Linear is live · free plan, paid from $10/user/mo billed annually · last verified 8 Nov 2026 · viability healthy
Linear
Linear is the product development system where human teams and AI agents plan, code and ship together
Linear now connects triage, an agent that writes and tests code, stacked-PR review and mobile diffs in one product, and few rivals cover that span. Pick Business at $16 per user/month billed yearly if you want Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Linear Asks and Insights; Basic at $10 stops short of the intelligence layer. Skip it if your work needs heavy custom fields outside software delivery.
Verdict generatedVerified 5d ago · liveness 83/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/linear
- Engineering teams putting AI agents on triage, coding sessions and pull request review
- Product teams that want opinionated planning with roadmaps, Pulse and Insights
- Organizations already running Cursor or other agents and wanting them wired into the issue tracker
- Support-driven teams funneling Zendesk and Intercom tickets into a routed backlog
- Marketing, HR or ops teams needing heavy custom fields and bespoke workflows
- Teams that want a plain task tracker and won't use agents
- Companies needing SAML, SCIM, IP restrictions or HIPAA without an annual Enterprise commitment
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Skip Linear if you need a field-heavy tracker that adapts to marketing, HR or ops workflows, or if you cannot budget AI credits on top of per-seat pricing for coding sessions and Loops.
Coding sessions and Loops are marked "Requires AI credits" on the pricing page, so agent usage is a separate line item from your per-seat plan.
Free covers unlimited members with 2 teams and 250 issues — enough to trial agent workflows but not to run a company. Basic at $10 per user/month billed yearly adds unlimited issues and 5 teams. Business at $16 per user/month billed yearly unlocks Loops, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence and Zendesk/Intercom. Enterprise is custom and annual-only for SAML, SCIM and HIPAA. A 30-person engineering org lands near $480/month on Business before AI credits.
In short
Linear — Linear is the product development system where human teams and AI agents plan, code and ship together. Best for Engineering teams putting AI agents on triage, coding sessions and pull request review, Product teams that want opinionated planning with roadmaps, Pulse and Insights, Organizations already running Cursor or other agents and wanting them wired into the issue tracker. Free to start; paid plans from $10/user/mo billed annually.
What is Linear?
Linear — Linear is the product development system where human teams and AI agents plan, code and ship together. Best for Engineering teams putting AI agents on triage, coding sessions and pull request review, Product teams that want opinionated planning with roadmaps, Pulse and Insights, Organizations already running Cursor or other agents and wanting them wired into the issue tracker. Free to start; paid plans from $10/user/mo billed annually.
Linear is an opinionated product development system for software teams that keep planning and execution in one workspace. Issues, projects, cycles, initiatives, documents and roadmaps sit alongside the agents that help you work them. The pitch is simple: one place where humans and agents share the same context, rather than an issue tracker bolted onto a separate coding tool. Intake runs on rails. Linear Asks turns Slack messages and email into tracked issues, Triage Intelligence labels and routes them before an engineer opens anything, and Pulse surfaces the customer feedback driving the backlog. Integrations with Slack, GitHub, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce and Figma keep the surrounding conversation inside the same record. Execution is where the newer work lives. The Linear Agent runs an issue end to end: research, write and test code in a secure cloud environment, then open a pull request. Linear Diffs groups stacked pull requests with review, CI and merge status next to issue context, PR Guides summarize what changed, and Guided Reviews walk a reviewer through it step by step. Since November 2026 Diffs runs on iOS and Android, so you can approve a change or send a fix back to an agent from your phone. Loops push automation past engineering: they react to initiative, project and cycle changes, edit documents, post to Slack, and since October 2026 fire from Slack events and GitHub activity, with template sharing and custom reasoning levels. Admin controls break AI credit spend down by team, feature, user or loop and cap it. Compared to Jira plus a stand-alone review tool, Linear trades configurability for speed and a coherent agent story.
