Atlassian Guard is an organization-wide cloud subscription that connects Atlassian cloud apps to a customer’s identity provider and adds user management, enterprise authentication and data security features.[2] It is sold in two tiers. Atlassian Guard Standard, formerly known as Atlassian Access, covers controls such as enforced single sign-on, SCIM provisioning, API token controls and the organization audit log; Atlassian Guard Premium is an add-on for data classification, anomalous activity detection, content scanning and related threat detection.[2][5] Unlike the apps it protects, Guard is billed per organization: each unique billable user is paid for once, regardless of how many apps or sites that user can reach.[2] Guard applies only to Atlassian cloud; Atlassian directs customers with Data Center products to Crowd for user management and SSO.[5]
Editions
Guard Standard supports Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Bitbucket, Trello and Statuspage according to the pricing page.[5] Atlassian’s documents do not list the supported apps identically: the Support billing article names Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Trello and Jira Service Management,[2] and one answer in the licensing FAQ on annual billing also names Jira Product Discovery and Compass.[1] Guard Standard is included at no extra cost in Cloud Enterprise plans[5][6] and in Premium and Enterprise collection plans.[7]
Guard Premium currently supports Jira and Confluence Cloud.[5] It is an add-on to Guard, uses the same billing date and cycle as the Guard subscription, and is not included in Enterprise plans.[3] Collections that include Guard Standard still require Guard Premium to be purchased separately.[7]
Both tiers can be trialled for 30 days by an organization administrator.[1]
Metrics
Atlassian bills the two tiers on separate counts: Unique billable user (Guard Standard) and Unique billable user (Guard Premium). Atlassian describes both tiers as billing “the total number of unique users that access at least one supported product”, but the populations differ.[1]
Counting / floors
Guard Standard
A user is billable for Guard Standard when all of the following apply: the account is a managed account or an external user of the organization; it has access to a supported app; its plan does not already include Guard Standard; and it is not exempted by a non-billable authentication policy.[2] Managed accounts and external users with access only to a sandbox also count (rule),[2] as do users on free versions of supported apps, counted once even if they also use a paid site.[1]
The number of managed and external users is therefore greater than or equal to the number of billable users.[1] Atlassian’s billing examples illustrate the exclusions (rule):[2]
| Organization | Guard Standard bill |
|---|---|
| 100 Jira Standard users, 50 of whom also use Confluence Standard | 100 |
| 30 Opsgenie Enterprise users and no other cloud apps | 0 |
| 1,500 Jira and Confluence Enterprise users plus 50 Bitbucket Standard users | 50 |
| 40 Jira Free users, 10 of whom use Statuspage Business | 30 |
| 30 Jira Service Management agents and 500 helpseekers | 30 |
In Jira Service Management only agents are billable; portal-only accounts that submit requests are not, provided they have no access to another supported app.[1] In an Enterprise organization, Atlassian’s example is 10,000 users covered by Guard policies of whom 8,000 are on Enterprise apps, so only 2,000 appear on the Guard bill.[6] A user who has access only to an Enterprise sandbox is not an Enterprise user and so counts for Guard Standard (rule).[6]
Trello users on Free, Standard and Premium workspaces are billable under Guard Standard when they are active managed accounts in a billable policy. They stop counting if deactivated, moved to a non-billable policy, assigned a Trello Enterprise licence, or removed from all workspaces (rule).[4]
Non-billable policies
An organization with Guard may designate one authentication policy, never the default policy, as non-billable. Its members are excluded from the Guard Standard bill, but single sign-on and two-step verification cannot be enforced for them, API token creation cannot be blocked, and users synced from an identity provider cannot be added to it (rule).[1] External user policies can likewise be made non-billable, leaving only one-time passcodes, session duration and API token controls available.[1]
Guard Premium
A user counts for Guard Premium if they are a unique user with access to at least one Jira or Confluence app on any plan, including Free and Enterprise. Deactivated users, users without Jira or Confluence access, and users whose only access is Jira Service Management or Jira Product Discovery are not counted (rule).[3] In Atlassian’s example, 8,000 people with Jira or Confluence access and 2,000 who use only Trello or Bitbucket produce a Guard Premium count of 8,000.[3]
Guard Premium cannot be reduced with non-billable policies. Users in such a policy lose Guard Standard coverage but remain covered by Guard Premium and are billed the price difference; users already covered by Cloud Enterprise or Guard Standard are also billed a price difference (rule).[1]
Prices and billing cycles
Guard uses progressive pricing with discounts as the user count rises.[1] Monthly subscriptions are charged at the end of each billing period on the number of unique users; Atlassian Guard is among the monthly subscriptions moved to maximum quantity billing in phases from 14 July 2025.[1][10] Annual subscriptions are bought up front, are tier-based, and are described as equivalent to two months free.[1] Renewal quotes are sent 60 days before the end of the term in the legacy billing system and 90 days before in the new billing engine.[1]
Atlassian’s price tables list new annual prices effective 13 October 2026.[8]
| Tier (annual) | Current list (USD) | From 2026-10-13 (USD) | Catalog row |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guard Standard, 1,000 users | 35,600 | 36,800 | SKU |
| Guard Premium upgrade from Cloud Enterprise or Guard Standard, 500 users | 22,000 | 23,100 | SKU |
The Guard Premium table is published as an upgrade price “(CEE/Standard to Premium)”, consistent with the price-difference billing described above.[8]
Virtualization & partitioning
Guard has no server or partitioning dimension. Its boundary is the Atlassian organization: users are counted once across all sites and apps linked to the organization,[2] and Atlassian recommends linking all sites to the same organization when several organizations are managed.[2] Starting a Guard subscription requires an organization and at least one verified domain.[2]
Cloud / BYOL
Guard is a cloud-only subscription and has no Data Center equivalent licence; Crowd is Atlassian’s product for Data Center identity management.[5] If a Guard subscription lapses, enforced SAML SSO, enforced two-step verification and detections stop, while the organization and verified domains remain.[1]
Programs
Atlassian states that Guard is available free of charge to eligible Community and Academic customers (rule).[1] The Purchasing and Licensing FAQ lists Guard Standard and Premium at 100% off for Academic and Classroom licences and Guard Standard at 100% off for Open Source projects.[9] Refunds are available only in the first paid month after a trial for monthly subscriptions and within 30 days of payment for annual ones.[1]
Out of scope
- Crowd Data Center licensing.
- Feature-level comparison of Guard Standard and Premium beyond what affects billing.
- Guard in Atlassian Government Cloud.
- Identity provider licensing (for example Okta or Microsoft Entra ID).