Jira Data Center end of life: the dates, what read-only means, and your options

Atlassian is ending its Data Center products. On March 28, 2029, every Jira Software, Jira Service Management and Confluence Data Center subscription expires and the product turns read-only, and two earlier dates already limit what you can buy. If you run Jira on your own servers, the question is no longer whether to move, but where to, and how much of your Jira comes with you.

This guide covers the dates, what read-only will mean, which products are affected, how to get your data out of Jira Data Center, and how to choose between Atlassian's cloud and another tool. Every fact about Atlassian's plans was checked on Atlassian's own pages in September 2026; they are listed at the end.

The dates

Each change takes effect at 23:59 Pacific time on the date shown.

Date	What changes
December 16, 2025	Atlassian stopped accepting new Data Center apps in its Marketplace.
March 30, 2026	New customers can no longer buy Data Center subscriptions or Data Center apps.
March 30, 2028	Existing customers can no longer buy new Data Center subscriptions, expand the ones they have, or buy Data Center apps. Renewals continue, prorated so they end on March 28, 2029.
March 28, 2029	Data Center subscriptions and their Marketplace apps expire, and the products turn read-only. Support and bug fixes stop.

An existing customer, in Atlassian's terms, is any organisation that paid for a Data Center subscription before March 30, 2026, including subsidiaries whose parent did.

Which products are affected

End of life covers Jira Software Data Center, Jira Service Management Data Center, Confluence Data Center, Bamboo Data Center, Crowd Data Center, the Data Center mobile apps, and the Atlassian and third-party Marketplace apps built for them. Jira Align Data Center is excluded.

Bitbucket Data Center is the exception: it does not reach end of life. Existing Bitbucket Data Center customers get a Bitbucket Hybrid License that covers both Data Center and Cloud, so self-managed repositories can stay where they are. When we checked in September 2026, Atlassian's page still described that licence as coming in mid-2026. Without it, Bitbucket turns read-only on March 28, 2029, and users can no longer push code.

What read-only will mean

Atlassian's end-of-life FAQ says that after expiry you can still view your data but cannot add new data or perform new actions, and it states no time limit on that access. Until March 28, 2029, Atlassian keeps providing technical support, fixes for critical security vulnerabilities, and the connectors from Data Center to its cloud. After that, fixes stop, and Atlassian strongly advises against keeping a read-only instance connected to the internet, and recommends backing it up for long-term access to its history.

There is one open question. Atlassian's current article on expired Jira Data Center licences describes a softer state than the FAQ: users can still comment on and transition existing issues, administrators can still administer, and only creating new issues is blocked. Atlassian has not said which behaviour applies at end of life. Plan for the stricter reading.

Extended maintenance beyond March 28, 2029 exists, but only by exception and at additional cost, and Atlassian publishes no criteria or price for it. Treat it as a contingency, not a plan.

Your options

There are two real paths: Atlassian's cloud, or another tool. Which one fits depends mostly on why you chose Data Center in the first place.

Move to Atlassian Cloud

If your team can move to the cloud, this is the least disruptive route, because the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant carries more across than any other route: projects and issues, active and archived, with attachments, comments, work logs, issue history, links and watchers; boards, sprints, versions and epics; workflows, filters, schemes and dashboards; Automation for Jira rules; and Marketplace app data where the app's vendor supports it. It does not carry users' passwords (users reset them unless you use single sign-on), global permissions, some workflow functions, custom fields that come from apps, or a few other settings, so read Atlassian's list before you plan.

Atlassian's cloud comes in several forms:

• Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans. Up to 100,000 users per site on paid plans, with Enterprise allowing up to 150 sites. Data residency lets you pin data to one of 11 locations, among them the EU, Germany, India, Japan, Switzerland and the United States.
• Government Cloud. A separate environment for US government agencies and their partners, authorised at FedRAMP Moderate (which FedRAMP now calls Certification Class C), at 25% more than Cloud Enterprise.
• Isolated Cloud. A dedicated, single-tenant environment that Atlassian runs for you, which Atlassian announced as generally available in June 2026. Atlassian says plainly that it does not support data sovereignty, and it leaves out Rovo AI, Bitbucket and Atlassian Analytics.

Two costs to plan for: Atlassian itself says the per-user price of cloud is higher than Data Center, and you lose direct access to the database that many Data Center teams report from, which Atlassian replaces with its Analytics, Data Lake and APIs.