Key features
- Linear Agent takes issues end to end, from research to pull request
- Coding sessions write and test code in a secure cloud environment before opening a PR
- Diffs group stacked pull requests with review, CI and merge status
- Mobile Diffs for approving changes and sending fixes to agents on iOS and Android
- PR Guides summarize the changes that matter in a pull request
- Guided reviews walk reviewers through a pull request step by step
- Triage Intelligence auto-labels and routes incoming issues
- Code Intelligence answers questions from your codebase
- Loops automate scheduled and event-driven workflows with configurable reasoning levels
- Loops triggered by Slack events and GitHub activity, shareable as templates
- Linear Asks turns Slack and email requests into tracked issues
- MCP access for external agents including Cursor and Figma
- AI credit usage explorer with workspace, user and loop spend limits
- Mobile app for iOS and Android with issue and diff review
- API and webhook access on every plan including Free
Behind the verdict
Where Linear earns its seat is the closed loop: a Slack message becomes an issue, Triage Intelligence routes it, an agent picks it up and opens a PR, and you review the diff without leaving the app. We'd reach for it when the friction you're trying to remove is handoffs between tracker, repo and review queue. Scout24 moved 1,100 people onto it to rebuild shipping around agents, which is the kind of bet this product rewards. The catch is temperament. Linear is opinionated, and the opinion is software product development. Teams that need bespoke fields and workflow trees for marketing, HR or ops campaigns will fight it and lose. If you want a plain task tracker and will never assign an issue to an agent, you're paying for a story you won't use. The closest alternative is Jira, and the trade is explicit: you give up deep configurability and get speed, cleaner planning surfaces and a genuinely agent-native review flow. Money is the second decision. Basic at $10 per user/month billed yearly covers the tracker, Loops and Guided Reviews. Business at $16 adds Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Linear Asks and Insights, plus Zendesk and Intercom intake. Cloud coding agent and Loops consume AI credits on top of seats, so budget for usage, not just headcount. A few practical caveats. Free gives you unlimited members but only 2 teams and 250 issues, fine for a trial and not for a department. SAML, SCIM, IP restrictions and HIPAA all sit behind Enterprise on annual billing, so regulated teams should plan the sales cycle early rather than discover it at procurement. Mobile Diffs arriving in November 2026 helps reviewers who are away from a desk, though serious code reading still wants a full editor.
Models under the hood
as of 2026-11-08
Limitations
- Linear is a product development system for engineering teams, so it fits software workflows far better than other functions.
- The Free tier is capped at 2 teams and 250 issues (and 10MB file uploads), while Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Linear Insights and Linear Asks require Business at $16 per user/month billed yearly.
- AI and agent workflows (Linear Agent, Coding sessions, Loops, the agent platform) are gated by AI credits/agent spend on top of seat pricing.
- SAML and SCIM, granular admin controls and other advanced enterprise features require a custom annual Enterprise contract.
as of 2026-10-20
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Is Linear still active?
Linear is live · free plan, paid from $10/user/mo billed annually · last verified 8 Nov 2026 · viability healthy.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Linear? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: November 2026
How we score →What's new in Linear
Checked 8 days agoAcross the latest 10 updates: 4 feature updates, 1 launch and 5 news mentions.
Introducing Mobile Diffs
Linear's Diffs code review is now on iOS and Android — approve a change, answer a thread, or send a fix back to an agent from mobile.
Diffs, Linear's code review experience, now available on iOS and Android
Mobile Diffs launched for iOS and Android: Guided Reviews, inbox review queue, preview links, review and cloud coding agents, and merging approved changes from the phone.
Inside Scout24's rebuild around agents
Customer story: Germany's Scout24 moved 1,100 people onto Linear to rebuild how the company ships software with agents.
Slack and GitHub loop triggers
Loops can now be triggered from Slack and GitHub, shared as templates, and given custom reasoning levels.
Five principles for working with Loops
Linear published five principles for turning recurring tasks into shared, reliable workflows with Loops.
Stacked pull requests in Linear Diffs
Stacked PRs are now displayed in Linear Diffs, with review, CI, and merge status at a glance and related PRs grouped in a collapsible row in Reviews.
New controls for Linear coding agent
Coding sessions let you assign a task to Linear Agent, which works in a secure cloud environment to write and test code before opening a pull request.
AI coding has made CI a bottleneck, so we reworked ours to keep up
Linear describes rethinking CI as a system to cut PR wait time and running costs, from infrastructure to work scheduling and test parallelization.
The coding agent behind 75% of Ramp's merged PRs
Customer story: Ramp built an internal coding agent that now accounts for three of every four PRs the company merges.
