All comparisons

Roundup

The best Linear alternatives for 2026

Nine tools worth evaluating when Linear stops fitting, ours included, ranked by the reason you are leaving: more structure, self-hosting, cross-functional work or cost.

How we picked

Linear set the standard for a fast, opinionated issue tracker, and for a product-led engineering team it is often the right answer. Its keyboard-first interface is best-in-class, and it runs an official MCP server, so coding agents can find, create and update issues. Most teams that look for an alternative are not unhappy with the speed. They hit one of four limits: they need more workflow structure or governance than Linear's opinions allow; they must host their own data, and Linear is offered only as a hosted service; engineering has to share one tool with the rest of the company; or they want to spend less.

The nine tools below are ranked by how well each answers those four reasons without giving up the speed that made Linear worth using. We weighted time to productivity, depth of integration with the code, fit for engineering first and the wider company second, and price predictability. Each pick says which of the four reasons it answers, because the right alternative depends more on why you are leaving than on any feature checklist. A fifth reason has arrived with coding agents: the tracker is fine, but the agent needs the acceptance criteria, designs and tests around each issue. Stride, our own product, answers that one; it is ranked by the same criteria as the rest, and its entry says where it falls short.

Six picks link to a one-on-one comparison with Stride. Plane and YouTrack do not have one yet, so their write-ups carry the detail here, with facts checked on each vendor's own site in October 2026.

One caution before you migrate: Linear's opinions are also its guard rails. Teams that leave for configurability sometimes rebuild the sprawl that sent them to Linear in the first place, so write down the three things Linear stops you from doing before you evaluate anything else.

At a glance

Disclosure: Stride is our product. We rank it by the same criteria as every other tool on this list, and its entry says where it falls short.

The best Linear alternatives for 2026: ranked picks with the best fit for each tool
RankToolBest for
1ShortcutThe closest in feel, with more structure: epics, objectives, iterations and roadmaps as first-class objects and a keyboard-driven interface. Answers: more structure.
2JiraMaximum configurability and governance: custom workflows, permission schemes, cross-team planning and the Atlassian Marketplace, with Rovo AI on every paid plan. Answers: more structure.
3PlaneThe open-source option closest to Linear's model: cycles, modules, triage intake and multiple layouts, free for up to 12 users and self-hostable. Answers: self-hosting and cost.
4GitHub ProjectsFree, and lives where the code lives: issues, pull requests and planning in one place. Answers: cost, for teams that only need issues and a board.
5YouTrackMore depth than Linear at a smaller bill: boards, Gantt charts, time tracking, 20 reports, a knowledge base and a helpdesk, free for up to 10 users. Answers: structure, self-hosting and cost.
6Stride(our product)Answers a fifth reason: the tracker is fine, but specs, designs, tests and decisions live in four other tools. Stride links them to the stories, and coding agents work from the whole record over MCP.
7AsanaThe pick when engineering shares a tool with marketing, ops and leadership: goals, portfolios and workload views across teams. Answers: cross-functional work.
8ClickUpOne workspace for tasks, sprints, docs, whiteboards, chat and goals, with a free plan for unlimited users. Answers: cross-functional work and consolidation, at the cost of complexity.
9Azure DevOpsBoards, repos, pipelines and test plans from one vendor, with a Server edition for your own infrastructure. Answers: governance and self-hosting on a Microsoft stack.

Quick answers

What are the best alternatives to Linear?

Shortcut if you want Linear's feel with more structure, Jira for governance and custom workflows, Plane or YouTrack to self-host or spend less, GitHub Projects if issues and a board are enough, Asana or ClickUp when engineering shares one tool with the company, and Azure DevOps on a Microsoft stack. Stride, our product, fits teams whose coding agents need the specs, designs and tests around each issue.

How much do Linear alternatives cost?

Most cost less per seat than Linear, which is $10 a user a month on Basic and $16 on Business, billed annually. GitHub Projects comes with every GitHub plan, Team included at $4. YouTrack is $4.50 a user for teams of 11 to 99, Plane's Pro plan $6 a seat and Shortcut's Team plan $8.50, all billed annually. Asana Starter, at $10.99, and Stride, our product, from $12, cost more.

What do AI-native startups use instead of Linear?

Often Linear itself: its official MCP server lets coding agents find, create and update issues. Startups switch when agents need more than the issue: the acceptance criteria, the designs and the tests that will judge the change. Shortcut, with an MCP server on every plan, adds structure with a similar feel. Stride, our own product, serves the whole story graph to Claude Code, Codex and Cursor over one MCP server and takes status and test results back.

What is the best Linear alternative that also handles email, chat and docs?

