Top 10 Bug Tracking Tools to Look for in 2024

Project management tools have long been in the software industry.

What about bugs? Well, they have been in all software products ever since the first computers were made. As time has passed, industries have been setup for tracking and fixing bugs. 🚫🐞

The demand for quality software products is rising. Needless to say, software complexities has pushed to creating tools not just to manage projects but also to track bugs.

According to Allied Market Research as of 2018, the bug tracking software market was valued around USD 218 Million. With an expected CAGR of 13.60% for the period 2019 to 2026, it is going towards an estimated valuation of USD 601.64 Million by the year 2026. 😯

In this post, we will cover 10 Best Bug Tracking for Software to look for in 2024 to make sure that you can keep track of the bugs for fixing in your software while you develop and test them. That way only you can enjoy 2024 🥳, and not the bugs. 🚫🐞

Let’s get started

# 1 - BetterBugs

BetterBugs can help teams report defects or issues up to 10 times faster than traditional bug-reporting workflows for software. It’s available as a free extension for Google Chrome. 🎉

It helps to report and manage bugs or defects by providing ways to create a comprehensive and shareable bug report with all the details that a developer needs to debug and fix the issue. 👨‍💻

It’s not uncommon for the QA engineers to be in a to-and-fro communication with the developers for defect resolution. BetterBugs can help save time and effort on it while reporting and following up on a defect. ⏳

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Screenshot and recording capabilities to create a visual proof of the issue or defect. 📷🎥
• Automatic inclusion of developer tools information like metadata, console logs, network requests, and more with the bug reports for developers to reproduce defects and debug faster. 🤖
• Simplified workflows for QA and developers for reporting and debugging with a central dashboard to manage all bug reports. 🐞📃
• Integrates easily with popular tools like Jira, Linear, Asana, and others for collaborative, quick, and easy sharing of reports that help to track, follow up, and resolve issues faster. 🦾🧩
• Real-time commenting feature on reports to get instant feedback and keep track of the reported issues. 💬

#2 - Jira

Jira has been adopted by the software industry as one of the most popular bug-tracking tools. It can help you create, assign, prioritize, and resolve bugs throughout the Software development and testing lifecycle. 🧑‍💻

It is feature-rich and provides many options to create custom workflows for Agile, Scrum, Bug tracking, and DevOps. It is very handy to use and provides a clear view of the progress of the reported issue. 🔎

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Boards for visualizing, prioritizing, and tracking issues or bugs 📃
• Repository to keep all issues or bugs in one place as Backlogs with key details like severity, version, and more. 👨‍💻
• Timeline feature to create interactive epics for better visual representation of bug tracking. 📅🟰
• Report and dashboard feature to get insights on the progress with charts and graphs. 📊
• Bug reporting templates available for Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps 🐞📄
• Real-time Notifications through email, mobile, or in-app. 🔔
• Easily integrated with other project development tools like GitHub, BitBucket, etc. 🧩

#3 - Linear

Linear is another excellent bug-tracking tool while developing and testing software. It is easy to use and provides various features for managing issues or defects. It can help create, track, and manage project issues with custom roadmaps. 👨‍💻🛣️

Interestingly, the workflows in Linear are pretty straightforward and less complex making it a great choice to include while tracking bugs and defects of software.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Issue tracking with Parents and sub-issues to help break bigger tasks into smaller ones for better issue or bug management 🫸🐛
• Automated backlogs function to auto-close and auto-archive issues 🗃️
• Cycles to plan and focus on issues to work on through configurable scheduling and automatic tracking. ⚙️
• Get a warning feature for cycles at risk ⚠️
• Create roadmaps for planning out projects and better collaboration in a timeline view. This helps to get insights, personal notifications, and updates on ongoing projects for managing issues and other project-related stuff🧑‍💼🔔
• Easily integrated with other software tools like GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Figma, Sentry, etc. 🧩

#4 - ClickUp

ClickUp is a productivity software that is another great choice as a bug-tracking tool. Its main feature for tracking GitHub activity for issues makes it an impressive add-on while for software development and testing lifecycles.

Its collaboration features can help cross-functional teams keep track of the issues in a streamlined manner.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Options to choose bug-tracking views for project workflows for Agile, Scrum, or Gantt charts as per the project requirement .🐛🔍
• Task dependencies feature to enable teams to save time by working on issues in the correct order and avoiding unnecessary workflows or tasks. 👨‍💻
• Customization options for priorities, task status, and tags for better bug management. 🏷️
• Options for automating tasks with 50+ automation workflows for better efficiency while doing repetitive tasks. 🤖
• Form view to collect bug reports with customizable fields for creating bug reports. Capabilities to create tasks using form responses. 📄
• Excellent workflows for issue management through GitHub integration. Notifications for all activities related to issues on GitHub🦾🔔

#5 - Asana

Asana is yet another widely used bug-tracking tool used in software development lifecycles. It has features for managing projects, tasks, and project-related workflows.

A dedicated project can be created in Asana for reporting, prioritizing, and fixing bugs making it a good choice for tracking bugs.

One downside with Asana while assigning the same issue to multiple people is that you have to make a copy of the issue leading to duplicate tracking. A workaround for this is to merge tasks to avoid duplicate bug tracking while reporting a bug that has been already reported.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Forms to collect relevant information like the source, priority, or description of bugs. Custom form fields can be added making it flexible to use for reporting issues. 📄
• A reporting dashboard is available to get insights while tracking issues with relevant metrics like the number of bugs reported and resolved, the average time of resolution, etc. 👨‍💻
• The project owner can be assigned to look over the bug management to keep things organized and trackable with options to take up a recurring task to triage issues and also merge duplicates 🧑‍💼
• Filter options for getting the most urgent or common bugs to spot trends. 🐞⚠️
• Featured templates available that can be customized for purposes like Work requests, IT requests, or Customer feedback. 🧑
• Can be integrated with many tools like GitHub, Slack, MS Teams, Okta, Trello, GitLab, BitBucket, and more. 🧩

#6 - GitHub

GitHub is one of the most popular platforms used for version control for tracking changes and issues in the source code in software development.

