Native GitHub issue tracker
GitHub Issues is GitHub's built-in, free issue tracker, tightly coupled with the same repo your code lives in.
Since Issues live in the same product as your code, closing a PR with 'Fixes #123' in the description auto-closes the issue. Genuinely seamless for smaller teams that don't need Jira's heavier workflow features.
GitHub Issues has no concept of Jira-style workflows, custom statuses, or cross-project reporting that larger teams often need. If your org has already standardized on Jira for planning, GitHub Issues isn't really a substitute, and there's still no branch-naming or standup automation built in either way.
This is really the whole reason Jitly exists — it's not trying to replace GitHub Issues at what GitHub Issues is good at. Jitly's job is narrower and more specific: jitly start ABC-123 creates your branch and moves the Jira ticket to In Progress in one shot, jitly done commits, pushes, and updates the status to whatever your team's workflow has, fetched live so it never gets out of sync with how your Jira is actually configured.
Mainly small teams or open source projects that don't need Jira's heavier planning features at all. If that's not you, this comparison probably isn't that relevant to your day — GitHub Issues and Jitly solve different problems most of the time.