Sharing Linear's growth with the people building it
Linear passed $100 million in ARR and is giving its team another opportunity to participate in the upside.
What do users say about Linear?
What people actually say about Linear — is it worth it?
Our community sentiment research written Aug 5, 2026 is more than 90 days old, so it is being re-reviewed against current data and is not shown.
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Linear — pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 8 Nov 2026. Analysis is drafted with AI models and checked against our editorial standards before publishing; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Linear 22 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed pricing tiers, our verdict, who it suits, who should skip it, summary, features, description, pricing page, limitations
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed integrations, features, pricing tiers, who should skip it, description, our verdict, summary
- — changed pricing page
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed who it suits, our verdict, summary, pricing tiers, description, features, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 22 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Linear cost in 2026?
Linear: Free to start; paid plans from $10/user/mo billed annually. Pricing last verified 8 Nov 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Linear tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | A single team or solo builder trying Linear's agent workflow before committing budgetAdds: Starting tier: unlimited members but only 2 teams, 250 issues and 10MB file uploads |
| Basic | $10/user/mo billed annuallyVendor: “$10 per user/month billed yearly” | monthly, billed annually, per seat | A small engineering org that has outgrown 250 issues and needs admin roles and Google SSOAdds: Adds 5 teams, unlimited issues, unlimited uploads, admin roles, Guided Reviews and Loops |
| Business | $16/user/mo billed annuallyVendor: “$16 per user/month billed yearly” | monthly, billed annually, per seat | Product and engineering teams that want agents doing triage and codebase research, with support intakeAdds: Adds unlimited teams, private teams and guests, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Insights and Linear Asks |
| Enterprise | Custom | quote | Companies with security review requirements — SAML, SCIM, IP restrictions or HIPAA — that can commit to an annual contractAdds: Adds SAML and SCIM, granular admin controls, advanced org modeling, invoice/PO billing and priority support |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Linear's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Free covers unlimited members with 2 teams and 250 issues — enough to trial agent workflows but not to run a company. Basic at $10 per user/month billed yearly adds unlimited issues and 5 teams. Business at $16 per user/month billed yearly unlocks Loops, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence and Zendesk/Intercom. Enterprise is custom and annual-only for SAML, SCIM and HIPAA. A 30-person engineering org lands near $480/month on Business before AI credits.
Has Linear's pricing changed?
No plan price for Linear has moved since we began logging in Aug 2026; the pricing page is re-read on every verification pass.
Who should pick Linear?
Pick Linear if you are Engineering teams putting AI agents on triage, coding sessions and pull request review, Product teams that want opinionated planning with roadmaps, Pulse and Insights, Organizations already running Cursor or other agents and wanting them wired into the issue tracker, Support-driven teams funneling Zendesk and Intercom tickets into a routed backlog.
Look elsewhere if you are Marketing, HR or ops teams needing heavy custom fields and bespoke workflows, Teams that want a plain task tracker and won't use agents, Companies needing SAML, SCIM, IP restrictions or HIPAA without an annual Enterprise commitment, Buyers unwilling to budget AI credits on top of per-seat pricing for coding sessions and Loops.
Skip it if Skip Linear if you need a field-heavy tracker that adapts to marketing, HR or ops workflows, or if you cannot budget AI credits on top of per-seat pricing for coding sessions and Loops.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Linear actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
A Slack thread reports slow iOS startup. Someone types @Linear create issues and assign to me; Linear Asks files it, Triage Intelligence applies the Performance and iOS labels, and the issue lands in the right team's backlog.
Outcome: The issue exists with labels and an owner two minutes after the complaint, with no engineer opening the tracker.
She delegates a bug to Linear Agent, follows the diff as it updates in realtime during the coding session, and restarts on the default reasoning model if adaptive routing sent it to the faster model and the task turns out harder.
Outcome: She catches a wrong turn before the pull request is finished instead of reviewing a complete but flawed PR.
She maps initiatives to projects on a visual roadmap, has Loops post a Slack update when a cycle changes, and documents the plan in Linear documents the agent can edit.
Outcome: Cycle updates reach the team without her copy-pasting status, and Triage Intelligence keeps the inbound backlog sorted.