ClickUp is the closest fit: it brings tasks, docs, chat, whiteboards and dashboards into one app and lists Email in ClickUp among its features, so one tool can replace several. The cost is a very large configuration surface that needs an owner to stay coherent. Stride, our own product, keeps specs and decision records linked to the work, but it has no team chat and does not handle email.

Pricing, side by side

The best Linear alternatives for 2026: paid plans and how each tool charges for AI, checked 2026-11-01
ToolPaid plans (annual / monthly)How AI is priced
ShortcutTeam $8.50 / $10 · Business $12 / $16 · Enterprise on quoteAI agent collaboration and the MCP server come with every plan, Free included. Korey, Shortcut's AI agent, is a separate product priced per organisation, from $99 a month.
JiraStandard $9.70 · Premium $19.60 per user, billed monthly, for up to 100 users; annual plans are priced by user tier · Enterprise annual only, listed from 801 usersRovo comes with every paid plan: a monthly allowance of 25 credits per user on Standard, 70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise, pooled across the organisation. Search uses no credits; chat and agents do.
PlanePro $6 / $8 · Business $13 / $15 · Enterprise Grid on quoteIts pricing page lists 500 AI credits per seat a month on Pro and 1,000 on Business, with none on Free; AI agents draw on a separate workspace pool.
GitHub ProjectsIncluded in every GitHub plan: Free, Team $4 and Enterprise $21 per user a monthCopilot is billed separately: Business $19 and Enterprise $39 per user a month, each with a pooled allowance of GitHub AI credits at $0.01 a credit. Assigning an issue to Copilot’s cloud agent needs a paid Copilot plan.
YouTrackFree for up to 10 users; teams of 11 to 99 pay $4.50 / $5.40 per user, and the rate falls as the team growsAI Assistant credits are free on every Cloud plan, Free included, refilled weekly. JetBrains plans to limit free credits to paid Cloud plans in Q4 2026, with more through a JetBrains AI subscription.
Stride(our product)Starter $12 / $15 · Pro $32 / $39 · Enterprise from $69AI credits are included in every seat (200, 1,000 or 1,500 a month by plan), with top-ups; when they run out, AI pauses rather than billing overage. No free plan. 14-day free trial.
AsanaStarter $10.99 / $13.49 · Advanced $24.99 / $30.49 · Enterprise on quotePaid plans include 5 AI requests per user a month, up to 50 per account (250 on Enterprise), plus AI Studio credits; more requests cost $0.50 each prepaid or $0.60 pay-as-you-go.
ClickUpCore $9 / $12 · Business $17 / $25 · MAX $100 / $120 · Enterprise on quoteBrain² on Business and up, an extended trial on Core; pooled AI credits per user a month: 1,000 on Core, 1,500 on Business, 3,000 on Enterprise and 10,000 on MAX. Top-ups are $10 per 10,000 credits.
Azure DevOpsBasic: first 5 users free, then $6 per user a month · Basic + Test Plans $52 per user a monthCopilot code review is billed in GitHub AI credits at $0.01 a credit. Handing a work item to Copilot’s cloud agent needs a paid GitHub Copilot plan and a GitHub repository.

Per user or seat a month in US dollars, before tax, shown as billed annually / billed monthly where a vendor offers both. Read on each vendor's own pricing page on 2026-11-01. Free plans are left out; the FAQ lists them. AI credits are each vendor's own unit, so allowances do not compare across vendors.

The ranking

  1. 1

    Shortcut

    The closest in feel, with more structure: epics, objectives, iterations and roadmaps as first-class objects and a keyboard-driven interface. Answers: more structure.

    Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse) treats epics, objectives, iterations and roadmaps as first-class objects (Objectives replaced Milestones in October 2025), so teams that find Linear's model too thin for quarterly planning get the structure without inheriting Jira's configuration surface. The stories model is engineering-native (story types and branch linkage to GitHub and GitLab), its keyboard shortcuts approach Linear's polish, and its AI agent, Korey, and an MCP server work on the same stories. Best fit: engineering teams of 10 to 50 that need roadmap views and richer reporting than Linear offers. The trade-off: like Linear it is a tracker, so tests and architecture still live elsewhere.

    Shortcut's simplicity, plus architecture, QA, and AI.

    Stride vs Shortcut

  2. 2

    Jira

    Maximum configurability and governance: custom workflows, permission schemes, cross-team planning and the Atlassian Marketplace, with Rovo AI on every paid plan. Answers: more structure.

