We have server instances of JIRA and Confluence configured with each other as trusted applications. Do the license tiers / number of seats on each application need to be the same?

Question

We have JIRA and Confluence running on a server in our company.  Access to each application is controlled via MS Active directory groups using LDAP.  Each application has its own AD group.  JIRA and Confluence are configured to treat each other as trusted applications.  Do the license tiers for JIRA and Confluence need to be the same?  I ask because it seems likely that we will have more Confluence end users than JIRA, and we're concerned that if we keep up the trusted application relationship we'll need to buy JIRA seats we'll never use.

I have seen many references that say "stand alone" deployments don't have to match, but I don't know what precisely is meant by that.

Any light shed on this question will be most gratefully received.  Thanks in advance!

Addendum: Here's what our IT staff told me: "We have been told that integrated deploys (i.e. Jira and Confluence have been integrated - you can see Confluence content in Jira, etc.) - require the licensing to be the same between both tools. If they aren't integrated (standalone) they do not."  I just am trying to be thorough to make certain I'm not confusing the issue due to incorrect word choice.  Thanks again!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted Answer

No, they do not need to match.

If you have group-A with access to JIRA and 45 people in it, then group-B with Confluence access and 220 people in it, you'll need 50 JIRA users and 250 Confluence licences (higher numbers because it's by tier).

You will need to think about the cases where someone has a licence for one and not the other system though.  If a user has access to JIRA but not Confluence for example, then when they visit a JIRA issue that links to Confluence, they'll see a "you need to authorise to see this link" (which won't work because they can't log in).  Same in the other direction - the JIRA macros in Confluence will not function for users who don't have JIRA access.  A partial fix for this is "anonymous access", which might not be suitable for several reasons.