Linear Alternatives for Startups in 2026: Real Pricing for Jira, Shortcut, GitHub Projects, and Asana

This ToolPick decision brief compares Linear against four real alternatives - Jira, Shortcut, GitHub Projects, and Asana - using pricing we pulled directly from each vendor's site rather than recycling numbers from an old roundup. The goal isn't to list every feature. It's to tell you what each tool actually costs your team and which one fits the workflow you already have.

Use this page when you're about to pay for a tool, replace a messy issue tracker, or decide whether Linear's free-tier issue cap is about to force an upgrade. If you don't yet have one real workflow, one budget owner, and a rough seat count, you're not ready to compare pricing yet - come back once you do.

Linear alternatives at a glance

Don't make this decision from a homepage demo. Run the shortlist against one real workflow for a week. The tool that wins should make that week easier without creating a second source of truth you have to reconcile later.

What each tool actually costs

Linear: unlimited members, but 250 issues total

Linear's Free plan gives you unlimited members and 2 teams, capped at 250 issues shared across the workspace. That's genuinely rare - most competitors cap free-tier seats, not issue volume. The catch: a team of 4 shipping normally creates roughly 15-40 issues a week once you count bugs and sub-issues, which means you cross 250 in about 6-13 weeks of real use. Basic is $10/user/month billed yearly and removes the cap entirely; Business is $16/user/month billed yearly and adds private teams, guest accounts, and Triage Intelligence. We go deeper on the exact seat math in our Linear pricing breakdown.

Jira: cheap on paper, calculator-priced in practice

Jira's Free plan is capped at 10 users and 2GB storage with community-only support - confirmed directly on two Atlassian pages. Above that, Atlassian prices Standard and Premium through a dynamic calculator that adjusts per seat count, and the page didn't render enough static content for us to quote an exact figure with full confidence. Independent SaaS-pricing trackers consistently place Standard around $7-8/user/month and Premium above $14/user/month on monthly billing, with lower effective rates at higher seat counts or annual billing - treat those as directional, not vendor-confirmed, and get your own quote from Atlassian before budgeting. What is confirmed: Standard adds audit logs and advanced permissions, Premium adds unlimited storage, sandboxes, release tracks, and a 99.9% uptime SLA, and Enterprise adds multi-site licensing across up to 150 instances with a 99.95% SLA.

Shortcut: the closest thing to Linear without the issue cap

Shortcut's Free plan covers up to 10 users with kanban views, roadmap visibility, reports, sprints, and docs - no total-issue limit, which is the opposite tradeoff from Linear. Team is $8.50/user/month billed yearly and unlocks unlimited users plus advanced reporting, WIP limits, and automations - meaningfully cheaper than Linear Basic's $10/user/month for a team that's outgrown Linear's issue cap but doesn't want Jira's setup overhead. Business is $12/user/month billed yearly and adds OKR tracking and multiple workspaces. Shortcut also runs a startup program offering 12 months free for companies with fewer than 50 employees - worth checking if you qualify before paying for Team on day one.

GitHub Projects: free if your team already lives in GitHub

GitHub Projects ships inside every GitHub plan, including Free. If your engineering team already treats pull requests and repos as the source of truth, Projects removes the need for a separate tool entirely - no per-seat charge on top of whatever GitHub plan you're already paying for. GitHub Team is $4/user/month billed annually and adds protected branches and required reviewers; GitHub Enterprise starts at $21/user/month annually - but both figures are GitHub's own introductory rate for the first 12 months only. GitHub does not publicly disclose the renewal price after year one; Enterprise renewal specifically requires contacting sales for a quote, so treat these two numbers as a first-year cost, not a stable ongoing rate, and confirm the year-two price directly with GitHub before budgeting. The tradeoff: Projects is lighter on timeline and portfolio reporting than dedicated PM tools, and it's a harder sell to non-technical stakeholders who don't already work inside GitHub. One official limit worth knowing: a project supports up to 50 fields, including built-in metadata and custom fields.

