How to read this list
“Delivery intelligence” has become a crowded shelf. Gartner published its first Magic Quadrant for Developer Productivity Insight platforms in May 2026 and put Jellyfish and LinearB in the Leaders box. Most tools on the shelf answer one of three questions, and the biggest mistake buyers make is assuming one tool answers all three:
- How is the engineering organisation performing? Throughput, DORA, AI-tool adoption, cost. Jellyfish, LinearB, Swarmia, Plandek.
- How do we run the ceremonies with less admin? Transcripts, summaries, tickets. Spinach, Rovo.
- Is the work moving the product, and who is drifting from the goal this week? Performalise.
The table gives the one-line answer per tool. The sections below give the honest version.
| Tool | Best for | Signal comes from | Pricing basis | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performalise | Leaders of 3+ teams who want a goal ladder, drift caught inside the team, and a coach | Standup + tickets + code + deploys + product analytics | Per team, from $450/team/month, annual | No individual scoring, no AI-tool ROI, no finance reporting |
| Jellyfish | CTOs and CFOs who need allocation, AI spend and capitalisation | Tickets + code | Per seat and module, quote only | No standup input, no coaching, no product-usage validation |
| LinearB | Engineering managers fixing PR flow, with exec reporting on top | Git + tickets | $29 / $59 per contributor, 30 / 50-seat minimums | Git-centric, no standup input, no goal ladder |
| Swarmia | Engineering orgs that want metrics developers trust | Git + tickets | Reported $25 / $45 per developer, free plan for startups | No standup input, no coaching, no OKR scoring |
| Plandek | Technology leaders who want 500+ metrics and an AI assistant | Tickets + code + CI | $25 to $55 per contributor | Tool data only; advises the leader, not the team |
| Spinach | Teams that want standups transcribed and actioned | Meeting audio | Reported $2.90 per meeting hour or $29 per user | Captures the meeting, does not score it against a goal |
| Atlassian Rovo | Atlassian-only shops wanting AI inside Jira and Confluence | Atlassian Teamwork Graph | Included with Standard, Premium and Enterprise Cloud plans, credit-metered | Platform-bound; entry-level coaching (stale tickets, summaries) |
1. Performalise
What it is. Product Development Intelligence. Performalise is a tool that tells you which of your teams' work actually moves your product forward and coaches them to stay aligned with goals. Every piece of work sits on a goal ladder from Organisational Vision to Sprint Goal, each level with an owner, teams, progress and a status, and the status comes from said versus did inside the sprint rather than from anything typed. Hans or Lotte, the coaches, act on the signal inside the team; only drift from the goal and blockers the team cannot clear travel up.
What it does well. Reads the standup as well as the tools. Scores work against OKRs at team level without pushing OKRs into tickets. Validates value from what customers use (Microsoft Clarity, Google Analytics 4, Amplitude). Forecasts as ranges you can defend: ±4-6 weeks across a portfolio, down from ±4-6 months. Teams on Performalise report 33% more successful sprints, aggregated across customer engagements in 2024 and 2025, methodology on request.
Best for. Product and technology leaders running three or more teams in Jira, Azure DevOps or Linear, who want a signal they can put weight on and a coach who keeps the team on the goal between their own visits.
Where it stops. No individual productivity scores, deliberately. No AI coding-tool ROI, no software capitalisation, no finance reporting. Not a dashboard you buy without wanting the coach; the full list is on our pricing page.
Pricing. From $450 per team per month billed annually, every capability on every plan, coaches and stakeholders included.
Deeper: How Performalise works
2. Jellyfish
What it is. “The Intelligence Platform for AI-Integrated Engineering.” A Gartner Leader in the 2026 Developer Productivity Insight Magic Quadrant (jellyfish.co).
What it does well. Allocation of effort and cost by initiative, AI-tool adoption and token spend, DORA and SPACE with cross-company benchmarks, developer experience surveys, and DevFinOps: software capitalisation and R&D tax credit reporting. If a CFO needs to understand engineering spend, this is one of the best ways to show it. 4.5/5 on G2 and Gartner Peer Insights.
Best for. CTOs and CFOs of organisations with 100+ engineers who need to report allocation and AI ROI to the board and the auditors.
Where it stops. Reads tools, not rooms: no standup or meeting input. Reports rather than coaches. No product-analytics integration on its integrations page (26 August 2026), so it cannot say whether shipped work was used. Delivery forecasting as a range is not published on its site.
Pricing. Per seat and per module, quote only, no free trial. Third-party purchase data (Vendr, July 2026) puts the median contract near $36,000 a year.
Deeper: Performalise vs Jellyfish
3. LinearB
What it is. “The productivity platform for modern engineering teams.” Gartner Leader in the same 2026 Magic Quadrant (linearb.io).
What it does well. PR cycle time and review flow, gitStream (programmable merge automation that nobody else does as well), AI code review, AI-tool ROI reporting, DORA with benchmarks, and the APEX operating model for running an improvement programme. 58 integrations including every major AI coding assistant.
Best for. Engineering managers whose bottleneck is inside the workflow: slow reviews, PR queues, merge friction. Executives get the reporting on top.
Where it stops. Git-centric; Essentials is GitHub Cloud only. No standup input; Slack and Teams are notification channels only. Project forecasting only in the Enterprise tier. No goal ladder, no product-usage input.
Pricing. $29 per contributor per month on Essentials (30-seat minimum), $59 on Enterprise (50-seat minimum), annual only, plus usage credits; 45-day trial (linearb.io/pricing, 26 August 2026).