Use cases
- Turn a Slack thread about slow iOS startup into routed, labeled issues without an engineer filing them
- Assign a bug to Linear Agent so it writes and tests a fix before opening a pull request for review
- Route customer requests from Zendesk or Intercom into prioritized issues
- Plan a quarter with initiatives, projects, cycles and roadmaps on one timeline
- Review agent-generated diffs inside Linear and steer the agent before the PR is finished
- Track stacked pull requests with review, CI and merge status per stack
- Automate recurring PM chores with Loops that post updates to Slack when a cycle changes
- Cap and audit AI credit spend by team, feature, user or loop
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Linear — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
A single team can import issues and be filing work in under an hour — Linear Docs' Start Guide and Import Issues pages cover both. Wiring Slack, GitHub and the Linear Agent into your workflow is a day-one task for one admin. Budget a week before Business-tier features (Loops, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence) are running on real cycles, and longer if you are migrating a large Jira backlog.
Switching to or from Linear
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Jira: use Linear's importer per the Import Issues docs, mapping statuses to Linear workflows
- →From Linear: Linear-to-Linear imports let you choose which issue labels, project labels, initiative labels, templates and project statuses to copy
- →From Asana or Trello: import issues then rebuild cycles and projects manually, since planning structures do not transfer
- ↗To Jira: export issues via Linear's import and export feature, then rebuild cycles and roadmaps as Jira epics and sprints
- ↗To a general-purpose tracker: export to CSV first, because Linear's initiatives and cycles have no direct equivalent
Resources & guides
- Documentationlinear.app
Docs · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Documentationlinear.app
Start Guide · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Documentationlinear.app
Import Issues · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Documentationlinear.app
Projects · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Documentationlinear.app
Triage · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Documentationlinear.app
Teams · Linear
Full product docs from linear.app
- Resourcelinear.app
Developers · Linear
Helpful link from linear.app
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Linear”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Linear” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Linear.
What are the best Linear alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Linear we list are Jira, Asana and Trello AI. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jira | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Asana | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Trello AI | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
Alternatives to Linear
View all
Tools that pair well with Linear
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Linear, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Jira
Jira is agile project management software for planning sprints, tracking issues, and assigning work to AI coding agents.
Asana
Work management platform where 30+ prebuilt AI Teammates run projects alongside your team on a shared Work Graph.
Trello AI
Visual Kanban boards with Butler automation and an MCP server that links Trello to outside AI tools.
Linear vs its closest rival
Linear's closest head-to-head is with Polycam — These two products never meet in a buying decision, and treating them as rivals would mislead you. If your problem is documenting a physical site — rooms, buildings, props, a claims scene — Polycam is the tool, and its limits are real: survey-grade accuracy belongs to FARO/Leica-class hardware and stairs still need a tape. If your problem is running software development with AI agents in triage, coding and review, Linear is the tool, and its free tier caps at 250 issues and 2 teams. Buy for the problem, not the comparison. Verdict generated
Head-to-head comparisons
Linear vs Polycam
These two products never meet in a buying decision, and treating them as rivals would mislead you. If your problem is documenting a physical site — rooms, buildings, props, a claims scene — Polycam is the tool, and its limits are real: survey-grade accuracy belongs to FARO/Leica-class hardware and stairs still need a tape. If your problem is running software development with AI agents in triage, coding and review, Linear is the tool, and its free tier caps at 250 issues and 2 teams. Buy for the problem, not the comparison.
GeneratedLinear vs Weglot
These are not competitors — you should not be choosing between them. Linear replaces your Jira-style tracker with an agentic product development system for engineering teams; Weglot bolts multilingual AI translation and SEO onto your existing website. A software team buys Linear to plan and ship; a marketing or ecommerce team buys Weglot to sell in more languages. If your shortlist has both on it, the actual decision is two separate budgets, not one pick.
GeneratedLinear vs Nectar Energy
These are not alternatives — they don't compete for the same budget or solve the same problem. Nectar Energy is for facility and sustainability teams running commercial buildings on Honeywell, Siemens, or Johnson Controls systems who want automated HVAC/lighting control and streamlined GRESB/CDP reporting. Linear is for engineering teams that want AI agents embedded in issue triage, coding sessions, and code review. If you're a facility manager, Nectar Energy is your shortlist; if you're a software team, Linear is. Nobody is choosing between them.
GeneratedFrequently asked questions
Topics
For makers of Linear
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