Linear: pricing, pros and cons
Linear is fast and opinionated, and engineers actually keep it up to date — which is worth more than any feature list. It deliberately refuses most customisation.
- Price
- $8/seat/moestimate
- At 50 people
- $4,800/yr
- Free tier
- Yes
- Website
- linear.app
Specification
What Linear supports
The dimensions every project tracker in our catalogue is compared on.
- Planning methods
- Sprints, Kanban
- Git and CI integration
- First-class
- Portfolio reporting
- No
- No-code automation
- Yes
- Custom workflows
- No
- Usable by non-engineers
- No
- SAML single sign-on
- Yes
- SOC 2
- Yes
- EU data residency
- No
- Self-hostable
- No
- Open source
- No
- Public API
- Yes
- Native mobile apps
- Yes
The honest assessment
Linear: pros and cons
Deliberately opinionated — if you need bespoke workflows and approval gates, it will fight you.
What it does well
- Keyboard-first and genuinely fast, so engineers keep it up to date
- Cycles, triage and projects work well with no configuration
- GitHub, GitLab and Slack integrations are first-class
What it costs you
- Limited customisation frustrates teams with regulated or unusual processes
- Reporting is lighter than Jira’s, which matters to some leadership teams
- Less suited to non-engineering departments sharing the same instance
Fit
Who Linear suits
Choose it if
- Product and engineering teams under 200 who want less process, not more
- Teams whose current tracker is ignored because it is slow
Look elsewhere if
- Departments outside engineering sharing one instance
- Organisations with approval gates and bespoke workflows to model
Head to head
Linear compared
Direct comparisons against every other project tracker we cover.
4 alternatives
Other project trackers worth a look
Everything else we cover in project management, cheapest first.
Questions
Linear, answered
What is Linear best for?
Product and engineering teams under 200 who want less process, not more. Teams whose current tracker is ignored because it is slow. In short: fast, opinionated issue tracking for product and engineering teams that want less process.
What are the downsides of Linear?
Limited customisation frustrates teams with regulated or unusual processes. Reporting is lighter than Jira’s, which matters to some leadership teams. Less suited to non-engineering departments sharing the same instance. The trade-off in one line: Deliberately opinionated — if you need bespoke workflows and approval gates, it will fight you.
How much does Linear cost?
About $8/seat/mo on its common paid tier — roughly $4,800 a year for 50 people. There is a free tier. That figure is our unverified estimate; confirm it with the vendor before budgeting.
What are the best Linear alternatives?
In project management the credible alternatives are Asana, ClickUp, Jira, Monday.com. Which fits depends on your team size, budget and non-negotiables — our questionnaire ranks all of them against your answers in about three minutes.
Is Linear worth switching away from?
Only if one of its real drawbacks is costing you something concrete. Deliberately opinionated — if you need bespoke workflows and approval gates, it will fight you. If none of the downsides above describe your situation, staying is almost always cheaper than moving — a migration costs weeks, and a tool that merely annoys you is not worth them.
Prices are unverified estimates — useful for comparing orders of magnitude, not for budgeting. Confirm the current figure with the vendor before you commit to anything.
Is Linear still the right call for your team?
Answer about a dozen questions and we will rank Linear against every alternative in project management — with the reasoning shown, and the cost of switching at your actual seat count.