Jira vs Linear
Jira or Linear? Here is how they compare on price, free plan, platforms and the jobs each does best, from each vendor's own pages.
| Compared on | Visit | Visit |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Atlassian's project and issue tracker with Rovo AI agents on paid plans and a free plan for 10 users | Issue tracking and product planning for software teams, with a built-in agent that can write code |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Cheapest paid plan | $9.70/user/mo (Standard)Jira pricing | $10/user/mo billed annually (Basic)Linear pricing |
| What it covers | $9.70 per user a month on monthly billing for users 1 to 100; lower graduated rates above 100 users (the page shows an average of $8.48 at its default of 300 users). Annual billing is priced by user tier instead, for example $2,450 a year for 16 to 25 users. Includes 25 Rovo credits and 400 automation steps per user a month, 250 GB storage. | $10 per user a month billed yearly; 5 teams, unlimited issues and file uploads, admin roles, Loops. Billed for unsuspended users. Coding sessions and Loops use prepaid AI credits on top. |
| Free trial | 7-day free trial of Standard or Premium; no payment information required | None stated |
| Platforms | Web, iOS, Android, CLI, API | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, API |
| Integrations (vendor's figure) | 3,000+ integrations in the Atlassian Marketplace | Not stated |
| Open source | No | No |
| Made by | Atlassian | Linear Orbit, Inc. |
Choose Jira if…
- Price matters: its cheapest paid plan is $9.70/user/mo against $10/user/mo.
- The job is software teams planning sprints and tracking work items.
- The job is organisations already using Confluence and other Atlassian products.
Choose Linear if…
- You want a desktop app (macOS, Windows).
- The job is software product teams planning cycles and roadmaps.
- The job is engineering teams that assign issues to coding agents.
Still weighing it up?
If neither is quite right, Jira and Linear are also compared with their other rivals: Trello vs Jira, Asana vs monday.com and Trello vs Asana.
What Jira does
- Backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar and summary views with customisable workflows and custom fields
- No-code automation rules with hundreds of templates; monthly steps from 150 per subscription (Free) to 1,000 per user (Enterprise)
- Rovo Search, Chat and Agents on every paid plan, including agents that run as a step in automation rules
- Rovo MCP server and Teamwork Graph CLI for connecting outside AI tools and coding agents
- Advanced planning (Plans) with cross-project dependencies and capacity management on Premium
- Forms for request intake and approvals
Watch out for
- Free plan: 10 users, 2 GB storage, 150 automation steps a month for the whole subscription and no Rovo AI
- Annual billing is sold in user tiers, and Enterprise is annual only and priced from 801 users
- Cross-project dependencies, approvals and the 99.9% uptime SLA need Premium
What Linear does
- Issues, projects, cycles and initiatives with triage, sub-teams and releases
- Linear Agent: turns Slack or Teams conversations into issues, drafts project updates and plans cycles
- Coding sessions in which Linear Agent writes code in a cloud sandbox and returns a reviewable diff
- Loops that run agent work on a schedule or when work matches criteria
- Triage Intelligence (Business) that suggests assignees, teams, labels and duplicates
- Linear Asks intake from Slack, email and web forms (Business)
Watch out for
- The free plan is capped at 250 issues and 2 teams
- The pricing page shows only yearly-billed prices, although the docs say monthly billing is available
- Coding sessions and Loops draw on a prepaid AI credit balance on top of seat fees
Questions
Is Jira or Linear cheaper?
On published entry prices, Jira is cheaper: $9.70/user/mo (Standard) for Jira against $10/user/mo billed annually (Basic) for Linear. What each plan includes differs, so compare the limits too.
Do Jira and Linear have free plans?
Both do. Jira: Up to 10 users, unlimited goals, projects, tasks and forms, backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar and summary views, 150 automation steps per subscription per month, 2 GB storage, 100 email notifications a day, community support. No Rovo AI. Linear: Unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues, 10MB file uploads; includes the agent platform, Linear Agent and MCP access.