Guides / Comparisons

Jira vs Linear: Which Issue Tracker Should Your Team Use?

Jira vs Linear compared: free plan limits, per-user prices as of October 2026, workflows, AI and integrations, and which kind of team should pick which.

Mythex Team · 2026-10-22 · 7 min read

Choose Linear if you're a software team of a few to a few hundred people who want a fast, opinionated tracker with tight GitHub links and little setup. Choose Jira if you need many teams with different workflows, custom fields and approvals, cross-team planning, or non-engineering teams working in the same system. As of October 2026 the prices are close: Linear Basic is $10 per user per month billed yearly, and Jira Standard is $9.70 per user per month for a 10-person team on monthly billing. Jira's free plan stops at 10 users; Linear's free plan stops at 250 issues.

Side-by-side

Sources, as of October 2026: Jira pricing and Linear pricing.

How we compared

We took plans, prices and limits from each vendor's own pricing page and documentation in October 2026. Jira's price per user changes with team size, so we quote the figure its calculator shows for 10 users on monthly billing; Atlassian says annual billing saves up to 17%. Linear lists yearly prices. We did not run a hands-on trial for this article or measure speed. Anything we couldn't confirm on the vendors' sites is left out.

The core difference: flexible vs opinionated

Jira is built to be configured. Workflows, fields, screens, permissions and automation can all be shaped to how a team or department works. That's why it's common in large companies, and why it's used outside engineering too, for marketing, operations or HR projects. The cost of that flexibility is setup time and, often, a Jira admin.

Linear makes more choices for you. Work is organised into teams, issues, cycles (time-boxed sprints), projects and initiatives. There are fewer settings to agree on, so a new team can be productive in an afternoon. The cost is that if your process doesn't fit Linear's model, there's less room to bend it.

A useful test: if your team argues about process a lot, Linear's defaults can end the argument. If your company has real reasons for different processes in different teams, such as regulated approvals or a support team with its own flow, Jira handles that better.

Pricing in detail

Jira

As of October 2026, Jira's pricing page lists:

• Free: $0 for up to 10 users, with unlimited projects and work items, backlog, board, timeline and calendar views, 2 GB of storage, 150 automation steps per month for the whole subscription, and 100 email notifications a day.
• Standard: $9.70 per user per month for 10 users on monthly billing ($8.48 at 300 users). Adds user roles and permissions, Rovo AI, 250 GB of storage, 400 automation steps per user per month and business-hours support.
• Premium: $19.60 per user per month for 10 users on monthly billing ($15.56 at 300 users). Adds cross-team planning and dependency management, approvals, unlimited storage, 750 automation steps per user per month, 24/7 support for critical issues and a 99.9% uptime SLA.
• Enterprise: billed annually through sales, with up to 150 sites, 1,000 automation steps per user per month and a 99.95% SLA.

Linear

As of October 2026, Linear's pricing page lists:

• Free: $0 with unlimited members, 2 teams and 250 issues, plus the Linear Agent and agent platform.
• Basic: $10 per user per month, billed yearly. 5 teams, unlimited issues, unlimited file uploads, admin roles.
• Business: $16 per user per month, billed yearly. Unlimited teams, private teams and guests, Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Linear Insights, Linear Asks (requests from Slack and email), and Zendesk and Intercom integrations.
• Enterprise: custom, annual billing only, with SAML and SCIM, granular admin controls, audit log and an uptime SLA.

Some Linear AI features, such as coding sessions, need AI credits on top of the plan.

What it costs a 10-person team

Using the figures above, a 10-person team pays about $97 a month on Jira Standard (monthly billing) and $100 a month on Linear Basic (billed yearly). At the next tier, Jira Premium is about $196 a month and Linear Business $160. For tiny teams, Jira Free (10 users, no issue cap) goes further than Linear Free (250 issues).

Working with code

Both connect to GitHub and other code hosts. Linear's GitHub integration links pull requests and commits to issues through branch names or "magic words", moves issue status automatically as PRs open and merge, can sync GitHub Issues one or two ways, and lets you review diffs inside Linear. This is one of Linear's strongest points.

Jira connects to code tools through its apps and integrations, including Atlassian's own Bitbucket and the Atlassian Marketplace. It does the job, but it usually takes more setup.

Planning across teams

This is where Jira pulls ahead. Jira Premium adds Plans (advanced planning), cross-project dependency management, capacity management and scenario modelling. If you have five teams shipping one release and need to see who is blocking whom, Jira is built for it.

Linear has projects, initiatives and sub-initiatives for roadmaps, and Insights and dashboards on Business. That covers most product teams, but it's lighter than Jira Premium for portfolio-level planning.

AI features

• Jira: Atlassian Rovo (search, chat and agents) is included from Standard, with 25 Rovo credits per user per month on Standard, 70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise. Jira also offers a Rovo MCP server and third-party agents.
• Linear: the Linear Agent and MCP access are listed on every plan. Triage Intelligence (suggesting labels, assignees and duplicates) and Code Intelligence are on Business. Coding sessions require AI credits.

Who should pick which

Switching between them

Linear has a built-in Jira importer, along with importers for GitHub Issues, Asana and Shortcut. Only workspace admins can start an import, and fields that don't translate may be dropped, so run a test import into a spare team first. Going from Linear back to Jira is possible through Linear's export, but plan for some cleanup.

Before you switch, write down the three or four workflows your team actually uses. Most Jira setups grow statuses and fields nobody uses; a move is a good moment to drop them.

When neither fits

Sometimes the problem isn't the tracker, it's that the work isn't software at all. A cleaning company tracking jobs, an agency tracking client requests, or a school tracking repairs often ends up with a heavy tool it only half uses. For those cases, simpler tools like those in our Trello vs Asana and Asana vs monday comparisons may fit better, and our Jira alternatives guide covers more options.

If you want a tracker shaped exactly to your process, with your own statuses, a client view and your own fields, you can also build one. With Mythex you describe it in chat, see it in a live preview, and publish it to a URL, with a database and login added when the app needs them; Free gives 5 credits a day and Pro starts at $25 a month. Our guide on how to build a project management tool walks through it. For a software team, though, Jira or Linear will beat a home-built tracker: they've solved permissions, integrations and history in ways a weekend build won't.

Verdict

Linear is the better pick for most software teams that want speed, sensible defaults and tight GitHub links, and its Business plan is cheaper than Jira Premium. Jira is the better pick when you need configurable workflows, many teams, cross-team planning or non-engineering departments in the same tool, and its free plan is more useful for teams of up to 10. Trial both with a real sprint's worth of work: how your team feels after two weeks is the best signal you'll get. For writing better tickets in either tool, see how to write a good bug report.