On 13 October 2026 Atlassian raised the list price of Jira Service Management Cloud, which it now sells as Service Collection. That part is a routine yearly increase and most teams will absorb it. The date worth a calendar reminder comes seven weeks later. From 3 December 2026, AI usage in Atlassian Cloud is billed per credit once an organisation goes past its monthly allowance, and in a service desk the AI features that use the most credits are the ones that answer your requesters, not your agents.
Below are the actual numbers from Atlassian's own pricing tables, worked out for service desks of 10 to 100 agents, plus the settings and decisions worth handling before December.
What changed on 13 October
Atlassian's cloud pricing FAQ lists Jira Service Management / Service Collection among the apps whose Standard, Premium and Enterprise list prices changed on 13 October 2026 (Pacific Time). The new prices apply to new purchases, renewals and upgrades. Monthly subscribers see them on any bill from that date. Annual customers see them on any quote generated or modified from that date, and on automatic renewals billed from that date. If you received a quote before 13 October, the same FAQ says Atlassian will honour the old price until that quote expires, so look for it before you accept a new one.
For annual plans, Atlassian's future pricing tables give these Service Collection prices (USD per year):
| Agents | Standard before | Standard now | Premium before | Premium now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 2,500 | 2,700 (+200) | 5,750 | 6,200 (+450) |
| 25 | 5,650 | 6,100 (+450) | 13,600 | 14,500 (+900) |
| 50 | 10,300 | 11,000 (+700) | 26,000 | 28,000 (+2,000) |
| 100 | 19,700 | 21,000 (+1,300) | 51,000 | 55,000 (+4,000) |
Monthly billing went up by a similar share. For the first 15 agents, Standard moved from USD 25.00 to USD 26.90 per agent per month and Premium from USD 57.30 to USD 61.60, according to the same tables. A 10-agent team on monthly Standard now pays USD 269 a month, or USD 3,228 a year, against USD 2,700 on an annual plan. If the size of your desk is stable, annual billing is clearly the cheaper option.
So the subscription increase works out to roughly 6.5 to 8 percent: a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year for a typical Gulf IT or customer service team. Annoying, but you can plan for it.
What changes on 3 December: Rovo credits become a meter
Every paid Service Collection plan includes Rovo, Atlassian's AI, with a monthly allowance of Rovo credits. Atlassian's Rovo usage documentation sets the Service Collection allowance at 250 credits per user per month on Standard, 700 on Premium and 1,500 on Enterprise. Allowances from all your Atlassian apps go into one pool for the whole organisation. The pool resets monthly and unused credits do not roll over.
The same page states that on 3 December 2026 "extra usage billing takes effect for Rovo credits". Past the allowance, the list price is USD 0.01 per credit, or USD 10 per 1,000 credits, and prepaid packs are available with volume discounts.
How fast do credits go? Atlassian sorts AI work into tiers on that page. Search, definitions and summaries inside Atlassian apps are free. Basic features, such as quick answers in Rovo Chat, cost 10 credits per billable event, and in chat each user message is one event. The premium tier covers Think Deeper mode, Agents in Jira, Request Resolver, Alert Intelligence and the Self-service Agent, and it uses a variable number of credits per event depending on how much reasoning and how many tool calls the job takes.
Why a service desk feels this more than a development team
The allowance is counted per licensed user. In Jira Service Management, licensed users are agents. Your customers, the employees or clients who raise requests through the portal, are unlicensed, and Atlassian's pricing page allows an unlimited number of them. They add nothing to the credit pool.
Yet the AI features aimed at those customers, the Self-service Agent on the portal and Request Resolver, sit in the variable-credit tier. Your supply of credits grows with the number of agents. Your demand grows with request volume. On a busy internal IT desk, where 25 agents may serve a couple of thousand staff, those two numbers have little to do with each other.
Here is the monthly pool each plan gives you, based on Atlassian's per-user allowances, and what it buys if spent only on basic 10-credit events:
| Agents | Standard pool | Basic events | Premium pool | Basic events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 2,500 | 250 | 7,000 | 700 |
| 25 | 6,250 | 625 | 17,500 | 1,750 |
| 50 | 12,500 | 1,250 | 35,000 | 3,500 |
| 100 | 25,000 | 2,500 | 70,000 | 7,000 |
A 25-agent Standard desk gets 6,250 credits a month. Spent only on quick Rovo Chat answers, that is 625 messages for the whole team: about 25 per agent per month, roughly one per working day.
A worked example, with the assumption stated
Atlassian does not publish a fixed credit cost for a Self-service Agent conversation, because that tier is variable. So read the following as an illustration, not a quote. Picture a 25-agent Standard IT desk in Dubai handling 2,000 portal requests a month, with the Self-service Agent switched on for all of them.
