The best Linear alternative in 2026, and the cheaper ones for a startup

The best Linear alternative depends on why you are leaving. If coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex do much of your work, pick Radial: a first-party CLI, a hosted MCP server and an atomic claim, at $50 per human per year with agents at $0. If price is all that matters, GitHub Team is cheaper still, at $4 per user per month. To self-host, pick Plane. For a free tier, Shortcut, Plane and Jira all have one, and so does Linear itself. Every price below was verified on Nov 2, 2026. For 20 people running 40 agents, Linear Basic costs $2,400 a year, and Radial costs $1,000.

Linear is a good tracker, and for many teams the right answer is to stay. This page is for the teams it does not fit: too expensive per seat for a startup, not self-hostable, or awkward for agents that work from a terminal, because Linear ships no first-party issue CLI. Prices and plan facts come from each vendor's pricing page or docs, linked in every row; Radial's come from its pricing and source code. Where a vendor does not publish something, we say "not published".

#What Linear and its alternatives cost for mixed human and agent teams

Seats are for the humans. In each column below the team runs two agents per person, and the agents add $0, because they connect through a person's token, a service account, a GitHub App or an agent member. The separate table after it shows which trackers say so in their docs.

Download this table as CSV.

Free plans change the small-team answer. As of Nov 2, 2026: Linear Free is $0 for unlimited members, up to 250 issues and 2 teams (Linear pricing). GitHub Free includes Issues and Projects (GitHub pricing). Plane Free covers 12 users in the cloud (Plane pricing), Shortcut Free 10 users (Shortcut pricing), and Jira Free 10 users (Jira pricing). A team of 5 fits in every one of them. Radial has no free tier and no trial.

Assumptions, so you can redo the math:

• Per-month figures are the yearly cost divided by 12 for plans billed yearly. Month-to-month billing costs more where it exists: Plane Pro $8, Shortcut Team $10 and Jira Standard $9.70 per user per month. Linear's billing docs say it offers monthly billing, but its pricing page publishes only the billed-yearly price. Radial bills yearly only.
• Jira prices are for new purchases from Oct 13, 2026 (pricing tables). Monthly billing is $9.70 per user for users 1 to 100 and $8.20 for users 101 to 250; the annual plan is priced per user band ($4,850 for 26 to 50 users, $18,000 for 101 to 200). Both come from the plan catalog on Jira's pricing page, read on Nov 2, 2026.
• No discounts or startup programs: list prices only.

#Are agents billed as seats?

#Extra costs the seat price does not show

#What is the best Linear alternative?

It depends on the reason you are leaving. Ranked by that reason, with where each one wins and loses against Linear and against Radial:

1. Your coding agents do much of the work: Radial. A first-party radial CLI with --json on every command that returns data, a hosted MCP server with 45 tools in a 21,020-byte tools/list (Linear's lists 60 tools in 101,447 bytes, both measured on Nov 2, 2026), an atomic radial claim, build records and HTML prototype previews on the issue. $50 per human per year, agents $0, no credits. It loses to Linear on a free tier, SAML and SCIM, a delegate field that keeps the human owner on an agent's issue, webhooks to wake agents, integrations and polish. Full detail: Radial vs Linear.
2. The lowest paid price, and your code is on GitHub: GitHub Issues. $0 on GitHub Free, $4 per user per month on Team, which is less than Radial at every team size above. It has an official CLI (gh issue) and an official MCP server, github-mcp-server. It is a flatter issue list than Linear: planning views and iterations live in GitHub Projects, a separate layer.
3. You want to self-host: Plane. Open source, a free cloud plan for 12 users, Pro at $6 per user per month billed annually, and a hosted MCP server at mcp.plane.so (Plane MCP). No official CLI published. Self-hosting moves the cost to your servers and your time.
4. You want a free tier for up to 10 people: Shortcut. Free for 10 users, Team at $8.50 per user per month billed annually, an official MCP server, and coding agents can own Stories. No official CLI.
5. You need breadth across engineering, support and operations: Jira. It has an official CLI (acli) and the Rovo MCP server. Its MCP calls have hourly caps, enriched calls draw Rovo credits, and the setup is heavier. See Jira vs Linear for AI coding agents.

Honest ties: Linear and Radial both keep agents off the seat count, and Linear, Plane, Shortcut, GitHub and Jira all ship an official MCP server, so "the agent can reach it" no longer separates them. What separates them is a CLI, the claim, the meter and the price. And if your team is small and under 250 issues, Linear Free costs less than every option here, Radial included.

For cross-functional tools such as ClickUp, Asana or monday, see what is a cost-effective issue tracker for sourced prices, or our ClickUp and monday comparisons.

#What is a cheaper alternative to Linear for a startup?