Move to another tool

If you chose Data Center to keep data on your own servers, the cloud is the one thing you cannot accept, and Isolated Cloud does not change that. The self-managed options are YouTrack Server, Azure DevOps Server, GitLab Self-Managed, Plane and OpenProject, and their Jira importers differ more than their feature lists: YouTrack's brings links, attachments, custom fields, work logs and history, while GitLab's skips comments and assignees, OpenProject's is a beta its vendor recommends only for test setups, and Azure DevOps Server has no Jira importer of its own.

We rank all of them, with Jira Cloud and our own product, in the best Jira Data Center alternatives, with what each importer brings across.

What Atlassian offers to help you move to its cloud

• Cloud Migration Trial. A free cloud trial that runs for the rest of your Data Center subscription (or 60 days if it has expired), for up to 20,000 users, covering Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence and Bitbucket. One Atlassian page excludes Starter licences of 10 users or fewer and Social Impact licences, so check eligibility.
• Step-up credits. A credit for unused Data Center maintenance, applied to an annual cloud plan, for migrations of 201 or more users or 51 or more agents.
• Dual licensing. Up to six months of Data Center at no cost while you migrate, for large Premium or Enterprise cloud purchases (for example, 1,000 or more Jira or Confluence users).
• A first-year discount. Customers who buy Cloud Enterprise by June 2027 may be eligible for 10 to 20% off the first year.

Atlassian describes step-up credits and dual licensing as limited-time programmes, so confirm the terms before you plan around any of these.

How to get your data out of Jira Data Center

Whichever way you go, export early, while the instance is fully licensed.

CSV exports stop at 1,000 issues by default. Atlassian caps them on purpose, to protect the server's memory. To export more, raise the limits in Administration, under Advanced Settings: jira.search.views.default.max sets the default, and jira.search.views.max.limit the ceiling, which Atlassian says is safe to raise from Jira 8.2. You can then add tempMax to the export URL, export in batches with pager/start, split exports with JQL (by created date, for example), or page through the REST API with startAt and maxResults.

Choose "CSV (All fields)". It includes every field, comment and attachment reference; "CSV (Current fields)" includes only the columns on screen.

The change history is not in the CSV. Take it from the REST API (?expand=changelog on each issue) or from the data pipeline, which exports issues, custom fields, history, links and users as CSV files. The data pipeline needs a valid Data Center licence, which is the strongest reason to run it before March 28, 2029.

Attachments live in the home directory, not in the database. A complete backup needs both, and for large instances Atlassian recommends your database's native backup tools over Jira's built-in XML backup, which can be inconsistent while Jira is in use.

A plan that works back from 2029

1. Take inventory now. Projects with activity in the last 90 days, users, Marketplace apps, integrations, custom fields and automation rules. Most instances hold far more history than live work.
2. Decide where your data must live. Self-managed or cloud splits the options in half, so settle it first.
3. Price both paths at your 2029 headcount, including apps, and remember that cloud costs more per user than Data Center.
4. Check every Marketplace app. Does it have a cloud version and a migration path, or a native equivalent in the tool you are moving to?
5. Export what you must keep while you are licensed: the history through the data pipeline, and a full backup of the database and home directory.
6. Pilot with one team, through the Cloud Migration Trial or the other tool's trial, then move the rest in waves.
7. Finish before March 30, 2028 if you may need to grow, because Data Center expansions stop then.
8. Retire the old instance properly: take it off the internet, keep the backup, and cancel the apps at renewal.

Where Stride fits

Stride is our product, so weigh this section accordingly. Stride runs as a hosted service, and its Enterprise plan lists private-cloud deployment through sales. If your reason for Data Center was keeping data on your own servers, Stride is not the answer, and the self-managed tools above are.

If it was not, Stride can take a Jira Data Center project directly: the import wizard reads a CSV export, up to 20,000 rows and 25 MB per import, shows a preview before anything is written, and brings across epics, stories, sub-tasks, sprints, comments, story points, issue links and dates. Attachments come across as links back to Jira, not as files, so copy any files you need before you retire the instance. The 30-day two-way sync that keeps a team working in both tools during a move works with Jira Cloud only. Single sign-on is on the Enterprise plan only.

Sources

Atlassian's pages, checked on September 27, 2026:

• Data Center end of life: dates, products, read-only access, incentives and extended maintenance.
• Migration hub and timeline: the full timeline, including the Marketplace dates.
• What the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant migrates.
• Isolated Cloud FAQ.
• Filter export only contains 1,000 issues: the export limits and how to raise them.
• Data pipeline: exporting issues, history and links in bulk.