Blog · 18 September 2026

Jira Smart Checklist: free limits, pricing, and when it fits

Smart Checklist for Jira is an app by TitanApps that puts a to-do list inside a Jira work item — a definition of done, acceptance criteria, a release checklist, a test case — instead of making you scatter the steps across subtasks or a description nobody re-reads. It is one of the most-installed checklist apps on the Atlassian Marketplace, and most of the searches for "jira smart checklist" are people who have heard the name and want three things: what it actually does, what the free version stops at, and what the paid one costs. All three answers are below, checked against TitanApps' own product page and the Atlassian Marketplace in September 2026. There is also a fourth question the product page does not answer, and it is the one that decides whether you should install it at all: is a checklist inside the ticket the right shape for what you are doing?

What Smart Checklist for Jira does #

The app adds a checklist panel to the work item view. A checklist is a list of items you tick off in place, and the items are richer than a plain bulleted list. Per its product page, as of September 2026, an item can carry:

• mandatory marking, so a checklist cannot be completed with the step skipped;
• headers, to group a long list into sections;
• text formatting and emojis or images on an item;
• item details — an assignee and a due date per item, not per ticket;
• custom statuses, so an item can be "in progress" rather than just unticked;
• links to other Jira work items or URLs.

Around the list itself, the app adds: checklist progress shown on the agile board, the checklist position adjustable in the issue view, an "all assigned items" view across tickets, notifications on updates and on assignment, a checklist history tab tracking changes, and a dashboard gadget on Data Center.

Two features matter more than the rest for how people actually use it:

Templates. You can save a checklist and re-apply it, and — the part its own FAQ leads with — have a template added to a work item automatically: "A Jira checklist template will be added to an issue based on your triggers and criteria." So an onboarding checklist can attach itself to every ticket tagged for HR, without anybody pasting it in.

Built-in automation. The app can add or update checklists based on triggers — something happened to a work item, and the checklist responds.

What the free version does — and where it stops #

Smart Checklist ships as two separate Marketplace add-ons, Free and Paid, and the split is stricter than most free tiers. From TitanApps' own FAQ, as of September 2026:

The free version is limited to 5 templates, and a maximum of 20 items per checklist, and it is only available for Jira Cloud.

Three limits, each with a practical edge:

• 5 templates. Five saved checklists across the whole site. A team running definition-of-done, onboarding and release separately is already near the ceiling.
• 20 items per checklist. A ten-section release runbook with thirty steps does not fit as one checklist; it has to be split into headers-and-sections or into two tickets.
• Jira Cloud only. On Data Center the free edition does not exist at all — the paid one covers both deployments.

What the paid version costs #

The paid edition is priced per Jira user tier through the Atlassian Marketplace, and the price is annual. From the Marketplace's live pricing endpoint for the paid add-on, as of September 2026, the annual renewal prices at common team sizes are:

Two things about reading that table the way Atlassian's Marketplace prices things:

• First year is double the renewal at most tiers — $135 first year, $67.50 to renew at 15 users. Marketplace apps commonly price a discounted or full first year and a cheaper renewal; budget for the renewal number, not the one on the install screen.
• Up to 10 users is free, matching Atlassian's own free tier, so a small team can run the paid add-on at no cost — and the free edition's 5-template/20-item ceiling does not apply to it. If you are under 10 users, the question is not free-vs-paid, it is checklist-vs-no-checklist.

The paid edition runs on Jira Cloud and Data Center. TitanApps is a Gold Marketplace Partner and the app carries Atlassian's Cloud Fortified security designation; the company states the app is GDPR compliant and publishes its data privacy policies for both deployments.

Who it fits #

Smart Checklist is the right tool when the steps belong to a ticket somebody is going to open anyway:

• Definition of done, acceptance criteria, code review and test-case checklists — the steps are part of one ticket's life, and the person working the ticket ticks them in place.
• Onboarding, offboarding, budget audit, tax preparation — TitanApps' own examples — when the trigger is a ticket being created, because the automatic template attach fires on an item, not on a date.
• Any list past 20 items or past 5 saved templates — that is the paid edition's case, and at 11+ users it is the only edition.

The one trigger it does not have #

Everything above is what the product is. Here is the question to ask before installing it:

What starts your checklist?

Smart Checklist's templates fire on triggers and criteria on work items — a ticket got created, tagged, moved. Its own automation is the same shape. There is no date in that list, and no ticket to fire on before the first one exists.

So if what you actually want is "this checklist comes back every Monday", "on the first working day of the month", "every quarter" — whether or not anybody remembers to create the ticket — then no checklist app is the missing piece. The steps are the easy half; the half people miss is the schedule. That is a different kind of object: a rule that holds the steps and the date, and creates the work item itself when the calendar says so.

The schedule case: Recurring Work Items for Jira #

Recurring Work Items for Jira (ours) is the other half. A rule holds an issue template and a schedule in one place, in one Jira project, and the app creates the work item for you when the schedule says so — daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly, with working-day and holiday handling for dates that land badly. Each occurrence can create the parent item plus up to ten subtasks, each with its own summary, description and assignee; every field can carry tokens so "Backup check — 17 September" writes itself per occurrence. Each rule keeps a History of every occurrence created, skipped or failed, with the reason, because when nobody creates the ticket by hand, "did it happen?" has to have an answer somewhere.

It is a Forge app, so the scheduling consumes no Jira Automation quota. It is Jira Cloud only, and free for up to 10 users, then $5.50 per user per year.

The honest framing of the pair: Smart Checklist makes the steps inside a ticket richer than Jira can; Recurring Work Items makes the ticket itself appear. They are not competitors — they answer different halves of "make this happen every week". If you already have Smart Checklist and the steps are fine but nobody creates the parent ticket reliably, the schedule is what you are missing, and it is a separate app either way.

Choosing, in one table #

One line to decide with: if somebody always creates the ticket, buy the richer checklist; if the ticket itself is the thing that gets forgotten, buy the clock. Most teams that search for a checklist app need the first. The teams that keep missing Mondays need the second.