One thing up front, because you would find it anyway. Our usual argument against the incumbents is that reviewers and approvers should not cost a seat. Against Jama that is not a differentiator: Jama includes reviewer licences at no additional cost and says so on its own pricing page¹. Free sign-off is the right model and they already do it. The real differences are below.
When Jama Connect is the right answer
- You need the regulated-industry package. Jama ships frameworks and validation material for medical device, automotive and aerospace programmes, and a customer-facing validation story. Reqlio does not have an equivalent yet.
- You are past about a hundred engineers. Jama is built for that shape of organisation, with the administration, integrations and account management that come with it.
- You need self-hosted or air-gapped. Jama offers a self-hosted deployment². Reqlio is hosted; self-hosting is an Enterprise conversation.
- Procurement requires a vendor of a certain size. Reqlio is one engineer. That is a real answer to a real question, and for some buyers it is disqualifying — which is why the continuity terms are written down rather than promised.
The comparison
Claims in the Jama column are sourced; references are at the bottom of the page. Checked September 2026.
| Jama Connect | Reqlio | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a price | Quote only. The pricing page offers "Request Pricing" and "Book Demo", with no published figure¹ | On the pricing page. €59 and €99 per editor per month, billed annually |
| Do reviewers cost money? | No. Reviewer licences are included at no additional cost¹. Reviewer and Stakeholder can both approve and sign³ | No. Reviewers, approvers, viewers and supplier guests are free |
| Who consumes a paid seat | Creator for authoring; Test Runner is its own named licence for executing test runs, and creating test cases needs a Creator¹³ | One editor role covers authoring, logging test runs, FMEA, budgets, baselines and AI actions |
| AI assistance | Jama Connect Advisor is a separately purchased add-on on top of Creator and Tester seats⁴ | Every plan, at the published price. Quality review, decomposition, link suggestions, risk identification, terminology extraction |
| Data residency | Cloud and self-hosted deployments offered²; the pricing page states no EU residency position — ask them and get it in writing | Frankfurt, Germany. creoline GmbH (ISO/IEC 27001:2022, TÜV SÜD) in firstcolo FRA4. One PostgreSQL database per customer. Does not leave the EU by default |
| Time to first requirement | Sales-led onboarding | Usually within a working day — the tenant is set up by hand |
| Getting your data out | Interchange is licensed separately from Creator and Tester seats⁴ | ReqIF, XLSX and CSV on every plan, at any time — including after cancellation |
What the table actually says. This is not a capability argument — Jama will do things Reqlio will not. It is an argument about packaging. The things a small team needs on day one (the AI, the interchange, the price) are add-ons and conversations there, and included here. If your evaluation keeps stalling on "what will this cost in total", that is the difference you are feeling.
What you get in the base product
- Specification trees, sections and stable identifiers, with full history behind every change.
- Traceability up and down the V — derivation matrix, trace explorer, health checks that find orphans before a reviewer does.
- Four verification methods — test, analysis, inspection, review of design — with activities, campaigns, runs and a coverage matrix.
- Risk register and AIAG-VDA FMEA, with failure modes that escalate into the register.
- Formal reviews with rounds, reviewer-versus-approver roles, and verdicts anchored to the version that was actually reviewed.
- Mass, power and cost budgets — the technical budgets that normally live in a spreadsheet nobody trusts.
- ReqIF, XLSX and CSV interchange, in both directions, on every plan.
Questions people ask before switching
We are in a regulated industry. Is Reqlio enough?
The engineering concepts are all there — specification trees, four verification methods, baselines, formal reviews, FMEA, full change history. What Reqlio does not yet have is a packaged validation kit of the kind Jama sells into medical device programmes. If your auditor expects that document set from the vendor, say so early and we will tell you straight whether it fits.
What counts as an editor?
Anyone who creates or edits requirements, specs, activities, risks, FMEA rows or budgets, logs test runs, runs AI actions, or manages baselines and reviews. Reviewers, viewers and supplier portal guests are free. Sign-off is not a seat.
Can we migrate from Jama?
Over ReqIF. Identity is carried on ReqIF.ForeignID, so a re-import updates the requirements Reqlio already knows rather than duplicating them. Run one real specification through the round trip before committing anything that matters.
You are one engineer. What happens if you stop?
It is the right question. The answer is written down rather than promised: ReqIF, XLSX and CSV export on every plan at any time; read-only access to your data for twelve months after cancellation; source-code escrow on Enterprise. Your data is never hostage to anyone's roadmap, including ours.
Sources
Every claim above about Jama Connect, with where it came from. Checked 18 September 2026.
- Jama Software, Jama Connect pricing — no published price ("Request Pricing" / "Book Demo"); "Jama Software includes reviewer licenses and hosting at no additional cost"; licence types Creator, Stakeholder, Reviewer, Test Runner, with test case creation requiring a Creator.
- Jama Software, Cloud and self-hosted options for Jama Connect — both deployment models offered. This page states no EU residency position.
- Jama Software, License types and permissions — Reviewer "grants permission to participate in reviews, act as approver or review admin"; Stakeholder is read-only; Test Runner is named-only.
- Jama Software, Jama Connect Advisor — a separately purchased AI add-on; Advisor, MCP Server and Interchange are licensed on top of Creator, Tester and Test Runner seats.
Jama and Jama Connect are trademarks of Jama Software, Inc. Reqlio is not affiliated with or endorsed by Jama Software. Comparisons reflect publicly documented information on the date shown; check the sources before relying on them for a purchasing decision.
Try it against a real specification
Thirty days, every module and the AI included, no card. Bring one spec over ReqIF and see whether it holds up.