Optimizing Atlassian Cloud Performance with Client Hardware and Network Requirements

[#1]

Last post we touched on TLS and Firewall best practices to get the best performance from Atlassian Cloud applications. This post we’ll touch on client hardware and network speeds that help get the best performance from Atlassian Cloud applications.

Modern teams rely on Atlassian to collaborate and deliver value at scale. While Atlassian Cloud is engineered for speed and reliability, our research shows that client-side hardware and network configuration play a critical role in the end-user experience. This post outlines Atlassian’s recommendations for client hardware and network requirements, the measurable impact of these factors, and actionable steps to ensure your teams get the best possible performance.

Why client hardware and network matters

Every interaction with Jira and Confluence—whether loading a dashboard, editing a page, or searching for issues—depends on the capabilities of the customer’s device and the speed of their internet connection. Even with a perfectly optimized cloud backend, insufficient client resources or slow connectivity can introduce delays that compound across teams and workflows.

Key impact:

• Jira: Up to 1 second additional Time to Visual Completion (TTVC)

• Confluence: Up to 7 seconds additional TTVC

Across large organizations, these delays can translate into significant productivity loss.

Recommended client configuration

Based on extensive performance testing and customer feedback, Atlassian recommends the following client-side specifications for optimal performance:

Factor	Atlassian's Recommendation
CPU Cores	8 or more*
Internet Speed	10 Mbps download speed or higher
Browser	Latest version of a modern web browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox, Dia, etc.)
Network Enhancements	Allowlisting Atlassian domains, HTTP/2 enabled

Details

• CPU Cores*: Devices with fewer than 8 cores may experience slower page loads and reduced responsiveness, especially when multitasking or running multiple browser tabs.

  • * - CPU models & speed differ greatly between each other. Newer CPU models with the best speeds may give incredibly performance with only 1 or 2 cores on the client hardware. While older CPU models with slower speeds may still give sub-optimal performance even with 8 or more cores. CPU models and speeds are not exposed to web applications by modern browsers because of security & privacy concerns, while number of cores is exposed. The best guidance we can give is the number of cores based but please know that CPU models and speeds is the bigger factor here with performance.

• Internet Speed: A download speed of at least 10 Mbps is recommended. Lower speeds can cause noticeable delays, particularly when loading large pages or attachments.

• Browser: Use the latest version of modern browser for the best compatibility and performance (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Dia, etc.).

• Network Configuration: For organizations with strict network policies, enabling allowlisting and HTTP/2 can further improve performance. - Link to post to learn more

How client configuration impacts performance

When client hardware or network speed falls below these recommendations, users may experience:

• Slower initial page loads

• Laggy interactivity (e.g., editing, searching, commenting)

• Delays in rendering large or complex pages

Our performance and support teams have analyzed thousands of customer environments and confirmed that client-side limitations are a key contributor to these slowdowns.

Additional best practices

• Allowlisting and HTTP/2: For organizations using proxies, firewalls, or secure web gateways, ensure Atlassian domains are allowlisted and HTTP/2 is enabled. This prevents protocol downgrades and ensures efficient resource loading. - Link to post to learn more

• Monitor and validate: Regularly test user experience across different devices and network conditions. Use browser developer tools or HAR files to diagnose performance bottlenecks. 

Summary

By ensuring your teams meet or exceed these minimum client hardware and network requirements, you can maximize the value of Atlassian applications and deliver a fast, responsive experience for every user.

[Tim Eddelbüttel]

CPU cores: 8 or more

This is not a typo? That sounds too much for end-user clients that are just working in a web application. 

[Dave Liao]

@Grant Heimbach - thanks for sharing. Two suggestions:

1. I see the article has three hyperlinks, but they all point to the same URL. Did you mean to have them point to different parts of the destination article?
2. Hopefully the contents of this article make it to an Atlassian Support KB page? Would save customers time so they don't need to trawl through Atlassian Community to find best practices for client configs. 🙏

[chihara]

8 cores for client side?

[Calogero Bonasia]

Requiring 8 CPU cores for web applications in 2025 represents an anomaly compared to industry standards: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Notion, and Linear operate effectively with 2-4 cores while maintaining superior performance.

The most telling data emerges from comparison: if Confluence requires up to 7 additional seconds on non-optimal hardware, the problem lies in the application architecture, not in client resources.

Platforms comparable in functional complexity demonstrate that collaborative editing, relational databases, and full-text search do not require excessive hardware resources when the application is properly designed.

The article completely lacks methodological rigor: it does not specify test conditions, statistical distribution of data, or TTVC measurement methodology. Without these elements, the claims remain unverifiable.

The document also reveals an implicit shift of performance responsibility from vendor to customer, contradicting the fundamental principles of the SaaS model.

In a cloud service, the vendor controls the infrastructure and must guarantee acceptable performance on heterogeneous hardware.

Salesforce, ServiceNow, and other complex enterprise tools do not require particular hardware specifications.

Atlassian's recommendations suggest architectural inefficiencies that should be addressed through JavaScript code optimization, improved caching strategies, and revision of client-side processing.

Perhaps the time has finally come to evaluate faster and, above all, less expensive alternatives: when a vendor asks you to upgrade hardware to compensate for their own inefficiencies, the question arises naturally.

[Anwesha Pan]

Thank you for sharing this post! 

[Josh]

@Grant Heimbach confirmation on 8 CPU cores being the recommended minimum requirement would definitely be helpful.

[Grant Heimbach]

Thank you all for your feedback!

It was poor word choice on my part with "minimum". These guidelines intent are more "optimal" in nature. I've edited my post to reflect this.

Specifically to answer the part of the number of cores, it matters more what CPU model(s) and CPU speeds you have than the purely the number of cores. Newer, better & faster CPUs can give great performance with a small number of cores while older, slower CPU models can give poor performance even with a larger amount of cores available.

Modern web browsers do not make available the CPU model details and speeds to web applications, only the number of cores. So in our data analysis of production web browsing, we see the more cores are better but we are not able to get which CPUs those are and their speeds. Great performance CAN be had with a small number of cores and good CPUs.

Other factors play into performance like browser and hardware RAM usage (i.e., tons of tabs open with high RAM usage may get slower performances than lower RAM usage) but again we don't have access to that data to analyze.

I've also updated the three hyperlinks in the article. It was my intent to link to the same post all three times. I see how it was confusing and greatly appreciate the feedback. Please let me know if the changes there are less confusing.

I'm also looking into making this a "knowledgebase" document so it's more "evergreen" and easier for folks to find in the future.

[Soloman Weng]

Thank you for sharing this post! 

Just curious if Safari is considered supported / recommended browser too ? 

[Grant Heimbach]

Hey Soloman! Thanks for the question!

Yes, Safari is fully supported and we find it just as performant as the other modern web browsers.

I've edited the article to include Safari in the list as well.