The Problem

On March 30, 2026, Atlassian deprecated the Jira Cloud Backup Manager
API — the only way to automate project backups on Standard plan. Their
replacement? A paid add-on, Premium/Enterprise only.

That doesn’t work if you need to:

• Migrate a single project to a new Jira instance
• Archive a project before deleting it
• Restore after accidental bulk changes
• Have automated backups without upgrading your plan

So I built a free tool.

Who this is for

• Jira Cloud Standard plan users
• Teams migrating a single project to a new Jira instance
• Admins who want automated backups without upgrading their plan

What It Does

jira-project-backup-restore backs up and restores individual Jira
Cloud projects using the standard REST API v3.

Backup captures:

• All issues with full field data and changelog history
• Comments, worklogs, attachments (binary files streamed to disk)
• Agile boards, sprints, components, versions, project roles

Restore features:

• 5-phase restore: epics → regular issues → subtasks → links →
  comments → worklogs → attachments
• Resumable: re-run after interruption, already-processed items skipped
• Dry-run mode: preview all actions without touching the API
• Cross-instance: backup from one org, restore into another
• –skip-existing: skip projects that already have a complete backup
• Auto-cleanup: incomplete partial folders removed before each run

Install

pip install jira-project-backup-restore

Quick usage

Backup

python main.py –backup PROJ

Backup multiple, skip already completed

python main.py –backup PROJ1,PROJ2 –skip-existing

Restore with dry-run first

python main.py –restore backups/PROJ_20260322_143000 –target NEWPROJ –dry-run

Then for real

python main.py –restore backups/PROJ_20260322_143000 –target NEWPROJ

Known Limitations (API constraints, not tool ones)

GitHub

https://github.com/davidmalko87/jira-project-backup-restore

PRs and feedback welcome