GILD verdict
Use GitHub Issues when the team, its community, and its agent all live on GitHub and planning fits in Projects.
Move to Linear when planning spans many repositories or teams, when Triage and cycles would replace manual coordination, or when you want to delegate to agents beyond Copilot. Count the seats first, because Linear bills every member of the workspace.
Automattic moved thousands of active GitHub issues to Linear and left stale work behind, in Linear's own customer story. GitHub Issues wins on cost for teams that plan inside GitHub: Issues and Projects come with the repository at no extra seat price. They now cover sub-issues, dependencies, issue types, and Projects boards with custom fields. Linear is a separate tracker linked to GitHub or GitLab, and it adds cycles, initiatives, Triage, and delegation to several agent vendors.
Choosing between Linear and GitHub Issues
Choose Linear if
- Work spans many repositories and teams, and leaders want projects and initiatives above them.
- You want issues to go to Cursor, Codex, Devin, or Linear's own coding sessions as well as GitHub Copilot.
- Some repositories live on GitLab, or product and support teams file work through Slack and support tools.
Choose GitHub Issues if
- Everything lives on GitHub and you want planning next to the code and pull requests, with no second seat.
- Your open source community files and follows issues on GitHub.
- Copilot cloud agent is your coding agent, started from an issue or pull request.
Side by side
| Dimension | Linear | GitHub Issues |
|---|---|---|
| PriceList prices in US dollars. GitHub plans also cover repositories, Actions, and more, so the prices are not like for like. | Free for 2 teams and 250 issues; Basic US$10 and Business US$16 per user per month billed yearly | Included with GitHub Free; GitHub lists Team at US$4 and Enterprise from US$21 per user per month for the first 12 months |
| Planning model | Teams with Triage and cycles, projects, and initiatives with sub-initiatives | Issues with up to 100 sub-issues per parent and eight levels, dependencies, up to 25 issue types per organization, and Projects with up to 50 fields |
| Where planning lives | A separate workspace linked to GitHub or GitLab, with pull request status flowing back to issues | In the repository, next to the code and pull requests |
| Coding agents | Cursor, Codex, Devin, GitHub Copilot, and others by assignment, plus Linear coding sessions running Claude Code or Codex | Copilot cloud agent started from an issue or pull request on GitHub.com |
| Reporting | Cycle capacity from the last three cycles' velocity, Insights on Business, Dashboards on Enterprise | Project insights on iterations and milestones |
| Moving between them | GitHub Issues sync with a Linear team going forward, and an importer for history | Teams that leave Linear export issues to CSV and recreate the planning structure |
| Who switched | Automattic moved thousands of active GitHub issues to Linear and left stale and closed work behind, in Linear's undated customer story18 | Automattic left thousands of GitHub issues behind in the move, per the same story; GILD found no named move from Linear to GitHub Issues18 |
18 sources
- Linear pricing
- Linear docs: Billing and plans
- Linear docs: GitHub
- Linear docs: GitLab
- Linear docs: Cycles
- Linear docs: Initiatives
- Linear docs: Insights
- Linear integrations: Agents
- Linear docs: Coding sessions
- Linear docs: Exporting data
- GitHub pricing
- GitHub Issues
- GitHub Docs: About Projects
- GitHub Docs: Adding sub-issues
- GitHub Docs: Managing issue types in an organization
- GitHub Docs: Creating issue dependencies
- GitHub Copilot docs: Copilot on GitHub.com and the cloud agent
- Linear customer story: Automattic (undated, read Oct 28, 2026)