Deeper: Performalise vs LinearB
4. Swarmia
What it is. Engineering effectiveness metrics with an explicit stance against surveillance: team-level metrics, individual data kept private, working agreements the team sets itself (swarmia.com).
What it does well. Developer-trusted metrics, which matters because the fastest way to kill an analytics rollout is engineers deciding it is a leaderboard. Investment balance, DORA, working agreements, Slack notifications, and a free plan for startups.
Best for. Engineering organisations that want metrics the developers will accept, and a team-first culture around them.
Where it stops. Git and tickets only; no standup input, no coaching, no OKR scoring, no product-usage input. It measures how the team works; it does not tell the team what to change this week.
Pricing. Reported at $25 (Lite) and $45 (Standard) per developer per month with Enterprise on request and an annual discount; Swarmia's own pricing page renders the current figures, so confirm there.
5. Plandek
What it is. “Engineering productivity insights that turn AI adoption into impact.” UK-founded, named in the 2026 Magic Quadrant (plandek.com).
What it does well. 500+ delivery metrics across four pillars (Focus, Speed, Predictability, Quality), real-time Jira and Azure DevOps integration, the RACER framework for AI adoption, and Dekka, an AI assistant that reads the data and flags risk for the leader.
Best for. Technology leaders who want the broadest metric catalogue and an assistant on top of it; familiar territory for UK and European buyers.
Where it stops. Tool data only, no standup or chat source; Dekka advises the leader, it does not coach the team; alignment is effort against the roadmap, not outcomes against a goal ladder; no product-usage input (integrations page, 26 August 2026).
Pricing. Single plan, $25 to $55 per contributor per month depending on term and volume, technical proof of concept at no cost (plandek.com/pricing, 26 August 2026).
Deeper: Performalise vs Plandek
6. Spinach
What it is. An AI meeting assistant that joins standups, retros and planning on Zoom, Google Meet and Teams, transcribes them, and writes the summary, action items and tickets into Jira, Linear, Asana and a dozen other tools (spinach.ai).
What it does well. Takes the admin out of the ceremony. The notes are written, the tickets are created, the follow-ups are tracked, in 100 languages, SOC 2 Type II. For a Scrum Master drowning in note-taking it is a relief on day one.
Best for. Teams that want their ceremonies captured and actioned with no manual work.
Where it stops. It captures what was said; it does not compare it with what happened, score it against a goal, or coach anyone. The transcript is an input to delivery intelligence, not delivery intelligence itself.
Pricing. Reported at $2.90 per meeting hour (Pro, unlimited users) and $29 per user per month (Business), Enterprise on request; confirm on spinach.ai/pricing.
7. Atlassian Rovo
What it is. Atlassian's AI layer across Jira and Confluence: agents that can be assigned work items, Rovo Studio for building your own, and the Teamwork Graph opened to third-party agents via MCP since Team '26 in May 2026 (atlassian.com/rovo).
What it does well. If your organisation lives inside Atlassian, Rovo is already there: summaries, search across the graph, agents inside the workflow, and entry-level delivery nudges such as flagging lingering work items and bottlenecks.
Best for. Atlassian-only organisations who want AI inside the tools they already pay for before buying anything else.
Where it stops. It is bounded by the Atlassian graph: no standup signal, no goal ladder from vision to sprint, no product-usage validation, no coach with a stance on the sprint. Its coaching is where every platform's coaching starts, stale tickets and summaries.
Pricing. Included with Standard, Premium and Enterprise Cloud plans, metered by monthly AI credits per user (reported 25, 70 and 150 respectively as of spring 2026); check Atlassian's current packaging.
Which one, in practice
Three questions settle it in most conversations we have.
Who needs to act on the signal? If the answer is the CFO or the board, Jellyfish. If it is the engineering manager fixing the pipeline, LinearB or Swarmia. If it is the team itself, this week, with a coach in the room, Performalise.
Where does the signal have to come from? If tool data is enough, any of the DPI platforms will serve. If “blocked” said on Monday needs to count before a ticket moves on Thursday, only a tool that reads the standup will catch it. Spinach hears it; Performalise hears it and scores it against the goal.
What do you do with the output? A report you read is one thing. A status that rolls up the goal ladder and a coach who tells the team one specific thing to change on Wednesday is another. Decide which you are buying before you compare feature lists.
Running two of these is common above 100 engineers: one for the money, one for the goal. Below that, pick the one that matches the question you are actually asking.
Last reviewed 28 August 2026. Vendor facts were read from each vendor's own site on 26 August 2026; prices marked “reported” come from TrustRadius or Vendr and should be confirmed with the vendor. Corrections welcome: josef@performalise.com.
Frequently asked questions
What is a delivery intelligence tool?
Software that reads your delivery toolchain (tickets, code, deploys, sometimes meetings) and turns it into signals for leaders: throughput, risk, alignment, cost. Gartner's 2026 category name for most of these is Developer Productivity Insight. Performalise calls its own category Product Development Intelligence because it scores work against product goals rather than measuring the engineering organisation.
Do I need more than one of these tools?
Above roughly 100 engineers, often yes: one for finance and allocation (Jellyfish) or pipeline flow (LinearB, Swarmia), one for goal alignment and coaching (Performalise). Below that, one tool that matches the question you are asking.
Which of these tools read the standup?
Spinach (transcribes and actions it) and Performalise (reads it and scores it against the sprint goal). Jellyfish, LinearB, Swarmia, Plandek and Rovo work from tool data only, as of their published integrations in August 2026.
Which tools avoid individual developer scoring?
Swarmia keeps individual data private by design and Performalise deliberately does not produce per-person scores. Jellyfish, LinearB and Plandek offer per-contributor metrics.