    Jira is where teams go when Linear's opinions become constraints: custom workflows and fields per project, granular permission schemes, cross-team planning and dependency management on Premium, and thousands of Marketplace apps. Every paid plan now includes Rovo, Atlassian's AI, with a monthly allowance of credits per user, and Atlassian runs its own MCP server for Jira, Confluence and its other apps. The Free plan covers 10 users, and paid plans are priced per user at a rate that falls as the team grows. The trade-off is the one Linear was built against: that configurability needs an owner, and without one it turns into sprawl.

    Replace Jira with AI that already knows your work.

    Stride vs Jira

  3. 3

    Plane

    The open-source option closest to Linear's model: cycles, modules, triage intake and multiple layouts, free for up to 12 users and self-hostable. Answers: self-hosting and cost.

    Plane's own repository describes it as an open-source alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday and ClickUp, and its model will feel familiar to Linear users: work items, cycles for timeboxed sprints, modules to group work, an intake queue for triage, estimates, and project pages for docs, with five layouts and unlimited views. It is licensed AGPL-3.0, runs in Plane's cloud or on your own infrastructure, and its free plan covers up to 12 users. Best fit: small teams that like Linear's model but must keep data on their own servers, or want to avoid per-seat costs. The trade-off: a younger product with a much smaller integration ecosystem.

    Open source (AGPL-3.0) · Cloud or self-hosted · Free plan for up to 12 users

  4. 4

    GitHub Projects

    Free, and lives where the code lives: issues, pull requests and planning in one place. Answers: cost, for teams that only need issues and a board.

    GitHub Projects adds tables, boards, roadmaps, custom fields, iterations and built-in automation on top of GitHub issues, so planning sits a click away from the pull requests that close the work. For a small engineering team whose process fits issues plus a board, it replaces Linear at no extra cost. What it lacks is a purpose-built planning layer: capacity arithmetic stays manual and there is no dedicated triage queue, so teams that grow into formal planning tend to outgrow it. Best fit: engineering teams under 30 people who already live in GitHub.

    Software delivery beyond what fits in a GitHub board.

    Stride vs GitHub Projects

  5. 5

    YouTrack

    More depth than Linear at a smaller bill: boards, Gantt charts, time tracking, 20 reports, a knowledge base and a helpdesk, free for up to 10 users. Answers: structure, self-hosting and cost.

    YouTrack puts in one product much of what Linear leaves to other tools: Scrum and Kanban boards, sprint planning with dependencies, time tracking, a Gantt chart, 20 configurable reports and dashboards, a knowledge base, and helpdesk projects that turn email or a web form into tickets. JetBrains AI helps with writing, summaries and turning text into issues. The cloud edition is free with every feature for up to 10 users, larger teams pay per user at a rate that falls with size, and a Server edition can be self-hosted. The trade-off: it is a denser, more configurable tool than Linear, so it asks more of whoever sets it up.

    By JetBrains · Free for up to 10 users · Cloud, or self-hosted with the Server edition

  6. 6

    Stride

    Our product

    Answers a fifth reason: the tracker is fine, but specs, designs, tests and decisions live in four other tools. Stride links them to the stories, and coding agents work from the whole record over MCP.

    Stride adds the artefacts that Linear leaves to other tools: acceptance criteria, designs, architecture decisions, test cases and defects are linked to each story, AI drafts them from the story's context, and Claude Code, Codex and Cursor read a story's full context and write status and test results back over MCP. It ranks below the first five because it answers none of the four common reasons as directly: it has no free plan, it runs hosted unless you buy an Enterprise private-cloud deployment, and it is built for engineering rather than the whole company. The trade-off against Linear itself: Linear's issue UX is best-in-class and its mobile app is more mature than Stride's progressive web app.

    Our product · Starter $15, Pro $39, Enterprise from $69 per seat a month · No free plan · 14-day free trial

    Stride vs Linear

  7. 7

    Asana

    The pick when engineering shares a tool with marketing, ops and leadership: goals, portfolios and workload views across teams. Answers: cross-functional work.

    Asana's portfolio-level features (goals, workload and portfolio reporting) and its rules engine coordinate work across departments in a way single-team trackers do not. For a company where engineering is one of several teams in the same tool, it trades Linear's engineering depth for one shared structure with common statuses and dependencies. The engineering experience is weaker than Linear's: pull-request status reaches tasks only through Asana's own GitHub app, and the workflow is less keyboard-driven. Best fit: organisations where cross-functional visibility matters more than engineering speed.

    AI writes the work, not just assigns it.

    Stride vs Asana

  8. 8

    ClickUp

    One workspace for tasks, sprints, docs, whiteboards, chat and goals, with a free plan for unlimited users. Answers: cross-functional work and consolidation, at the cost of complexity.