It is a great platform for collaboration allowing team members to work on projects together, and track changes and issues effectively.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Issues can be raised through GitHub just like an issue or bug management system. 📄
• Milestones on GitHub can be used to track the progress of an issue. It can also be used to see the collective progress for a set of issues related to the project 👨‍💻
• Option to mention other collaborators in a project and express ideas to discuss through @mentions
• Pull requests can be done using GitHub making it absolutely incredible to associate the code with particular issues.🧑‍💼
• Managing defects or issues can be easily done using the GitHub repository with options to make customized Board items like In Progress, Done, and so on.
• Notification capabilities for the activities in a certain repository can help members keep track of everything. 🔔
• Can be integrated with a list of project management tools like Jira, ClickUp, Asana, Linear, and many more. 🧩

#7 - Monday.com

Monday.com is a collaboration and project management platform that enables software team members to work and intuitively track project progress and issues.

It can be used for many purposes while managing projects. Bug tracking is one of the use cases for Monday.com. It is a versatile tool and highly customizable as per the requirements.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Custom workflows can be created for bug tracking progress like “Testing”, “In Progress” and so on. 📌
• Users can create tasks for each bug or issue, assign them to team members, set due dates, and add relevant details. This helps in organizing and prioritizing work or assigned issues.  📄
• Team members can collaborate on tasks by commenting, attaching files, and providing updates.  👨‍💻👩‍💻
• Custom field creation capabilities for capturing additional information about bugs, such as severity, priority, steps to reproduce, and more. 🐞!!!
• Integrates with various third-party tools and services like GitLab, Slack, and MS Teams to connect bug-tracking processes with other parts of a workflow. 🧩
• Accessible via mobile apps, enabling team members to manage and track bugs on the go. 📲

#8 - BugZilla

Bugzilla is an open-source web-based bug-tracking system that helps software developers and quality assurance teams manage and track software defects and issues throughout the SDLC.

Mozilla Foundation developed BugZilla and it is widely used in the software industry for tracking defects while developing and testing software.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• A centralized repo is made available for tracking and managing software defects and bugs. This allows users to submit new issues, search through existing bugs, and monitor the progress of bug resolution.🔎🪰
• Email notifications can be set up for users based on various events, such as when a new bug is submitted, when a bug is assigned to a user, or when there are updates to an existing bug.  📩🔔
• Admins can define user roles, permissions, and access levels, ensuring that only authorized individuals can perform specific actions within the system  👨‍💻👩‍💻
• Can be with other development tools and version control systems. 🧩
• Users can generate various reports and charts, providing insights into bug trends, team performance, and project status. 📊
• It has a RESTful API (Application Programming Interface) that enables integration with external tools and systems, making it easier to automate certain processes and extract data for analysis. ⬆️⬇️
• Option to define custom fields to capture additional information specific to their development process. 📃

#9 - YouTrack

YouTrack is a task management and collaboration tool by JetBrains. It offers many features for software development, Quality Assurance, and most importantly for our post, ways to track bugs while developing and testing software.

It is also an enterprise-level tool and can handle heavy workloads for tracking issues and attachments during software development

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• It has features to create, edit, and assign issues, add attachments and comments, use custom fields and workflows, and track the progress and status of bugs or defects for managing tasks. 📌
• Scrum, Kanban, or Mixed boards for Agile workflows to visualize issue backlog, prioritize and sort issues, and monitor the development process side-by-side. 📄
• Option to automate bug reporting and handling process with predefined or custom workflows, using rules and scripts to trigger actions and notifications. 👨‍💻
• Feature to import issues from other task trackers like Jira, GitHub, BugZilla, Mantis, and others. ⬇️🐞

#10 - Zoho Bug Tracker

Zoho Bug Tracker like the name says is specifically designed for tracking defects or issues in a project. There are options to customize workflows and report, submit, track, and fix bugs using third-party apps and other Zoho products.

A few downsides of Zoho Bug Tracker is that it has limited integration capabilities unlike most other bug tracking tools mentioned in this post and only Kanban boards are available with it.

Key Features as a Bug Tracking Tool

• Customizable Kanban boards for defect tracking and management. 📃
• Capabilities to record bugs quickly with relevant details like assigned users, due dates, followers, and so on. 📌
• Consolidated view for progress, defects with reports and milestones  📄 🙌
• Automated SLAs for faster defect and time-tracking capabilities
• Email notifications for various activities and updates 📩🔔
• Option to set rules for automated workflows for bug fields and other app integrations. 🔃

With so many tools to choose from for tracking bugs, some tools may appeal to you more and some less. However, the 10 bug tracking tools mentioned in the post are some of the best ones carefully selected for the purpose. 🚫🐛

The main goal is to track bugs efficiently in minimum time and make sure they have been well documented and accounted for for debugging. It won’t be new to say that reporting bugs and debugging is a tough ask. It’s problem solving. There are no limits to what could go wrong and what not. 🚀

All the tools mentioned in the post are versatile enough to make sure that you can get and share as much information as possible in less time with maximum efficiency.

The smallest bit of information may be the key to solving an issue. You never know. 🤔

That’s what BetterBugs is made for. It makes sure that you don’t miss any information while you track and fix issues. You can download it for free as a Google Chrome extension. 😋

I hope you enjoyed reading the post like I did writing it for you.

Stay tuned for more of such exciting posts.

Happy Hunting! 😊