Linear
Linear Project Management Review and Pricing: Cycles and Team Costs
Linear project management organizes software work through issues, projects, cycles and initiatives. Its GitHub integration can connect implementation activity to that planning record and update issue status from pull-request or commit events, reducing the need to repeat a code update manually in the tracker.
It suits a team evaluating a dedicated engineering planning system while keeping development in GitHub. Explore a representative issue and cycle first; the important question is whether Linear's workflow fits how your team makes and tracks commitments.
Plan recurring cycles and see progress
Assign issues an owner and priority, group them in a project and select the cycle that should contain the work. Linear generates repeating cycles automatically; unfinished assigned work generally rolls into the next cycle. This gives the team a recurring planning routine without treating each cycle as a release.
The cycle graph separates total scope, started work and completed work, using configured estimate points or issue counts. A lead can see whether the planned workload is growing and whether started items are reaching completion. Linear’s cycle guidance and cycle graph explain that routine; a completed planning period does not itself mean the software shipped.
Turn code events into useful planning updates
GitHub pull requests can link through branch names, titles or supported keywords, while commits link through their messages. Status automation responds to development activity and can use branch-specific rules. That lets a team decide which events indicate progress on an issue.
Keep those rules aligned with your definition of completion. A merged pull request may be ready for testing rather than released. Linear also documents one-way or two-way GitHub issue synchronization; that is a separate capability from attaching a pull request, and historical import is another separate operation.
Linear pricing: Free, Basic and Business team costs
Linear pricing lists Free with unlimited members, two teams and 250 issues. All Free users are administrators. This can support an initial evaluation, but unlimited membership does not mean unlimited work capacity or restricted collaborator access.
Basic costs USD $10 per user/month billed annually and allows five teams with unlimited issues and uploads. Business costs USD $16 per user/month billed annually and adds unlimited teams, private teams, guests and Insights. Enterprise is quoted and adds SAML/SCIM plus migration and onboarding support. Check the provider for up-to-date monthly pricing and any AI features you want to include.
For twelve people, Basic is USD $120 per month equivalent, billed $1,440 annually; Business is $192 per month equivalent, billed $2,304 annually. Adding two contractors as Business guests makes fourteen paid seats: $224 per month equivalent or $2,688 annually, before tax and add-ons.
Guests require Business or Enterprise and are billed as regular members. They can access specified teams, with restrictions on workspace-wide features; a project spanning teams can expose its shell while restricting the underlying issues. Inspect workspace integration access separately rather than assuming it follows every guest boundary.
Adoption, support and an optional migration
If you are switching, Linear has import assistants for Jira, GitHub Issues, Asana, Shortcut and Linear. They provide a starting path, not a guarantee that every field, identity or historical state transfers. Compare a sample containing the awkward cases before scheduling a full move, and decide which tool will own ongoing issue updates if sync remains enabled.
Enterprise onboarding assistance can help with a larger move. Ask for the response commitments your team needs on the intended plan. If running the tracker yourself is mandatory, compare the actual deployments in our self-hosted guide.
Linear alternatives: Jira or Shortcut?
Choose Jira when you want to rank a backlog, estimate sprint work and review completion and scope changes, with company-managed shared schemes when several teams need a common process. Premium Plans adds cross-team dependencies, capacity and scenarios. Linear is the stronger starting point when issues, projects and cycles with GitHub event updates match the way your team wants to plan. Shortcut organizes Stories, Epics and Iterations and has a ten-user Free option with one workflow. Compare their practical boundaries in the software-team guide.
For Linear, model a cycle and test a code-event rule and the intended collaborator access. If switching, include an imported record. Those checks expose the value of its GitHub connection and the real access cost before the team commits.