Linear
Linear Orbit, Inc. ·linear.app· As of: 2026-07-30
Our verdict
An issue tracker creates no lasting edge. Without one, handovers get lost and work is done twice. With one, you are still no better than your competitors. The agent connection does not change that verdict either: the vendor documents that agents do not consume a billable seat, and rival trackers have shipped comparable interfaces. The difference comes from how precisely the tickets are written, not from the tool.
Who it fits
Solo
suitable
The free plan covers a single person until the cap of 250 issues bites. After that it is ten dollars per user per month, which one developer can carry on their own.
Mid-market
suitable
Between ten and sixteen dollars per user per month the bill stays predictable, and the Business plan includes private teams and guests, which is enough for working with customers and contractors.
Enterprise
suitable with caveats
SAML sign-in, SCIM provisioning, the audit log and granular admin controls exist only in the Enterprise plan, for which no price is published. The data region is chosen once at workspace creation and cannot be changed later on a self-serve basis.
Buy, switch or build
Off-the-shelf
Established enterprise issue tracker
The grown systems bring permissions, compliance evidence and configurability that here only start in the Enterprise plan. You pay for that with setup effort and an interface teams tend to avoid rather than use. For organisations with audit duties and mixed business units this stays the safe route.
AI-native
Agent-first work tracking
Young tools generate issues themselves from code, conversations and error reports and treat the human as the approver. None of them has a defensible market position, and the incumbents are shipping the same features right now. Switching for that reason trades risk for an edge that will likely be matched within a year.
Build it yourself
Your own work register on a database and API
Technically feasible and sensible where workflows are genuinely idiosyncratic, for instance when tasks originate in a line-of-business system and must flow back there. Building is cheap, running is not: notifications, permissions, search, history and the hooks into editors and agents are the real cost. If you only want the agent interface, build it alongside a bought system instead.
Our advice
- Solo: Free plan, one team, upgrade when the 250 issues run out.
- Mid-market: Buy. Basic is enough; move to Business only when private teams or guests are needed.
- Enterprise: Buy, but fix the data region first and settle audit log, SAML and price in the enterprise contract.
Who is behind it
Staying power: Funded
The vendor states that it operates profitably. That is not substantiated, as a privately held US corporation publishes no annual accounts. What is substantiated is the funding round, the years in market and the certifications.
- Funding: USD 82 million Series C at a valuation of USD 1.25 billion, led by Accel, June 2025 · Source · As of 2026-07-30
- Years in market: six years in market at the time of the Series C, so founded around 2019 · Source · As of 2026-07-30
- Customer count (vendor claim): more than 15,000 companies, stated June 2025 · Source · As of 2026-07-30
- Certification: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 Type II · Source · As of 2026-07-30
- Legal entity: Linear Orbit, Inc., a corporation under the law of Delaware, registered office 2261 Market St STE 10632, San Francisco, CA 94114 · Source · As of 2026-07-30
Cost of leaving: Moderate
Issues can be pulled as CSV for the entire workspace, and there is a full GraphQL API on top of that. The CSV export contains no attachments and no comments, the download link expires after 12 hours, guests cannot export at all, and on the Enterprise plan only the owner can. Anyone who wants history, comments and files must write code against the API.
Regulation and data
| Data processing agreement | yes, publicly available data processing agreementThe agreement exists as a standalone document and names a notice period of at least 30 days before a new subprocessor is engaged.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
|---|---|
| Storage location | EU or United States, chosen when the workspace is set up; account data always sits in the United StatesThe chosen region holds issue text and uploaded attachments among other things. Workspace metadata, all user accounts, user-created API keys, notification emails for 7 days plus usage and crash data always stay in the United States. The region cannot be switched afterwards on a self-serve basis.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Subprocessors | fully public, 32 named subprocessors in Annex B of the agreementThese include Amazon Web Services, Google, Cloudflare, PlanetScale and Modal for infrastructure, plus Anthropic, OpenAI, Cohere, Fireworks AI and turbopuffer for AI and search. Several are listed with location US and EU, Cloudflare as global.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Third-country transfer | transfer to the United States expressly provided for, based on the EU standard contractual clausesThe agreement names the transfer to the United States as necessary for providing the service and bases it on the clauses under Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914, module two for controller to processor.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Training on customer data | no, the vendor states it does not train on customer dataThe statement sits in the product documentation, not in the contract. Anyone who relies on it should have it written into an enterprise contract, because a documentation page can be changed at any time.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Retention and deletion | data kept for as long as the account exists; audit logs 90 days; notification emails 7 daysThe privacy policy names no fixed period after the contract ends, only retention while the account is open or where legal duties require it. A concrete deletion deadline for backups is not published.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Certifications | ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA with a business associate agreement only on the Enterprise planThe reports themselves are not openly published but requested through the vendor's trust centre. Only the claims on the security page were available for this review.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | unclearNeither the security page nor the agreement nor the documentation addresses the transparency duties under Article 50 of the AI Act. Since several model providers are listed as subprocessors and the product ships agents, the question belongs in contract talks.no source given · As of 2026-07-30 |
| Audit logging | audit log only on the Enterprise plan, 90 days retentionIt records account access, subscription and settings changes including IP address and country. Owners can read it in the interface, query it filtered through the GraphQL API, or stream it to a webhook target for their own analysis.Source · As of 2026-07-30 |
What it really costs
Entry price
Free for unlimited members with 2 teams, 250 issues and a 10 MB file limit. The first paid plan is ten dollars per user per month and removes the caps on issues and file uploads.
Source · As of2026-07-30
What gets expensive
Not at the seat price but at the enterprise threshold. SAML sign-in, SCIM provisioning, the audit log and granular admin controls all hang off the Enterprise plan, which carries no published price and is billed annually only. Anyone with even one of those four requirements leaves the predictable price list entirely.
What it displaces
- Task lists buried in chat threads
- Spreadsheets used as an issue tracker
- Verbal handovers between product and engineering
Interfaces
- GraphQL API
- MCP server at mcp.linear.app, read and write
- Webhooks, including a stream of the audit log
- CSV export of the workspace, Markdown export of individual issues
At Convios: Not used by us
Not used in our own operation for this review. All statements come solely from public vendor sources and have not been verified in practice.
Matching methods
Evidence
- 1.Plans, prices, free tier limits and the scope of the Enterprise plan · As of 2026-07-30
- 2.Data region choice, which data always stays in the United States, encryption · As of 2026-07-30
- 3.Legal entity, subprocessor list, standard contractual clauses, notice period for new subprocessors · As of 2026-07-30
- 4.No training on customer data, agents do not consume a billable seat · As of 2026-07-30
- 5.Audit log only in the Enterprise plan, 90 day retention, access via interface, API and webhook stream · As of 2026-07-30
- 6.Scope and limits of data export, roles and expiry of the download link · As of 2026-07-30
- 7.Funding, years in market and customer count as stated by the vendor · As of 2026-07-30
- 8.ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA agreement in the Enterprise plan · As of 2026-07-30
Last reviewed: 2026-07-30byDr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
Details out of date? Let us know.