If you manage Atlassian products for an organization of any size, there's a good chance you're paying for users who haven't logged in for months — maybe longer. It's one of those invisible costs that compounds quietly until someone in finance asks why the Atlassian bill keeps climbing.
This guide walks through why inactive users are a real and growing cost problem, what Atlassian's billing changes mean for your organization, and practical steps to get your license spend under control.
The Inactive User Problem Is Bigger Than You Think
When someone joins a company, they get provisioned on Jira and Confluence. When they leave — or move to a role that no longer needs access — what usually happens? Nothing. The account stays active. The license keeps getting billed.
Data across Atlassian Cloud customers consistently shows that 10–30% of licensed users are inactive at any given time. For a company running 100 Jira and Confluence users at Atlassian's Standard tier pricing (roughly $8.15/user/month for Jira, $5.75/user/month for Confluence), that's a significant amount of wasted spend:
- Conservative estimate (10% inactive, 100 users): ~$1,600/year wasted
- Realistic estimate (20% inactive, 100 users): ~$2,200–$3,200/year wasted
- Enterprise scale (20% inactive, 500 users): $11,000–$16,000/year wasted
The issue isn't just cost. Inactive accounts are a security liability. Dormant accounts that retain access to sensitive Jira projects or Confluence spaces are a compliance risk — especially for organizations subject to SOC 2, ISO 27001, or GDPR requirements.
What MQB Billing Means for You
In July 2025, Atlassian rolled out Maximum Quantity Billing (MQB) for monthly Cloud subscriptions. Under the old model, your monthly bill was calculated based on the number of users at the end of each billing cycle. Under MQB, Atlassian bills based on the highest seat count at any point during the month.
What this means in practice: if you added 10 users on the 2nd of the month and removed them on the 28th, you still pay for those 10 seats for the entire month. There are no mid-month credits when users are removed.
This changes the calculus significantly. Previously, admins could be a little reactive — clean up users when it was convenient. Now, every seat that sits active unnecessarily costs money for the full billing period it touches.
The MQB change applies to Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Jira Product Discovery, Compass, and Guard. Annual subscriptions are currently unaffected.
Why Manual Cleanup Doesn't Scale
The obvious response is: "We'll just do a quarterly cleanup." And many teams try. But manual user audits have real costs:
- Time investment: For 200+ users across Jira and Confluence, manually cross-referencing last login data, checking with managers, and deactivating accounts can consume 4–8 hours per audit cycle.
- Inconsistency: Different admins apply different standards. Users get missed.
- No enforcement: Between audit cycles — often 3–6 months apart — inactive accounts accumulate again.
- Separate products: Jira and Confluence are billed separately with separate user groups. An account inactive in one may still be active in the other, creating partial waste that's easy to miss.
Manual processes are better than nothing. But they're not reliable enough for most growing teams.
The Automation Approach
The more sustainable approach is automation — setting rules that continuously monitor user activity and deactivate accounts that fall below your defined threshold, without requiring admin intervention.
The core logic is straightforward: if a user hasn't logged into Jira or Confluence within your defined inactivity window (typically 30, 60, or 90 days), the system automatically removes them from the relevant product groups or deactivates their account.
When evaluating automation tools on the Atlassian Marketplace, there are a few things worth looking for:
- Coverage of both Jira AND Confluence in one install. Many tools handle one or the other. Managing them separately doubles your configuration work and creates gaps.
- Forge-native architecture. Forge apps run entirely within Atlassian's infrastructure. Your user data never leaves Atlassian's environment — important for data sovereignty and enterprise compliance.
- SCIM compatibility. If your organization uses an IdP like Okta, Azure AD, or OneLogin with SCIM provisioning, your automation tool needs to work alongside that setup without conflicts.
- Audit logging. Any changes to user access should be logged for compliance and review purposes.
- Unmanaged account support. Atlassian has two types of accounts — managed (under your organization's domain) and unmanaged (personal emails). Good tools handle both.
User Management Automation – For Jira & Confluence by UserSentry covers all of the above. It's one of only three apps on the Marketplace that handles both Jira and Confluence in a single install, runs natively on Forge, and is free for teams up to 10 users. Worth evaluating alongside the other options available.
Step-by-Step: Start Reducing Costs Today
Whether you automate or go manual, here's a practical framework:
Step 1: Audit your current user base
Export your Atlassian admin user list and filter by last login date. Anything beyond 60–90 days of inactivity is a candidate for review.
Step 2: Segment by product
Check Jira and Confluence separately. A user might be active in one and inactive in the other — partial license reclamation is still reclamation.
Step 3: Define an inactivity policy
Decide what threshold triggers deactivation — 30 days? 60 days? 90 days? Document it and get sign-off from IT leadership. Consistency matters more than the exact number.
Step 4: Notify before deactivating
A simple automated warning ("Your Jira access will be revoked in 7 days due to inactivity") reduces false positives and help desk tickets.
Step 5: Consider automation for ongoing enforcement
A one-time audit gets you clean. Automation keeps you clean. With MQB now in effect, the ROI on automation tools is better than ever.
Step 6: Review your subscription tier
Once you've removed inactive users, you may drop into a lower pricing tier. Atlassian uses tiered pricing (e.g., 1–10, 11–25, 26–50, 51–100 users), so removing enough users can trigger meaningful per-user cost reductions.
Key Takeaways
- 10–30% of Atlassian licensed users are typically inactive — that's real money.
- MQB billing (live since July 2025) makes reactive cleanup more expensive than ever.
- Jira and Confluence are billed separately — check both.
- Manual audits work short-term. Automation works long-term.
- Removing inactive users can drop you into a lower Atlassian pricing tier.
- 30 minutes of user activity analysis this week will likely surprise you.
If you're ready to automate your user cleanup, try User Management Automation free on the Atlassian Marketplace.