Stack cost
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.
What it costs
A ten-person team on Notion Business, Slack Pro and Linear Basic pays $387.50 a month, or $4,650 a year, at the list rates checked on 21 August 2026 with Slack on monthly billing. Moving Slack to annual brings it to $4,470. Polaris replaces all three at $0 for the software and bills only for work an AI worker delivers.
- Total
- $4,650 / year
- Per person
- $465 / year
- With annual Slack
- $4,470 / year
- Prices checked
- 21 August 2026
The stack, line by line
Rates read from each vendor's own pricing page on 21 August 2026. Linear publishes only its yearly-billing rate, so that is what the Linear row uses and says.
- Notion Business$200.00
- Slack Pro$87.50
- Linear Basic$100.00
- Total$387.50
- Same stack, Slack on annual$372.50
- If Linear moves to Business$447.50
- Polaris$0.00
| Tool and plan | Rate | Basis | Seats | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notion Business | $20.00 / member / month | As displayed | 10 | $200.00 | $2,400.00 |
| Slack Pro | $8.75 / active user / month | Monthly | 10 | $87.50 | $1,050.00 |
| Linear Basic | $10.00 / user / month | Billed yearly | 10 | $100.00 | $1,200.00 |
| Total | 10 | $387.50 | $4,650.00 | ||
| Same stack, Slack on annual | $7.25 Slack rate | Mixed | 10 | $372.50 | $4,470.00 |
| If Linear moves to Business | $16.00 / user / month | Billed yearly | 10 | $447.50 | $5,370.00 |
| Polaris | $0 | No seats | unlimited | $0.00 | $0.00 |
Why ten is the expensive number
Three ceilings land within a few months of each other. Linear's free plan stops at 2 teams and 250 issues. Slack Free keeps 90 days of history, which becomes a problem the first time a decision from last quarter cannot be found. Notion's free tier limits blocks once a workspace has more than one member, and by ten people the Business features are what people are actually asking for.
So the jump is not gradual. A team goes from paying nothing to paying about $4,650 a year inside one quarter, and nobody planned for it because each upgrade looked small on its own.
Two seat counts that are usually wrong
The people who only need one of the three
A designer who lives in Figma, a founder who lives in Slack, an ops hire who lives in Notion. All three are billed on all three products in most companies, because seat audits happen at renewal and renewals are annual.
Contractors and part-timers
Slack gives you back the money when someone goes fully inactive for a 28-day window. Notion and Linear do not. A three-month contractor is a twelve-month seat unless somebody remembers.
The upgrade you did not choose
Linear Basic allows 5 teams. Crossing that pushes you to Business at $16, which on ten seats adds $720 a year for a limit rather than a feature.
The illustrative Polaris side
Polaris is in free public beta with no customers and no usage data. Every row below is arithmetic on a stated assumption, marked illustrative, and is not a measurement of anything.
- Software, all ten people$0
- Illustrative: workers deliver 30 human-hours a month~$2 / human-hour
- Illustrative: workers deliver 60 human-hours a month~$2 / human-hour
- Illustrative: workers deliver 120 human-hours a month~$2 / human-hour
- Nothing assigned to a worker~$2 / human-hour
| Assumption | Rate | Per month | Per year | Versus $4,650 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software, all ten people | $0 | $0.00 | $0.00 | Real, not an estimate |
| Illustrative: workers deliver 30 human-hours a month | ~$2 / human-hour | ~$60.00 | ~$720.00 | About 15% |
| Illustrative: workers deliver 60 human-hours a month | ~$2 / human-hour | ~$120.00 | ~$1,440.00 | About 31% |
| Illustrative: workers deliver 120 human-hours a month | ~$2 / human-hour | ~$240.00 | ~$2,880.00 | About 62% |
| Nothing assigned to a worker | ~$2 / human-hour | $0.00 | $0.00 | Nothing delivered, nothing billed |
The shape of the two bills
Three per-seat subscriptions
- Predictable, and predictably rising with every hire
- $465 per person per year before any AI subscription
- Three invoices, none of which names a deliverable
- Seat cleanups only pay off at the next renewal
Free software, metered work
- $0 regardless of headcount, so hiring does not move the bill
- Variable, and tied to what came back finished
- Each hour attached to a named job with its inputs logged
- You close and rate every delivery before it counts
Where to go next
Tool stack cost for a 25-person team
The size where paying monthly instead of annually costs $1,650 a year on its own.
Tool stack cost for a 5-person team
Three subscriptions, five people, and the arithmetic laid out so you can check it against your own invoices.
Linear pricing, checked August 2026
A generous free tier with two hard caps, and paid rates published on yearly billing only.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Replacing Linear, Notion and GitHub
Three tools a technical team chose on purpose, and none of them has to move anywhere.
Polaris for software teams
Nobody joined your team to write the release notes. Something still has to write them.
Questions people ask
+How is the $4,650 calculated?
Notion Business at $20 per member per month, Slack Pro at $8.75 per active user per month on monthly billing, and Linear Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly, each times ten seats and then times twelve. All rates were read from the vendors' pricing pages on 21 August 2026.
+Why is Linear shown at the yearly rate when Slack is shown monthly?
Because that is what each vendor publishes. Slack prints both its monthly and annual rates; Linear's page showed only the yearly-billing rate when checked. Mixing bases silently is how most comparison pages produce numbers that match nobody's invoice, so this page labels every row instead.
+Does Polaris actually replace all three?
It covers all three jobs: tasks and boards, a nested doc tree with a block editor, and team chat, in one free workspace. Whether it replaces them for your team depends on what you use Linear's cycles and Notion's databases for. Slack, Notion and Linear are all in the connections catalog, so connecting first and cutting seats later is the low-risk path.
+Are the Polaris usage numbers on this page real?
No, and they are labelled illustrative for that reason. Polaris is in free public beta with no customers and no usage data to publish. The $0 software line is real; every hour figure on this page is arithmetic on an assumption stated in the row.
+How do I challenge an hour on the bill?
Open the job on the worker's work log. It records the searches run, the characters of finished prose delivered, the acceptance-criteria items ticked, the comments addressed and the files produced. The formula is published, so recompute the line and dispute it with the inputs in front of you.
Related
Tool stack cost for a 5-person team
Three subscriptions, five people, and the arithmetic laid out so you can check it against your own invoices.
Tool stack cost for a 25-person team
The size where paying monthly instead of annually costs $1,650 a year on its own.
Linear pricing, checked August 2026
A generous free tier with two hard caps, and paid rates published on yearly billing only.
Slack pricing, checked August 2026
The one vendor here that bills per active user, which helps more than most people realise.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Replacing Notion, Linear and Slack
The default startup stack, three subscriptions, and a decision that has to be written down three times to stay true.
Polaris for software teams
Nobody joined your team to write the release notes. Something still has to write them.
Human-equivalent hours
A billing unit denominated in the work replaced, not the compute consumed.