Linear
Linear pricing, checked August 2026
A generous free tier with two hard caps, and paid rates published on yearly billing only.
What it costs
Linear lists Free at zero with unlimited members but only 2 teams and 250 issues, Basic at $10 per user per month and Business at $16 per user per month, both marked billed yearly on linear.app/pricing, checked 21 August 2026. Enterprise is custom and annual only. Polaris charges nothing for software and meters delivered work instead.
- Basic
- $10 / user / month, yearly
- Business
- $16 / user / month, yearly
- Free plan cap
- 2 teams, 250 issues
- Checked
- 21 August 2026
Linear plans as listed
Read from linear.app/pricing on 21 August 2026. Both paid rates are shown with the note "Billed yearly"; the page does not print a separate monthly-billing rate, so this page does not quote one.
- Free$0
- Basic$10 / user / month
- Business$16 / user / month
- EnterpriseCustom
| Plan | Rate | Billing basis | Caps and additions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | n/a | Unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues, agent platform and Linear Agent included |
| Basic | $10 / user / month | Billed yearly | 5 teams, unlimited issues, unlimited file uploads, admin roles |
| Business | $16 / user / month | Billed yearly | Unlimited teams, private teams and guests, Triage Intelligence, Loops, Code Intelligence, Insights, Asks, Zendesk and Intercom |
| Enterprise | Custom | Annual only | SAML and SCIM, invoice or PO billing, advanced org modeling, migration support |
The 250-issue ceiling is the real trigger
Linear's free tier gives unlimited members, which reads as generous, and then caps you at 2 teams and 250 issues. A working engineering team crosses 250 issues in a couple of months. That is the moment the decision arrives, and it arrives on issue count rather than headcount, which is unusual and worth planning for.
Linear also includes its agent platform and Linear Agent on the free plan, with coding sessions and Loops drawing on AI credits. The credit rates were not printed on the pricing page when we checked, so this page does not state them.
Ten people on Linear, and what the rest of the stack adds
Linear rates as listed on yearly billing. Slack is shown at both of its published rates because Slack prints both.
- Linear Basic$100.00
- Linear Business$160.00
- Slack Pro (annual)$72.50
- Slack Pro (monthly)$87.50
- Linear Basic + Slack Pro, annual basis$172.50
- Polaris software$0.00
| Line | Rate | Basis | Seats | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linear Basic | $10 / user / month | Yearly | 10 | $100.00 | $1,200.00 |
| Linear Business | $16 / user / month | Yearly | 10 | $160.00 | $1,920.00 |
| Slack Pro (annual) | $7.25 / active user / month | Annual | 10 | $72.50 | $870.00 |
| Slack Pro (monthly) | $8.75 / active user / month | Monthly | 10 | $87.50 | $1,050.00 |
| Linear Basic + Slack Pro, annual basis | 10 | $172.50 | $2,070.00 | ||
| Polaris software | $0 | n/a | unlimited | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Where Linear earns its money, honestly
Cycle discipline
Linear's opinionated cycles, triage and keyboard-first speed are the reason engineers defend it in tool reviews. That is a real product advantage, not a marketing line, and it is the main reason not to leave.
The team cap, not the seat price
Basic allows 5 teams. Companies that model teams as squads hit that ceiling long before they mind the $10, which pushes them to Business at $16 and a sixty percent jump in the seat line.
It still only tracks
Linear is a superb record of what should happen. The work itself is done by the people whose names are on the issues, and every one of those people is a seat.
Linear Business against Polaris
Linear Business
- $16 per user per month, billed yearly, checked 21 August 2026
- Unlimited teams, private teams and guests
- Issue tracking that engineers actually enjoy
- Docs and team chat live in other subscriptions
Polaris
- $0 for the software, unlimited humans and workstreams
- Tasks, docs and team chat in one place
- Assign a task to an AI worker and a cloud machine wakes for it
- Roughly $2 per human-equivalent hour delivered, challengeable line by line
Where to go next
A Linear alternative for the work Linear was never meant to hold
Linear is the best issue tracker most engineers have used. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Jira vs Linear
One tool is opinionated and fast. The other is configurable and permanent. That is the whole decision.
Replacing Linear and Slack
Issues in one place, everything anyone said about those issues in the other, and nothing written down.
Replacing Linear and Notion
Two tools people choose deliberately, and a bill that is small enough that saving money is not the argument.
Tool stack cost for a 10-person team
The size where the free tiers run out on all three products at roughly the same time.
Connect Linear to Polaris
A Linear API key carries one person's visibility, so the account you make it on decides what every worker can see.
Questions people ask
+What does Linear cost per month if I do not want annual billing?
Linear's pricing page showed only the yearly-billing rates when checked on 21 August 2026, so this page does not quote a monthly figure. Assume the monthly rate is higher, as it is with every other vendor in this cluster, and check the page's toggle before budgeting.
+How long does Linear's free plan last for a real team?
Until you cross 2 teams or 250 issues, whichever comes first. Issue count is usually the binding constraint, and an active engineering team reaches 250 issues within a few months of normal work.
+Does Polaris replace Linear?
It can, and for some teams it should, but connecting is the lower-risk first step. Linear is in the Polaris connections catalog, so AI workers can operate on your existing issues while people keep using Linear. The bill only changes when you stop paying for seats.
+What is the catch on two dollars per human-hour?
There is no catch, but there is a limit worth knowing: the hour figure is an estimate from observable effort, not a stopwatch. It comes from a published formula, it is logged per job with its inputs, and you can challenge any line from the work log. That auditability is the point.
+Who marks work as done in Polaris?
A person does. An AI worker ticks its acceptance-criteria checklist and posts its deliverable as a comment with any files it produced, but it never closes the task. You close it and rate it, which is also the moment the work counts.
Related
A Linear alternative for the work Linear was never meant to hold
Linear is the best issue tracker most engineers have used. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Jira vs Linear
One tool is opinionated and fast. The other is configurable and permanent. That is the whole decision.
Linear vs Shortcut
Two trackers built for engineers, disagreeing about how much structure a team should be allowed to have.
Replacing Linear, Notion and GitHub
Three tools a technical team chose on purpose, and none of them has to move anywhere.
Jira pricing, checked August 2026
The only vendor in this cluster whose per-user price you cannot read off a page.
Tool stack cost for a 10-person team
The size where the free tiers run out on all three products at roughly the same time.
Per-seat pricing
The bill tracks headcount, which is only a proxy for value received.
Connect Linear to Polaris
A Linear API key carries one person's visibility, so the account you make it on decides what every worker can see.