Atlassian Intelligence and Rovo are both “Jira AI,” but the difference that matters in a comparison isn’t the feature list, it’s the meter: Rovo’s agents and chat run on a shared credit pool that starts at just 25 credits per user per month on Standard, and every agent run or chat message costs 10 of them. That’s roughly two or three AI actions per person per month before you’re drawing down a pool everyone shares. If your plan is to lean on Jira’s AI for something you do all day, like drafting tickets, the credits are the thing to look at first.
What’s the actual difference between Jira AI and Atlassian Intelligence?
They’re two layers of the same stack, not competitors.
Atlassian Intelligence is the AI baked into Jira’s own screens: summaries, in-line term definitions, and drafting help that appear where you already work. Rovo is the newer layer built on top: agents you can delegate work to, Rovo Chat, and search that reaches across products. On Atlassian’s own AI features in Jira page, the marquee items are Rovo: “Assign work to agents,” a “Work Readiness Checker Agent,” “Work breakdown” that splits a task into subtasks with descriptions, and “Instant context” overviews of an issue’s status and blockers.
So “jira ai vs atlassian intelligence” is a slightly false framing. They ship together. The real question is which parts cost you credits and which don’t.
What does Jira’s built-in AI actually cost to run?
This is where the two layers split. Per Atlassian’s Rovo usage allowance docs, the lightweight Intelligence-style features are free and unmetered: search queries, summaries, chart insights, and definitions don’t consume credits. The powerful stuff does:
- Rovo Chat costs 10 credits per request.
- Rovo Agents cost 10 credits per request.
- Deep Research costs 100 credits per request.
And the allowance you’re spending from is small. For Jira, Confluence, and JSM, Atlassian includes 25 credits per user per month on Standard, 70 on Premium, and 150 on Enterprise (Rovo usage allowance). Credits are pooled at the organization level, reset monthly, and don’t roll over.
How far do 25 credits actually go?
Do the arithmetic. At 10 credits per agent run or chat message, a Standard seat’s 25 credits buys about two and a half AI actions per user per month before you’re eating into the shared pool. One Deep Research request costs 100 credits, which is four months of a Standard user’s entire allowance in a single call.
| Rovo action | Credit cost | What a Standard seat (25/user/mo) covers |
|---|---|---|
| Search, summaries, definitions | Free | Unlimited |
| Rovo Chat | 10 / request | ~2–3 messages per user / month |
| Rovo Agent run | 10 / request | ~2–3 runs per user / month |
| Deep Research | 100 / request | 0 (one call = ~4 months of allowance) |
Because the pool is shared across the whole org, the person who runs agents all day is spending everyone else’s allowance too. The numbers get more comfortable on Premium (70 credits, ~7 actions per user) and Enterprise (150 credits, ~15 actions per user), but the shape is the same: this is metered, monthly, and tuned for occasional use, not for a job you do dozens of times a day.
Will Atlassian charge me when the pool runs out?
Not yet, and this is worth stating plainly rather than scaring you. Atlassian’s docs say it is not currently billing for usage above your included allowance, and that it will give at least 90 days’ notice before any overage becomes billable (Rovo usage allowance). Both Intelligence and Rovo are also included with paid plans by edition, so there’s no separate AI SKU to buy (Rovo plans and trial).
So the honest read is: Rovo won’t hand you a surprise bill today. But the meter is already running and visible in your usage dashboard, the allowance is genuinely small for heavy use, and Atlassian has told you in writing that it intends to charge for overage eventually. If you’re picking a tool for a high-frequency task, you don’t want that task to be the thing racing the meter.
When does a focused copilot make more sense than Rovo?
When the job is narrow and you do it constantly. Rovo is broad: agents, chat, cross-product search, research. That breadth is exactly why a single repetitive task, like turning a one-line request into a full Jira ticket, is an expensive way to spend a 10-credit-per-request agent call two or three times before the pool’s gone.
If drafting tickets, writing acceptance criteria, or summarizing an issue is a thing your team does all day, a purpose-built copilot handles that one job without drawing down the Rovo credits you’re saving for everything else. That’s the whole idea behind AI Copilot for Jira: a focused drafting tool that lives on the issue, does the high-frequency writing work, and leaves your Rovo allowance for the agents and research it’s actually sized for. Use Rovo for the broad, occasional stuff. Use a dedicated copilot for the thing you do a hundred times a week.