantt, risk and resource modules in one app | Compare BigPicture on the same user tier |
| Dozens of teams, value streams and a SAFe cadence | Shortlist Jira Align or Atlassian Focus |
| Everything is visible and nothing ever gets cut | Add a portfolio decision layer above Jira, whatever you choose for the hierarchy |
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The last row is not either-or. Plenty of PMOs keep Structure for the delivery view and add a small decision workspace for the funding question. What matters is not paying a full Jira user tier for a view that answers neither.