Asana: powerful, but Free effectively means "just you and one other person"

Asana's Personal (Free) plan technically offers unlimited tasks and projects, but it caps active membership at 2 users - by far the tightest free tier in this comparison, tighter even than Jira's or Shortcut's 10-user caps. Starter is $10.99/user/month billed yearly ($13.49 billed monthly) and adds timeline/Gantt views, reporting dashboards, and unlimited automations - this is where most small teams land immediately, not eventually. Advanced is $24.99/user/month billed yearly ($30.49 monthly) and adds portfolios, goal tracking, and workload management. If your team is anything but a true two-person side project, budget for Starter from day one rather than assuming Free will cover you.

What a 5-person team actually pays per year

GitHub Team is the cheapest paid seat here by a wide margin, but that's only a fair comparison if you're already paying for GitHub seats anyway - it isn't a standalone PM tool the way the other four are, and its $240/year figure is a first-year introductory rate that GitHub does not guarantee past month 12. Among the dedicated tools, Shortcut Team is the cheapest paid tier at 5 seats ($510/year), about 15% less than Linear Basic ($600/year) - the deciding factor is whether your team hits Linear's 250-issue cap fast enough to make Shortcut's uncapped model worth the switch, or whether Linear's tighter, faster UI is worth the extra $90/year either way. Asana Starter is the most expensive of the confirmed tiers at 5 seats ($659/year), which tracks with it being the only tool here whose free plan effectively forces an upgrade almost immediately. Jira is deliberately left out of these bar charts because we can't confirm an exact per-seat figure directly from Atlassian - get a live quote before comparing it dollar-for-dollar against the other four.

Who should pick which tool

• Fast-moving software teams that want speed over structure: start on Linear Free, budget for Basic ($10/user/month) once you cross 250 issues, usually within your first quarter of active use.
• Teams that need governance, compliance, or are already on Confluence/Bitbucket: Jira is the default, even with less pricing transparency - the ecosystem fit and admin controls are the point, not the sticker price.
• Startups that want Jira-adjacent structure without the setup overhead: Shortcut Free covers up to 10 people with no issue cap; graduate to Team ($8.50/user/month) when you need advanced reporting or automations.
• Engineering teams that already live entirely in GitHub: GitHub Projects is close to free and avoids a second tool. It's the weakest option for cross-functional visibility, so pair it with something else if non-engineers need to track work too.
• Cross-functional teams (marketing, ops, product) that need timelines and portfolios: Asana is built for this, but plan to pay for Starter ($10.99/user/month) almost immediately since Free stops being usable past 2 people.

Honest downsides before you commit

• Linear: thin native docs/wiki - most teams end up running Notion or Confluence alongside it. The pricing page currently shows annual billing only, with no visible monthly toggle.
• Jira: setup and admin overhead is real, and Standard/Premium pricing is genuinely harder to pin down than any other tool here without contacting Atlassian directly.
• Shortcut: smaller integration marketplace and fewer enterprise compliance certifications than Jira, which matters once you're selling into regulated customers.
• GitHub Projects: reporting and portfolio views are lighter than a dedicated PM tool, and it's a harder sell to stakeholders who don't already work inside GitHub.
• Asana: the 2-user free cap is the real trap - if you're evaluating Asana as "the free option" for a team bigger than 2, you're actually evaluating Starter at $10.99/user/month.

The bottom line

If you're weighing Linear against the field rather than deciding whether to upgrade tiers, our Linear review covers workflow fit and keyboard-first UX in more depth, and Linear vs GitHub Issues is the right read if you're deciding whether you need a dedicated tracker at all. For teams leaning the other direction - toward more governance rather than less - our Jira alternatives for product teams roundup and Notion vs Linear comparison cover adjacent decisions worth reading before you commit a budget line. If Asana is on your shortlist for reasons beyond pricing, our Asana alternatives page is the place to compare it against the rest of the field feature-by-feature.

Prices verified directly against linear.app/pricing, shortcut.com/pricing, github.com/pricing, and asana.com/pricing on 2026-07-12. Jira's Free-tier cap is confirmed on Atlassian's own pricing page and Jira Cloud plans overview; Standard/Premium per-seat figures are approximate, sourced from independent pricing trackers, and should be confirmed directly with Atlassian before you budget against them. GitHub's Team and Enterprise figures ($4 and $21 per user/month) are GitHub's own introductory rate for the first 12 months, per its live pricing page checked the same day; GitHub does not publish the renewal rate, so confirm year-two pricing directly with GitHub before you budget against it long term.