What is a cost-effective issue tracker? Prices for 8 trackers with AI agents (2026)

A cost-effective issue tracker is one whose bill tracks the people on your team, not the agents working beside them. Check three things: the price per human seat, whether each agent counts as a seat, and whether agent calls draw metered credits. For 10 people running 20 agents, the cheapest paid plans as of Nov 2, 2026 are GitHub Team at $480 a year and Radial at $500, then Plane Pro at $720, Jira Standard at $950, Shortcut Team at $1,020, ClickUp Core at $1,080, Linear Basic at $1,200 and Asana Starter at $1,318.80. GitHub Issues costs $0 on GitHub Free, and several trackers have free tiers that fit a small team. Radial is not the cheapest: GitHub Team costs less, and Taiga's flat cloud plans cost less at 10 people (see free and open-source issue trackers). Among these eight, Radial is one of three whose docs or code say agents are not billed as seats, and the only one with no meter at all.

Every price below comes from the vendor's official pricing page or docs, verified on Nov 2, 2026, linked inline. Radial's prices come from its source code. Where a vendor does not say something, we write "not published" and show the cost both ways. The tables are also published as CSV, with a source URL and a verified date on every row: prices, yearly cost and hidden costs.

#Prices and free tiers, side by side

The prices table as CSV: cost-effective-issue-tracker-prices.csv.

Three prices need a note. Jira's $9.70 is new pricing: Atlassian's future pricing tables set Standard for 1 to 100 users at $9.70, effective Oct 13, 2026, for new purchases, renewals and upgrades. An annual customer pays the new price from their next renewal. Many 2026 guides still list the older, lower rate. Jira's pricing page also shows $8.48 per user per month for Standard; that is the blended rate for 300 users, where the per-user price steps down past 100 and 250 users. A team of 1 to 100 users buying new pays $9.70 on monthly billing. And Linear's billing docs say it offers "either monthly or yearly options", but the pricing page shows only the billed-yearly price.

#What it costs at 1, 10 and 25 people with agents

The chart shows the yearly cost for 10 humans and 20 agents on each entry paid plan, cheapest first: GitHub Team $480, Radial $500, Plane Pro $720, Jira Standard $950, Shortcut Team $1,020, ClickUp Core $1,080, Linear Basic $1,200 and Asana Starter $1,318.80.

The chart groups yearly cost by team size. At 1 human and 3 agents: GitHub Team $48, Radial $50, Plane Pro $72, Jira Standard $116.40, Linear Basic $120. At 10 humans and 20 agents: GitHub Team $480, Radial $500, Plane Pro $720, Jira Standard $950, Linear Basic $1,200. At 25 humans and 50 agents: GitHub Team $1,200, Radial $1,250, Plane Pro $1,800, Jira Standard $2,450, Linear Basic $3,000.

The yearly cost table as CSV: cost-effective-issue-tracker-yearly-cost.csv.

Assumptions:

• List prices in USD as of Nov 2, 2026, with no tax, discounts or startup programs.
• Cheapest published billing for the entry paid plan. For Jira that is monthly billing at 1 user and the annual per-band plan at 10 and 25 users. For Linear and GitHub it is the one price each publishes.
• Agents ride on a human's token or seat in the first three columns, which is how Claude Code or Codex usually connects. Radial, Linear and Jira (through service accounts) document that agents are not billed as seats, and GitHub Apps are not on GitHub's list of billed users. For the other four, agent billing is not published, so the last column shows the bill if every agent needed its own seat: a scenario, not a vendor rule.
• Not included: AI credits, SSO add-ons, storage add-ons, and taxes. Those are below.

#The cheapest issue tracker for AI agents

It depends on whether a free tier's limits fit you.

• $0: GitHub Issues on GitHub Free, with no published cap on issues or collaborators. Jira Free covers 10 users, and its Rovo MCP server is capped at 500 calls an hour (Rovo MCP). Linear Free stops at 250 issues, which a team of agents can file in weeks. Shortcut Free covers 10 users, Plane Free 12, Asana Personal 2. ClickUp Free Forever caps storage at 60 MB.
• Cheapest paid plan: GitHub Team at $4 per user per month, then Radial at $50 per user per year ($4.17 a month), then Plane Pro at $6 a month billed annually.
• Cheapest flat plan: Taiga's cloud Basic plan is €200 a year for unlimited users, with no official MCP server or CLI (free and open-source issue trackers).
• Cheapest where agents are documented as free: GitHub Team if your agents run as GitHub Apps, then Radial at $50 per user per year with no meter. Linear Basic is $120 a year and also does not bill agents as seats. Jira Standard does not bill service accounts, but more than 5 need Atlassian Guard.

#Issue trackers that don't charge for agents

Three of the eight say in their docs or code that agents are not billed as seats:

• Radial: agents are workspace members marked as agents, and the seat count excludes them. No credits for anything.
• Linear: "Agents are not counted as billable seats in Linear." Linear's own agent work, coding sessions and Loops, draws prepaid AI credits.
• Jira: Atlassian service accounts "do not count towards your user limit. This means we don't charge your Jira or Confluence subscription plan for service accounts." There are 5 free; more need Atlassian Guard Standard (up to 250) or Enterprise. Enriched Rovo MCP calls still draw Rovo credits.

