Linear vs Jira in 2026: Pricing Caveats, AI Costs, Planning and Migration

The verdict in brief​

TechRepublic's reviewer scores Jira 4.03 out of 5 and Linear 3.39. Jira wins on workflow customization, sprint reporting, roadmaps and portfolio planning, DevOps integrations and analytics. AI is called a tie: Jira's Rovo for organization-wide workflows, Linear for coding agents that investigate bugs and open draft pull requests.

That is a reasonable framing. But the scores come from one reviewer's weighting. A team that wants fewer knobs may rate "less to administer" higher than the scorecard does. The article's own advice is the best part: test both tools against your real workflows.

Pricing: the figures are unstable​

Pricing is where the comparison needs the most care. TechRepublic lists Jira Standard at $9.05 per user per month and Premium at $18.30. It adds worked examples: 25 developers cost $2,250 a year on Jira against $3,000 on Linear, and 100 people cost $9,050 on Premium.

Those figures don't match what other sources show today:

• Atlassian's own pricing page: it showed Standard at $8.48 and Premium at $15.56 per user per month. Those were the displayed figures. The page lets you change team size and billing period, so what you see depends on your configuration.
• Third-party trackers: Breeze reports that Jira Standard is $9.70 and Premium $19.60 per user from 13 October 2026, with usage billing from 3 December. Another tracker lists $7.91 and $14.54. These are secondary sources, and they disagree with each other.
• What this means: treat every Jira per-seat number, including TechRepublic's, as a snapshot. Annual billing also changes the math. Atlassian says annual subscriptions are charged by the tier closest to your user count rather than strictly per user. Price your own seat count and billing term directly.

Linear's pricing is steadier. Its pricing page lists Free at $0, Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly, Business at $16 billed yearly, and Enterprise at a custom price. Free includes unlimited members, 2 teams and 250 issues. Basic adds 5 teams and unlimited issues. SAML and SCIM sit in Enterprise.

AI costs are not "free" on either side​

Jira's AI cost is built on credits. Rovo Search, Chat, and Agents are included on every paid Jira plan. The monthly allowance is 25 credits per user on Standard, 70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise. Search doesn't use credits, but Chat and Agent requests do. Atlassian's page says it isn't charging beyond the allowance today and has promised at least 90 days' notice and an explicit opt-in before that changes. Third-party trackers, however, describe a $0.01 per credit rate beyond the allowance. Check Atlassian's current terms before budgeting for heavy agent use.

Linear's model is different. Its documentation says coding sessions and "Loops" draw on a prepaid, workspace-level credit balance. Other AI features are included in the plan. Using the credits is opt-in. Coding-session costs include model tokens at provider rates with no markup, plus sandbox runtime at $0.25 per 20-minute block. Typical Loop runs without a coding session cost $0.07 to $0.20. Admins should know that anyone with access to those features can spend from the shared balance. Guests can be blocked with a security toggle.

Planning and sprints: similar words, different mechanics​

Linear Cycles. Linear describes them as time-boxed periods similar to agile sprints, but "not tied to releases." Duration runs from 1 to 8 weeks, and upcoming cycles are created automatically, up to 15 ahead. Capacity is estimated from the velocity of the previous three completed cycles. If none exist, it is roughly estimated from team size. Unfinished open issues generally roll over automatically. Issues moved to backlog, triage, canceled or completed during a cooldown are not carried forward.

Jira velocity. Atlassian's velocity chart is available only for company-managed spaces using the Scrum template. It compares committed and completed work over several sprints, and more sprints make the forecast more reliable. Sub-task estimates aren't counted. The chart is also board-specific, so it only includes work items matching the board's saved filter.

Jira's cross-team planning and dependency management are advertised as Premium features. Atlassian's Jira plan guide describes Premium as adding Advanced Roadmaps for cross-team planning. TechRepublic's "Jira wins on portfolio planning" therefore depends on plan level. Standard buyers don't get it.

Security and administration: be specific​

TechRepublic says Jira's SSO, SCIM and audit logs come through Atlassian Guard, and that Linear offers them on Enterprise. Two cautions apply.

• Plan boundaries: Atlassian's pricing page says its Enterprise plan includes Atlassian Guard Standard. It also lists multi-region data residency on Standard. A reader could take the TechRepublic summary to mean those capabilities need higher tiers, but Atlassian's page suggests otherwise for data residency. Confirm regions and eligible data types against your requirements.
• Audit logs: Atlassian has several log types, and availability and retention differ by plan and Guard subscription. Ask which log, which plan and which retention period a vendor means.
• Linear's side: SAML and SCIM are Enterprise only. Multiple Jira sites for the integration also need Enterprise.

Migrating from Jira to Linear​

This is the section with the most practical value, and Linear's documentation backs most of it.

Import versus sync

• Import is a one-time migration. It carries the broadest range of data: issue relationships (parent-child, blocking, relates-to), epics as Linear projects, and sprints as cycles. Linear says import is the right starting point for most teams. A clean cutover is preferable because "some drift is inevitable" with sync.
• Sync is a continuous one-way or two-way connection for teams where some groups stay in Jira. It has more limited support for issue relationships and estimates.

What doesn't transfer automatically

• Custom fields, which should be replaced with labels or label groups. Linear advises converting them in Jira before importing.
• Releases, which can be recreated as a label group.
• Boards, which are recreated as views.
• Jira roles and permissions, which must be configured separately in Linear.

Preparation steps from Linear's guide

1. Create the destination Linear teams. You can't import into a sub-team.
2. Provision users through SCIM. Users are matched by email and must have signed in at least once.
3. Create workflow states that match your Jira statuses so the importer can map them.
4. Turn on Cycles and Triage and align them with your sprint schedule.
5. Run the import as an Admin, using API credentials or a Jira CSV export.
6. If it goes wrong and the import is under 14 days old, you can delete it. The same Jira projects can't be imported twice.

Running both tools in parallel

• Linear's documentation says Jira Sync only creates Linear issues for items created after setup. Older issues appear when they receive an update in Jira. TechRepublic's tip is to enable the integration before importing history. That matches Linear's recommendation.
• Required Jira fields can stop a synced issue from being created. Issue types, constraints and components don't map cleanly. Component values appear as labels.
• Statuses that don't exist in Linear won't update the Linear issue.
• Hierarchy differences can cause failures or discrepancies.
• If you use GitHub, set different team identifiers in Linear and Jira so pull requests link predictably. For example, if your Jira key is ENG, Linear's documentation suggests something like LIN or LENG.
• Setting up the integration needs a user with the global ADMINISTER permission in Jira. That permission can be removed after setup.

A practical test plan​

TechRepublic suggests running a shared dependency and a production incident through both tools. A fuller pilot would include:

• A real cross-team dependency: a backend delay that threatens a mobile release. Check whether the tool models alternatives or only flags the conflict.
• A mid-sprint interruption: see how each tool shows scope change and rollover.
• A mandatory approval field: see whether Linear's replacement workflow is acceptable once Jira's validation is gone.
• A sample migration: import representative projects with custom fields, then check relationships and history.
• An AI cost trial: run realistic coding-agent work and read the actual credit consumption.

Bottom line​

Jira suits organizations that need custom workflows, approval gates, Scrum reporting and, on Premium, cross-team planning. Linear suits teams with consistent processes that value speed and low administration, and that can live with its more limited cross-team forecasting. The article's conclusions are sensible. Its dollar figures are the weakest part, and they were already shifting by the day it was published. Quote your own seat count, billing term and AI usage before deciding.