Linear is a new species of product tool. Purpose-built for product teams with agent workflows at its core, it sets a new standard for planning and building products.
Linear is the tool of choice for 20,000+ companies including OpenAI, Ramp, and Vercel.
The community submitted 453 reviews to tell
us what they like about Linear, what Linear can do better, and
more.
4.9
Based on 453 reviews
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Reviewers largely see Linear as a fast, clean, low-friction tool that helps product and engineering teams stay aligned on issues, sprints, roadmaps, and bug tracking without the heaviness of Jira, Asana, or Notion. Users repeatedly praise its intuitive UI, shortcuts, integrations, and strong GitHub fit. Founders of , , and also highlight MCP and agent workflows. The main caveat: some users find roadmap planning, boards, swimlanes, and multi-team structure too limited or occasionally confusing.
Linear is core to my product development. It's really helped my agents coordinate and keep track of requirements and issues. Linear also acts as a context bridge for agents, which my agents use to implement the requirements.
vs Alternatives
The reason for choosing Linear is its optimistic UI and ease of use; another reason is its powerful MCP server.
I’ve used linear at 2 companies now. Overall there’s lots to like about it and it’s my 'Go to' project management tool, but it has some frustrating rough edges that would be nice to see polished!
Good/Great:
- Generally it has just the right amount of complexity for running small-medium projects. I’ve only really seen it in action within a single team scope - think running larger multi teams projects would be more challenging
- The design is opinionated without generally being overly restrictive. At the moment, we switch back and forth between kanban and scrum quite regularly and even then i don’t find it gets in the way too much.
- I love the burndown graphs and find them very motivating
Areas for improvement:
- There are some very frustrating snags around cycle times that i’ve found really get in the way. Basically the best way to do what i want is to run cycles that correspond to the day after we do the cycle and then manually advance it. This is really unintuitive!
- If you open a ticket within a project view, it sets the project as the last project not the project you’re in - so confusing!
- the number of times people on the team are confused as to why they can’t see tickets and where they’ve gone due to some quirk of the UI is frustrating!
Linear is hands down the tool that redefines how product teams handle project management. From the moment you log in, the clean, intuitive design shows that it's built to make work flow seamlessly. Task tracking feels natural, and every feature feels like it has a purpose, with no unnecessary extras bogging down the process.
The real game-changer is the speed: updating tasks, switching views, or collaborating with teammates – everything feels instant. Plus, the keyboard shortcuts and streamlined UI make managing projects not just efficient but genuinely enjoyable. I love how Linear’s approach keeps the focus on productivity without overcomplicating the experience.
For agile teams, the attention to detail in sprint planning and the simplicity of tracking progress are standout features. Integrations are well-thought-out, making Linear a perfect addition to the modern tech stack. If you're looking for a tool that blends elegance with functionality, Linear is an exceptional choice!
It fits well for small startup teams but gets messy when roadmap grows just a little. Has the freedom to define projects and tags but it works well IMO only for a single team with one or two boards only (there is no "board" definition).
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
If I have to choose it will not be my first option.
If it's of interest, swimlanes are now available in Linear!
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@zenithquinn I have tried the project again last week and it looks much better now. Great work team! It looks like a tool I will use now no matter the team size I am in.
Linear is a good app to run a team using scrum. It is much simpler to use and doesn't require a lot of configuration and set-up.
It also integrates with GIthub, so that your tasks get updated automatically when you perform actions like, opening a PR, assigning reviewers and merging or closing a PR.
It also provides helpful charts.
However, it does have a confusing structure, in which you have two competing views: the active sprint (called "cycle") and all the active tasks (called "active"), regardless if they are a part of the sprint or not.
Linear defaults to opening the "active" view, so if you don't pay attention, you may think you are in the sprint ("cycle") view and may end up taking tasks that are outside the sprint.
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
If I have to choose it will not be my first option.
What needs improvement
single task assignment (6)confusing structure (10)no kanban board (8)
Linear is fast, intuitive, and great for managing internal tasks with its streamlined UI and automation. However, it's less suited for client-facing project management. It lacks customization options, such as setting cycles at the project level, and doesn’t include project gantt charts. If you need granular control over timelines and workflows for specific clients, Linear's current setup may not meet all of your needs.
What's great
fast performance (52)task management (62)workflow automation (5)intuitive design (34)
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
There is no board or flight level views, you have to make your own filters and setup your organisation which may or may not be your best time spending idea. The swim lanes that are so interesting on the competitors (Jira, kanbanize etc) are not present here. There is only one lane per team and tickets belongs only to projects so you have to manage your organisation with a single hierarchy of tasks.
Onboarding with Linear is near-instant, and the daily user experience is incredibly smooth. I’m a huge fan of the clean, focused interface and how seamlessly it integrates with Slack and GitHub. It’s exceptionally reliable—performance is snappy, and bugs are a rarity. While I’d love a bit more flexibility for custom workflows, I suspect that’s already on their roadmap. Highly recommended for teams that value speed.
Linear's webhook system and API have been also crucial for our post-action workflows. We're automatically updating statuses, leaving comments, and tracking progress based on GitHub events through their webhook integration. The API is good and the webhook payloads are well-structured, making it easy to map GitHub PRs and deployments to Linear tickets. Our AI agents can now automatically coordinate development workflows across GitHub and Linear.
I've been using Linear to organize Semwright's development across the runtime, drivers, SDKs, and platform. It's helped keep a pretty large project manageable.