Linear+41 Positive

GILD Review

GILD's call and the buying facts behind it.

From GILD research

Should we adopt Linear?

Will Linear still serve the leaders who report across teams once engineers and agents work from it?

30-Second TakeLinear suits engineers and costs the leaders who report from it.
Best fitSoftware teams on GitHub or GitLab that want planning engineers keep current and that hand scoped issues to coding agents.GILD Review
Consider another workflowIf leaders run a multi-team portfolio from the tracker, or departments encode different processes with custom fields and approvals, keep Jira or run Linear for engineering beside it through Jira Sync.GILD Review

Drawn from 314 sources and 7 operator insights

GILD analysis

Linear Review

GILD's call: Linear is the stronger tracker for the people doing the work and the weaker one for the people reporting on it. Engineers keep it current because it is fast and pull requests move status, while teams that hand issues to coding agents split on how well that works. Leaders give up Jira's issue types, required fields, and constraints, which Linear chose not to pursue, and cross-team Dashboards need Enterprise, so price reporting before a company-wide move.

Team Workspace
Agentic Development

The decision

Best fit: Software teams on GitHub or GitLab that want planning engineers keep current and that hand scoped issues to coding agents.
Consider another workflow: If leaders run a multi-team portfolio from the tracker, or departments encode different processes with custom fields and approvals, keep Jira or run Linear for engineering beside it through Jira Sync.
Adoption condition: An agent-ready issue template, a Triage owner per team, an AI credit spend limit, and a cross-team report a leader has built and checked during the pilot.

Basis: Linear documentation and pricing, and public accounts from teams and engineers in Linear's Signals records, updated Oct 25, 2026. On speed, Dennis Brotzky's May 2026 teardown of the shipped app traces its instant feel to a database in the browser. It finds about 21 MB of minified JavaScript split into route chunks. Linear's engineers report sync lag of about 1 second at p50. In the pilot, time how long an edit takes to reach a teammate.

Buying & deployment factsWhat engineering leaders should verify before a broader rollout.

How you buy it

US$10

Per user per month for Basic billed yearly. Business is US$16, and every active user is billed.

Source 1, linear.app, Pricing: Pricing Source 2, Linear, Billing and plans: Billing and plans

Details

Free for 2 teams and 250 issues. Basic US$10 and Business US$16 per user per month billed yearly, with monthly billing also offered; Enterprise is custom and billed yearly only. Every unsuspended user in any role is billed.

Cost drivers

US$0.25 a block

Per 20-minute coding sandbox, plus model tokens at provider rates with no markup.

Source 2, Linear, Billing and plans: Billing and plans Source 4, Linear, AI agents: AI agents Source 3, Linear, AI credits: AI credits

Details

Seats for every unsuspended user. Installed agents are not billable seats. Coding sessions and Loops draw on a prepaid AI credit balance: model tokens at provider rates with no markup plus US$0.25 per 20-minute sandbox block. Typical loop runs cost US$0.07 to US$0.20.

Where it runs

US or EU

Data region chosen at creation. Web, desktop, mobile, Slack, Teams, and an MCP server.

Source 11, Linear, Security: Security Source 5, linear.app, Download: Download Source 1, linear.app, Pricing: Pricing Source 6, Linear, MCP server: MCP server

Details

Linear's cloud service, with most workspace data stored in the US or EU region chosen at creation. Teams use it through web, desktop, and mobile apps, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and a hosted MCP server for Claude, Cursor, Codex, and other clients.

What to verify

No training

Linear does not train on customer data. SAML, SCIM, and the audit log need Enterprise.

Source 7, Linear, Triage Intelligence: Triage Intelligence Source 9, linear.app, Data Processing Agreement: Data Processing Agreement Source 1, linear.app, Pricing: Pricing Source 8, linear.app, Releases: Releases Source 10, linear.app, Audit log: Audit log Source 11, Linear, Security: Security

Details

Linear states it does not use customer data to train its own AI models and lists OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google among its AI subprocessors. Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence, Insights, and Releases need Business; SAML, SCIM, the audit log, and a HIPAA BAA need Enterprise. Coding sessions use zero-data-retention models by default, and audit logs are retained for 90 days.