At list price as of Nov 2, 2026, four trackers cost less per person than Linear Basic's $120 a year: GitHub Team at $48, Radial at $50, Plane Pro at $72 and Shortcut Team at $102. For a 20-person startup running 40 agents, that is $960, $1,000, $1,440 and $2,040 a year, against $2,400 on Linear Basic. Jira Standard costs about the same as Linear at that size: $2,328.

Before you pay anything, check the free plans: Linear Free (250 issues, 2 teams), GitHub Free, Plane Free (12 users), Shortcut Free (10 users) and Jira Free (10 users). A startup of five whose agents file few issues may never need a paid plan. The catch for agent-heavy teams is the issue cap: agents can file 250 issues in weeks, which is where Linear Free stops.

What a startup should weigh besides the price:

• Billing terms. Radial bills a year upfront and has no monthly plan; adding a person mid-term is invoiced at once, prorated, and removing one gives no credit. GitHub, Plane, Shortcut and Jira offer month-to-month billing.
• The meter. Radial has none. Linear's own agent work and Jira's enriched MCP calls draw credits; GitHub Copilot is billed separately.
• The switch. radial import --from linear export.json --dry-run previews a move from Linear's GraphQL JSON export; the Linear migration guide lists what comes across and what does not (attachments, cycles, custom fields and history do not).

#Linear has no first-party issue CLI

Linear's official command-line tools do not manage issues. linear-release tracks releases, and the CLI importer moves data in. An agent in a terminal reaches Linear issues through the hosted MCP server, the GraphQL API (writing queries and resolving workflow state ids), or a community CLI such as schpet/linear-cli, maintained outside Linear. The Linear CLI guide covers those options.

That matters for Claude Code and Codex, which work in a shell. With a first-party CLI the agent runs one command and parses JSON; with GraphQL it writes and debugs a query on every task. Among the alternatives above, GitHub (gh), Jira (acli) and Radial (radial) ship an official issue CLI; Plane and Shortcut do not publish one.

#Where Radial fits for agent teams

Radial is built for the team where people plan and review, and agents pick up, work and close issues. Three commands from the CLI cover the pick-up loop:

radial list --assignee unassigned --status Todo --limit 1 --json
radial claim ENG-42 -s "In Progress"     # one atomic write: exits 3 if another agent has it
radial close ENG-42 -m "Fixed in #412"

The claim is the part a work queue needs. Linear has no conditional update, so two agents that read an issue and assign it both get success: in our live race of 20 workers over 10 rounds on Nov 2, 2026, more than one worker was told "claimed" in 10 of 10 rounds (method and data). radial claim assigns only if nobody holds the issue, so exactly one agent wins.

Where Radial is the wrong pick: you want a free tier, SAML or SCIM, a tracker that runs its own agent, or agents woken by webhooks rather than polling. Linear does all four.

#How we compared

We read each vendor's pricing page and docs on Nov 2, 2026, and bought no plan. Costs are list price times human seats, at each plan's cheapest published billing, with no tax or discounts. Jira's monthly and per-band annual prices come from the plan catalog embedded in its pricing page. The Linear MCP measurements and the claim race come from the live runs documented in Radial vs Linear. Radial's facts come from its source code and pricing.json. The same prices appear in what is a cost-effective issue tracker, which also covers Asana and ClickUp.

#FAQ

#What is the best Linear alternative?

It depends on why you are leaving. For a team whose coding agents do much of the work, Radial: a first-party CLI, a hosted MCP server and an atomic claim, at $50 per human per year with agents at $0. For the lowest paid price, GitHub Issues: $4 per user per month on GitHub Team, with the gh CLI. To self-host, Plane. For a free plan for up to 10 people, Shortcut or Jira. Prices as of Nov 2, 2026.

#What is a cheaper alternative to Linear for a startup?

GitHub Team ($48 per user per year), Radial ($50), Plane Pro ($72) and Shortcut Team ($102) all cost less than Linear Basic ($120 per user per year), at list prices as of Nov 2, 2026. For 20 people running 40 agents: $960, $1,000, $1,440 and $2,040 a year against $2,400. Free plans from Linear, GitHub, Plane, Shortcut and Jira cost less still if a small team fits their limits. Radial has no free tier and bills yearly.

#Does Linear have a CLI?

Not for issues. Linear's official linear-release CLI tracks releases, and its importer moves data in. Agents manage Linear issues through the MCP server, the GraphQL API or community CLIs.

#Does Linear charge for AI agents?

Not as seats: "Agents are not counted as billable seats in Linear." Linear Agent's coding sessions and Loops draw prepaid AI credits (AI credits). Third-party agents calling the MCP server or API draw none, per the pages we read.

#Does Radial have a free plan?

No. Radial has no free tier and no trial: $50 per human user per year, billed annually, with agent members never counted as seats and nothing metered.