Glue vs Jira

By Priya Shankar, Head of Product at Glue

Notion has become the default workspace for product teams. PRDs, roadmaps, meeting notes, competitive analysis, team wikis. If you are using Notion for product management and wondering how Glue compares, the honest answer is that they do completely different things. Notion organizes what your team writes down. Glue surfaces what your codebase contains.

I used Notion extensively as a PM before joining Glue. I still use it. The difference is that I now understand what Notion cannot do: give me real-time visibility into the software my team builds.

Notion has grown into one of the most popular workspace tools in technology, with over 30 million users and deep penetration in product management teams. Its block-based architecture allows teams to build almost any information structure: wikis, databases, project trackers, meeting notes, and roadmaps. For many PMs, Notion is the first tool they open in the morning and the last they close at night.

Glue is purpose-built for a specific problem that Notion cannot address: understanding the codebase. Notion stores what your team writes. Glue understands what your team has built. The information in Notion is only as current and complete as the last person who updated it. The information in Glue is as current as your latest commit, because it comes from the code itself.

This comparison is not about replacing one with the other. It is about understanding why product teams need both a workspace for collaboration and an intelligence layer for codebase visibility.

Notion is one of the most versatile workspace tools available, and product teams have good reasons for adopting it.

Flexibility. Notion can be a wiki, a project tracker, a document repository, a database, a roadmap, and a meeting note system. Its block-based architecture means you can build almost any information structure. For teams that want one tool for multiple knowledge management needs, Notion's flexibility is unmatched.

Collaboration. Real-time editing, commenting, mentions, and sharing make Notion a natural hub for team collaboration. Product teams use it for async decision-making, spec reviews, and cross-functional alignment documents.

Templates. Notion's template ecosystem includes hundreds of product management templates: PRDs, sprint reviews, OKR tracking, user personas. This accelerates setup and provides structure for teams building their PM practice.

AI features. Notion AI can summarize pages, draft content, translate text, and answer questions about documents within your workspace. It is genuinely useful for content tasks within the Notion ecosystem.

Notion knows what your team has written. Glue knows what your team has built.

Codebase truth vs. documented truth. Notion contains whatever your team chooses to write down. If nobody documented how the billing system works, Notion has nothing to tell you. Glue reads the actual code and can explain the billing system whether anyone documented it or not. For teams dealing with documentation gaps (which is every team), this distinction is critical.

Real-time vs. point-in-time. A Notion page about your system architecture reflects the state of the system when someone last updated the page. Glue reflects the current state of the codebase because it analyzes the code directly. When the system changes, Glue's understanding updates. The Notion page does not.

Code-grounded specs. Notion helps you write a PRD using templates and past examples. Glue helps you write a PRD grounded in your actual system architecture: which modules need to change, what dependencies exist, and where complexity lives. The Glue-informed PRD earns engineering respect because it reflects system reality.

Discovery vs. retrieval. Notion retrieves information that someone stored. Glue discovers information that nobody stored: features that exist but were never documented, dependencies that nobody mapped, technical debt that nobody tracked. For product managers who need to understand their codebase, discovery is more valuable than retrieval.

Choose Notion when your primary need is a flexible workspace for documentation, collaboration, and knowledge management. If your team needs a place to write PRDs, maintain a wiki, track projects informally, and collaborate on documents, Notion is excellent.

Notion is also the right choice when your team is small enough that codebase complexity is manageable through direct communication.

Notion's database feature deserves specific mention. PMs who build custom databases for tracking competitors, mapping feature requests, or managing launch checklists get significant value from Notion's flexibility. The ability to create linked databases, filtered views, and relational connections between pages makes it a surprisingly capable lightweight project management tool. For teams that do not want the overhead of Jira but need more structure than a shared document, Notion fills that niche well.

Notion AI has also improved significantly. It can summarize long documents, generate content within your workspace, and answer questions about the information your team has stored. For queries about what your team has written, it is useful. The limitation is that it only knows what is in Notion, and the codebase is not in Notion.

Choose Glue when your challenge is not documentation but understanding. If your system has grown beyond what any document can capture, if documentation is perpetually outdated, if PMs need answers about the codebase that no wiki page provides, Glue fills the gap.

Glue is especially valuable when product teams need to make decisions informed by codebase reality: estimation, prioritization, spec writing, and roadmap planning. For the AI-assisted PM workflow, see our guide to the PM AI assistant for 2026.

Yes, and most teams should. Notion is your team's knowledge workspace: documents, processes, decisions, and collaboration. Glue is your team's codebase intelligence layer: system understanding, feature discovery, and technical context for product decisions.

The ideal workflow: use Glue to understand what a project involves and what the system looks like, then write the PRD in Notion with that context. The result is documentation that reflects reality, stored in a workspace the whole team can collaborate on.

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Can Notion replace a codebase intelligence tool?

No. Notion is a knowledge management and documentation platform. It contains whatever information your team manually enters and maintains. A codebase intelligence tool like Glue reads the actual code and provides understanding that does not depend on anyone writing it down. Notion cannot tell you what features exist in the codebase, what dependencies a project involves, or where technical debt is concentrated. These insights require analyzing code, not documents.

Is Glue a wiki or documentation tool?

No. Glue is an AI codebase intelligence platform that provides real-time understanding of your software system through natural language queries, feature catalogs, dependency maps, and technical debt analysis. It does not store documents or serve as a wiki. It analyzes your codebase and answers questions about it on demand. Think of Notion as where you store what you know. Think of Glue as how you learn what you did not know.

How do product managers get technical context for specs?

Traditionally, PMs get technical context by asking engineers in Slack, meetings, or ad-hoc conversations. This is slow, dependent on individual availability, and produces context that is not captured for future use. AI codebase intelligence tools like Glue provide technical context on demand: which modules a feature touches, what dependencies exist, where complexity lives. This context flows directly into specs, making them more accurate and reducing rework during implementation.