This article develops a particle swarm optimization algorithm based on a feed-forward neural network architecture to fit software reliability growth models. We employ adaptive inertia weight within the proposed particle swarm optimization in consideration of learning algorithm. The dynamic adaptive nature of proposed prior best particle swarm optimization prevents the algorithm from becoming trapped in local optima. These neuro-prior best particle swarm optimization algorithms were applied to a popular flexible logistic growth curve as the [Formula: see text] model based on the weights derived by the artificial neural network learning algorithm. We propose the prior best particle swarm optimization algorithm to train the network for application to three different software failure data sets. The new search strategy improves the rate of convergence because it retains information on the prior particle, thereby enabling better predictions. The results are verified through testing approaching of constant, modified, and linear inertia weight. We assess the fitness of each particle according to the normalized root mean squared error which updates the best particle and velocity to accelerate convergence to an optimal solution. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed [Formula: see text] model based prior best Particle Swarm Optimization based on Neural Network (pPSONN) improves predictive quality over the [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], and existing model.