    ClickUp replaces Linear and the tools around it: engineering tasks and sprints, docs, whiteboards, chat and goals in one workspace, with ClickUp Brain², included from the Business plan, across all of it. Its free plan allows unlimited users with feature caps. The cost is the opposite of what Linear users are used to: a very large configuration surface that needs an owner to stay coherent. Best fit: companies that want one tool for every team and accept some engineering depth as the price.

    AI built for software, not a hundred surfaces.

    Stride vs ClickUp

  9. 9

    Azure DevOps

    Boards, repos, pipelines and test plans from one vendor, with a Server edition for your own infrastructure. Answers: governance and self-hosting on a Microsoft stack.

    Azure DevOps Boards sits in the same control plane as Repos, Pipelines, Test Plans and Artifacts, with work-item customisation (custom fields, workflows and states per type) far beyond Linear's. It also ships as Azure DevOps Server for teams that must run on their own infrastructure. Best fit: Microsoft 365 and Azure organisations and regulated environments that want planning, code and CI under one identity and audit trail. The trade-off: it is heavier than Linear in every interaction, and outside the Microsoft ecosystem its advantages shrink.

    AI-native delivery without the .NET legacy.

    Stride vs Azure DevOps

Honourable mentions

  • NotionProjects and docs in one database; good when the plan is the document, weaker as the main engineering tracker.
  • Monday.comMonday Dev brings software-team features to a company-wide work platform; strongest when every department already runs on Monday.com.
  • BasecampRadically simpler than Linear (to-dos, message boards and Hill Charts) for small teams that find even Linear too much process.
  • TaigaOpen-source (MPL 2.0) Scrum and Kanban boards, free to self-host; clean and opinionated, with no AI features.

Where Stride fits

Stride is our product, ranked below and labelled as ours. It answers a fifth reason for leaving Linear: you like a fast tracker, but requirements, designs, tests and decisions live in four other tools. In Stride those artefacts share one connected graph with the stories, so AI drafts acceptance criteria and test cases from real project context, and coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor read and update the same record over MCP. The honest trade-off: Linear's issue UX is best-in-class, its mobile app is more mature than Stride's progressive web app, and its third-party integration list is broader.

If your team codes with AI agents, see how Claude Code, Codex and Cursor work from a Stride backlog over MCP.

stride.page/plan/issues
The Plan board in Stride: the sample project’s active sprint in To Do, In Progress and In Review columns, each card with its points and assignee.
The Plan board, on the sample project.

When to choose Stride

  • Your specs, designs, test cases and decision records live in separate tools and drift from the tickets.
  • You want AI to draft acceptance criteria and tests from a story's real context, not a blank prompt.
  • Your engineers work with Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and you want the agent to read and update the backlog itself.
  • You want every test and decision linked back to the story that drove it.

When Stride isn't the fit

  • You only need issue tracking: Linear is the better tracker, and this roundup says so.
  • Your team works mostly from phones and needs a mature native mobile app.
  • You depend on a broad set of third-party integrations that a newer platform has not matched.

How Stride differs

CompetitorHow Stride differs
LinearLinear's AI and MCP server work on issues and projects, and its agent can now write code. Stride's work on the whole graph around the story: acceptance criteria, designs, tests and decisions.
JiraJira adds governance and configuration on top of issues. Stride adds connected artefacts (designs, tests and decisions) with a far smaller configuration surface.
PlanePlane is an open-source tracker you can host yourself for free. Stride is a commercial platform whose graph extends past the tracker into designs, tests and decisions.

FAQ

What is the best free alternative to Linear?
GitHub Projects is free with any GitHub plan. Plane's free plan covers up to 12 users and the software is open source, YouTrack is free for up to 10 users, and Jira's Free plan covers 10. Which is best depends on why you are leaving: GitHub Projects if you only need issues and a board, Plane if you want Linear's model on your own servers, YouTrack if you want more depth.
Is there an open-source alternative to Linear?
Yes. Plane is open source under AGPL-3.0 and describes itself as an alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday and ClickUp; it runs in Plane's cloud or on your own infrastructure. Taiga (MPL 2.0) and OpenProject are the other established open-source options, with Scrum and Kanban boards but a more traditional model.
Can I self-host Linear?
No. Linear is offered only as a hosted service. If self-hosting is a requirement, Plane, YouTrack (Server edition), OpenProject and Azure DevOps Server all run on your own infrastructure.
Linear vs Jira: which should I choose?
Linear for product-led teams that value speed and an opinionated workflow; Jira for organisations that need custom workflows, granular permissions, cross-team planning and the Atlassian Marketplace. Both now ship AI and an official MCP server for coding agents. The deciding question is whether your process should adapt to the tool (Linear) or the tool to your process (Jira).

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