Linear vs Jira: how to choose, and what both leave out

Short answer: Choose Linear if you're a software team that wants a fast tracker with good defaults and is happy to work the way Linear works. Choose Jira if you need deep configuration, many kinds of teams in one tool, and planning across teams. Both track the work well. Neither decides what to build from customer evidence, which is what Devplan does on top of either one.

A note before we start. We build Devplan, which works with both Linear and Jira, so we don't need you to pick one over the other. What follows is the comparison we'd want to read ourselves, and then the part both tools leave to you.

Linear vs Jira at a glance

Compared	Linear	Jira
Built for	Software teams that want speed and fixed, good defaults	Organisations with many teams and workflows to configure
Setup	Quick for a single team	More setup, more control
Workflows	Opinionated: cycles, projects, triage	Custom workflows, fields, permissions and approvals
Planning across teams	Projects grouped into initiatives	Plans (advanced planning) on Premium and Enterprise
Customer requests	Built in on all plans; Intercom, Zendesk and Front on Business	Through Jira Product Discovery, a separate product
AI	Linear Agent and an agent platform; Triage Intelligence on Business	Rovo Search, Chat and Agents on paid plans
Add-ons	Integrations such as GitHub, Slack, Zendesk and Intercom	More than 7,000 apps on the Atlassian Marketplace
Free plan	250 issues, 2 teams, unlimited members	Up to 10 users
Paid plans from	$10 per user a month, billed yearly	$7.91 per user a month, billed monthly

Sources for every row are listed at the end of the article. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026.

What both leave out: deciding what to build

Linear and Jira are both good at the same job: tracking work once someone has decided what it should be. The hard part comes before the ticket.

Someone has to read the sales calls, the support tickets and the Slack threads, work out which requests are really the same request, count how many customers asked and what's at stake, and write a spec an engineer or an AI coding agent can build from. In ProductPlan's State of Product Management 2026, only 34% of product professionals said they regularly use customer insights to guide prioritization, and 18.9% said they collect insights but struggle to turn them into decisions.

To be fair to Linear, it goes further here than Jira does. Its Customer Requests feature, available on every plan, lets you attach customer feedback to issues, and on the Business plan requests can come in from Intercom, Zendesk and Front. What it doesn't do is read your calls, tickets and Slack for you, group the same request across all of them, rank it by the customers and revenue behind it, and write the spec from that evidence and your code.

That is what Devplan does. It reads customer feedback from calls, tickets and Slack, suggests the project with the evidence counted, writes the PRD and tech spec grounded in your code, and creates the issues in Linear or the tickets in Jira. You can run it on top of either tool, or move one project at a time into Devplan until you don't need them. See Devplan vs Linear and Devplan vs Jira Product Discovery for the details.

Where Linear is stronger

• Speed to start. Even Atlassian's own comparison page says Linear is quick to set up for a single team.
• Good defaults. Linear comes with a way of working built in. Cycles are time-boxed periods of work, similar to sprints. Projects group issues around an outcome or a launch date. Initiatives group projects around company objectives.
• Triage. Issues created by integrations, or by people outside a team, land in that team's triage inbox instead of the backlog, so nothing slips in unreviewed.
• Customer requests built in. As above, on all plans.

The trade-off is that you work Linear's way. Teams that need unusual workflows, fields or approval steps find less room to configure.

Where Jira is stronger

• Configuration. Atlassian describes Jira as built for customizability, with custom fields, advanced workflows, permissions, approvals and a no-code automation engine. The Free plan includes 150 automation steps a month.
• Planning across teams. Jira's Plans feature tracks work across multiple teams and spaces, on the Premium and Enterprise plans.
• Breadth. The Atlassian Marketplace lists more than 7,000 apps, and Jira sits next to Confluence and the rest of Atlassian's tools.
• Many kinds of teams. Atlassian positions Jira for software, platform, operations and business teams as an organisation grows.

The trade-off is setup and upkeep. Someone has to own the configuration, and the more you customise, the more there is to maintain.

Pricing

Plan	Linear	Jira
Free	250 issues, 2 teams, unlimited members	Up to 10 users
First paid plan	Basic: $10 per user a month, billed yearly	Standard: $7.91 per user a month, billed monthly
Next plan	Business: $16 per user a month, billed yearly	Premium: $14.54 per user a month, billed monthly
Enterprise	Custom, billed annually	Contact sales

If you also need customer feedback and roadmaps in Atlassian, Jira Product Discovery is priced separately: free for 3 creators, then $10 per creator a month on Standard, with contributors free.

AI in Linear and Jira

Linear offers an agent platform for building and deploying AI agents that work alongside the team, plus Linear Agent. Some of these features use AI credits. Triage Intelligence, which suggests properties such as the assignee and flags likely duplicates, is on the Business and Enterprise plans.

Jira includes Atlassian's Rovo Search, Chat and Agents on every paid plan. The Free plan doesn't include Rovo.

Both are adding AI to tracking. Neither one turns raw customer feedback into a ranked project and a spec grounded in your code.

Switching from Jira to Linear

Linear supports a gradual move. Its Jira sync creates a copy of each new issue in the other tool, and updates to synced issues flow both ways, so a team can trial Linear while Jira stays up to date. You can also import existing Jira issues and projects. Each Jira space links to one Linear team, and connecting several Jira sites needs Linear's Enterprise plan.

The safest path is one team and one project first, then the next once it works. For a wider look at the options, see our guide to Jira alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Is Linear the new Jira?

For many software teams, yes: smaller teams that want speed often choose Linear. Jira is still the standard for organisations that need configuration and cross-team planning. They solve the same problem at different scales.

Is Jira becoming obsolete?

No. Jira Cloud continues, and Atlassian is investing in it, including Rovo. What Atlassian is retiring is self-hosting: Jira Data Center reaches end of life on March 28, 2029. Our Jira alternatives guide covers the dates.

What are Linear's main competitors?

Jira first, then Shortcut, GitHub Projects, ClickUp, Asana and monday dev, plus open-source options such as Plane.

Is Linear free?

Linear's Free plan covers 250 issues and 2 teams with unlimited members. Paid plans start at $10 per user a month, billed yearly.

Can you use Linear and Jira together?

Yes. Linear's two-way Jira sync is built for running both during a transition. Devplan also works with both: it can create issues in Linear and tickets in Jira from the same customer evidence.

---

About the author. Chris Bee is the co-founder and CEO of Devplan.

Linear or Jira, start with what customers asked for. Start free with $100 in credits, no credit card needed, or book a demo.

← All posts