How many hierarchy levels does Jira support?

[Clayton]

Hello.

I'm wondering how many levels of hierarchy a Jira Premium subscription will support? Currently, we have 4 levels of hierarchy and that seems to be the limit.

As an example we have the following:

• Project - Hierarchy Level: 2
• Epic - Hierarchy Level: 1
• Task- Hierarchy Level: 0
• Subtask - Hierarchy Level: -1

Now, when we go to create another issue type above Hierarchy Level: 2, it only allows us to create it at Hierarchy Level: 0 or Hierarchy Level: -1.

Is this the expected behavior? Does Jira only support 4 levels of hierarchy natively?

We read these articles but these don't tell you how many levels you can actually configure:

• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-the-issue-type-hierarchy/
• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-custom-hierarchy-levels-in-advanced-roadmaps/

Thank you. 

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Clayton 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

I don't believe a limit has been been published for the number of hierarchy levels, but I recommend that you do your best to keep it simple and not create more than a few levels above Level 1.

When you create a new work item type you can only create them at level 0 and level -1. The Add Work Type screen doesn't allow you to choose levels 1 and higher as those are custom and the dialog is not designed to find out dynamically what levels are available.

First, create your new level in the Work Type Hierarchy screen.

Then from the Work Types screen create your new work item type at level 0.

After creating the new work item type at level 0 you then go to the Work Type Hierarchy screen and click in the Jira work types column for your new level. There you select the new Work Type you created.

[Tomislav Tobijas]

I'm wondering how many levels of hierarchy a Jira Premium subscription will support? Currently, we have 4 levels of hierarchy and that seems to be the limit.

Quick info... it's 25 levels in total, including level 0 and -1. So max level is actually 23.

Just to be clear, I've never even seen anything above level 5 or 6 on any instance, and I'd also agree to keep it as simple as possible. 
I did test this out during one webinar when someone from the audience asked the same question 😅

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

@Tomislav Tobijas 

25.... Please don´t do such creepy Things xD

[Olga Cheban _TitanApps_]

hello  @Clayton !

As the others have already mentioned, you can have pretty much as many levels as you need. You just need to configure them correctly.

I described how to do this with step-by-step instructions in my article Advanced Roadmaps Hierarchy Configuration Guide 2026, so it might be worth a read.

And here's an example of a custom multi-level hierarchy:

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions

[Lukas Maczejka - JXL]

Hi @Clayton,

As @Trudy Claspill and @Tomislav Tobijas have covered, Jira does support well beyond 4 levels. The key is the workflow: you first create the new level in the Work Type Hierarchy screen, then create your work type at level 0, and finally assign it to the new level from the hierarchy screen. The "Add Work Type" dialog doesn't dynamically offer custom levels, which is why it looks limited.

If you find yourself working with deeper hierarchies and want a more flexible way to visualize and manage them, you might want to look at JXL for Jira on the Atlassian Marketplace.

JXL provides a spreadsheet-like view of your Jira data with highly configurable hierarchy structures. You can set up custom structures that combine Jira's built-in parent/child relationships with grouping, filtering at each level, and sum-ups (e.g., rolling up story points across levels). Here's an example of a multi-level hierarchy in action:

You can also build hierarchies based on issue links (not just parent/child), which gives you additional flexibility for cross-project or dependency-based views.

Disclosure: I work for the team that builds JXL.

Hope this helps, Lukas

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello and welcome to the Community @Clayton 

By default Jira gives you 3 hierarchy levels: the Epic level, the standard work item level, and Sub-task below that.

If you are on Premium or Enterprise, you can add additional levels above Epic. Atlassian’s current Cloud docs document that you can create extra levels, but they do not give a hard maximum on that page. You also cannot add anything below Sub-task.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/configure-the-issue-type-hierarchy/

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-custom-hierarchy-levels-in-advanced-roadmaps/