GitHub does not list GitHub Apps among its billed users, so an agent that runs as a GitHub App is not a seat; an agent with its own user account is. Asana, ClickUp, Shortcut and Plane do not publish whether an agent with its own account is a billable seat. If your agents connect with a person's token, the question does not come up. If you want each agent to have its own identity, ask the vendor before you count on it.

#Hidden costs

The hidden costs table as CSV: cost-effective-issue-tracker-hidden-costs.csv.

A meter is the cost that moves. Seat prices are known in advance; credits scale with how much you use the vendor's own AI features. External agents that call a tracker's API or MCP server draw no credits at Linear, and draw Rovo credits at Jira only on enriched calls such as search. For an agent-heavy team, a tracker with no meter is easier to budget, even when its seat price is not the lowest.

#Where Radial is not the cheapest

• GitHub Issues is free with GitHub, and GitHub Team is $48 per user per year against Radial's $50. If your work already lives in GitHub and a flat issue list is enough, it is hard to beat on price.
• Plane has a free plan for 12 users and an open-source edition you can self-host. If you run your own infrastructure, the license costs nothing; the server and admin time do not, as our free and open-source issue tracker comparison prices out.
• Free tiers beat any paid plan for tiny teams. Jira Free covers 10 users, Linear Free has unlimited members up to 250 issues, and Shortcut Free covers 10 users. Radial has no free tier.
• Taiga's cloud plans are flat per workspace. Basic is €200 a year for unlimited users, less than Radial at 10 people, without an official MCP server or CLI.
• Radial bills yearly only, upfront. If you need month-to-month billing, Jira, Asana, ClickUp, Shortcut and Plane offer it.

#The cost of switching

A seat price saving can disappear in one migration day, so count the move too. Radial's importer works from a JSON export: export your Linear or Jira data (Linear through its GraphQL API, Jira through its REST search API, both paged), run radial import --from linear export.json --dry-run (or --from jira) to see counts and warnings, then run it again without --dry-run. Issues, statuses, priorities, assignees, labels, parents, relations, comments and timestamps come across from both; projects and estimates from Linear only. Attachments, sprints, custom fields and history do not, and imported comments are posted under the importing user's name. There is no importer for the other six trackers yet. The full list is in migrating from Linear and migrating off Jira.

Radial is built for the case where coding agents do much of the work: a first-party CLI, a hosted MCP server and a REST API for the agents, a web app for the people, and one plan at $50 per user per year with agents free and nothing metered. See Radial pricing. For head-to-head detail, read Radial vs Jira, Radial vs Linear, and the best Jira alternative depends on what made you leave.

#How we compared

We compared from docs: we read each vendor's official pricing page and billing docs on Nov 2, 2026, did not buy or check out any plan, and recorded each figure with its URL and a verbatim quote. Jira's per-user prices and per-band annual prices come from the plan catalog embedded in its pricing page. Costs are list price times seats, with the arithmetic shown in each cell. Radial's facts come from its billing code: one yearly price, a seat count that excludes agent members, and no metered features. We did not price Enterprise plans, which are quote-only at Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Shortcut, Asana and Plane.

#FAQ

#What is the cheapest issue tracker for AI agents?

On price alone, GitHub Issues on GitHub Free at $0. Among per-seat paid plans, GitHub Team is $4 per user per month and Radial is $50 per user per year, about $4.17 a month. Taiga's flat cloud Basic plan is €200 a year for unlimited users. Among trackers that document agents as free, GitHub Team (agents as GitHub Apps) and Radial ($50 per user per year, no credits) are the cheapest; Linear Basic is $120 per user per year.

#Which issue trackers don't charge for agents?

Radial, Linear and Jira say so in their code or docs, and GitHub does not list GitHub Apps as billed users. Radial excludes agent members from the seat count and charges no credits. Linear says "Agents are not counted as billable seats in Linear", though its own agent work draws AI credits. Jira does not bill service accounts, with 5 free and more through Atlassian Guard, and enriched Rovo MCP calls draw Rovo credits. Asana, ClickUp, Shortcut and Plane do not publish a rule.

#How much does an issue tracker cost for 10 developers and 20 agents?

On each entry paid plan, prices verified on Nov 2, 2026, per year: GitHub Team $480, Radial $500, Plane Pro $720, Jira Standard $950, Shortcut Team $1,020, ClickUp Core $1,080, Linear Basic $1,200, Asana Starter $1,318.80. That assumes the agents connect through the developers' tokens. Credits and add-ons are extra.

#Is there a free issue tracker for a small team with agents?

Yes. GitHub Issues is free on GitHub Free. Jira Free covers 10 users, with the Rovo MCP server capped at 500 calls an hour. Linear Free has unlimited members up to 250 issues. Shortcut Free covers 10 users and Plane Free 12, and Plane can be self-hosted. Radial has no free tier. For self-hosted options such as Gitea, Redmine and OpenProject, see free and open-source issue trackers.

#Do Jira's Rovo credits make it more expensive for agents?

They can. Each paid Jira seat brings 25 to 150 Rovo credits a month into a shared pool. From December 3, 2026, usage past the pool costs $0.01 per credit, and a Rovo MCP search can use up to 10 credits per call. Writes and single-issue lookups are free, so an agent that avoids cross-product search stays near zero.

#Is Radial the cheapest issue tracker?

No. GitHub Issues is free with GitHub, GitHub Team costs $48 per user per year against Radial's $50, Taiga's flat cloud Basic plan is €200 a year for unlimited users, and several trackers have free tiers. Radial is $50 per user per year, flat, with agents free and no meter.