- If each conversation cost the same 10 credits as a basic chat message: 20,000 credits, 13,750 over the allowance, USD 137.50 a month or USD 1,650 a year.
- If conversations averaged 20 credits: 40,000 credits, 33,750 over, USD 337.50 a month or USD 4,050 a year.
The second case adds about two thirds of the new USD 6,100 annual licence, before a single agent opens Rovo Chat, and agent usage comes out of the same pool. Your real figure could be lower or higher. You will only know it from your own usage data, and November is the month to collect it.
Is extra usage on by default? Atlassian's pages disagree
This is the detail we would check first. Atlassian's Rovo usage documentation says: "Extra usage is enabled by default, and admins can set spending limits to ensure teams experience no interruptions when working with AI." Atlassian's cloud pricing FAQ says: "Extra usage billing requires opt-in. You're never charged beyond your allowance unless an billing admin explicitly enables extra usage."
Both cannot describe your organisation at the same time. Don't guess. Open Atlassian Administration, find the Rovo extra usage setting, and choose deliberately. If extra usage is off when the pool runs dry, billable AI features pause until the allowance resets, per the Rovo documentation. That may be acceptable for agent chat. It is much less acceptable if the portal assistant goes silent on the 20th and requesters have no idea why.
What to do before 3 December
- Check the extra usage setting and set a spending limit. Organisation and billing admins get alerts at 80% and 100% of the allowance, according to the Rovo documentation. Make sure those alerts reach a person who acts on them, not only a shared billing mailbox.
- Measure November. The usage view in Atlassian Administration shows credit consumption. Note which features use the most: portal AI, agent chat or automation agents. Then scale it to your busiest month, not an average week.
- Clean up agent licences. Atlassian's own FAQ suggests deactivating inactive users so they stop counting toward the bill. Desks with staff rotation often carry a few departed agents into every renewal.
- Decide which AI features face requesters. If the portal agent eats most of the credits, limit it to request types where it actually closes the request, such as password resets and access requests, and keep it off categories that always end up with a human. Our piece on ticket deflection versus real resolution covers how to tell the two apart.
- Move monthly subscriptions to annual if your agent count is stable. In the 10-agent Standard example above, that saves USD 528 a year.
If you were planning to self-host instead
Some Gulf teams ask whether Jira Service Management Data Center, the self-managed edition, avoids all of this. It is being retired. Atlassian's end-of-life page says new customers could not buy Data Center subscriptions after 30 March 2026, existing customers can buy and expand until 30 March 2028, and on 28 March 2029 Data Center products become read-only. Staying self-managed on Atlassian is a bridge, not a destination.
If ticket data has to stay on servers you control, for regulatory or contractual reasons, the real choice is cloud with a data residency option or a different product you host yourself. We compared the self-hosted options, including licence terms and Arabic support, in on-premise helpdesk software in 2026. And if the price change is one item on a longer list of complaints about your current tool, these signs it is time to migrate may help you decide whether to renew at all.
For most teams already on Jira Service Management, leaving over a single-digit price increase makes little sense. Treating AI credits as a budget line with a named owner, starting this month, makes a lot.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 13 October increase apply to my existing annual subscription?
Yes, at renewal. Atlassian's cloud pricing FAQ says the new prices apply to renewals and upgrades of existing subscriptions as well as new purchases. Quotes generated before 13 October 2026 are honoured at the old price until they expire.
How much does a Rovo credit cost after 3 December 2026?
The list price for usage beyond the included allowance is USD 0.01 per credit, which is USD 10 per 1,000 credits. Prepaid packs with volume discounts are also offered. Usage within the monthly allowance carries no extra charge.
Do portal customers increase our Rovo credit allowance?
No. The allowance is per licensed user per month, and in Jira Service Management the licensed users are agents. Customers who raise requests through the portal are unlicensed, so they add nothing to the pool, even though portal AI features use credits from it.
Will Atlassian bill extra Rovo usage automatically?
Atlassian's pages give different answers. The Rovo usage documentation says extra usage is enabled by default, while the cloud pricing FAQ says extra usage billing requires opt-in by a billing admin. Check the setting in Atlassian Administration for your own organisation and set a spending limit either way.
Can we move to Jira Service Management Data Center to avoid these costs?
Only as a temporary step, and only if you are already a Data Center customer. New Data Center purchases ended on 30 March 2026, existing customers can expand until 30 March 2028, and Data Center products become read-only on 28 March 2029.
Sources
- Atlassian: Cloud pricing overview and FAQs (13 October 2026 change)
- Atlassian: Future cloud list pricing tables
- Atlassian Support: How Rovo credits work
- Atlassian: Rovo licensing FAQs
- Atlassian: Jira Service Management pricing
- Atlassian: Data Center end of life
All prices and dates checked against Atlassian's pages on 1 November 2026. List prices exclude taxes and partner discounts.
