The honest summary
For a team under 100 engineers without strict compliance requirements: Linear. For teams over 200 engineers or in regulated industries: Jira, almost regardless of how much you dislike it.
Where Linear wins
- Speed — opening, navigating, creating tickets is dramatically faster
- Keyboard shortcuts — every action has one, deeply integrated
- Opinionated workflow — sprints, projects, roadmaps work without configuration
- Clean GitHub integration
- Built-in roadmapping that engineers will actually update
Where Jira wins
- Customisable workflows — really, infinitely customisable
- Permissions and audit logs (matters at enterprise scale)
- Plugin ecosystem (especially if you need Confluence integration)
- Service Management (Jira ITSM) for ops + dev shared workflows
Pricing in 2026
- Linear: $8/user/month for the Standard plan, $14 for Plus
- Jira: $7.16/user/month for Standard, $12.48 for Premium, custom for Enterprise
When to migrate
Do not migrate a team using Jira just because Linear looks nicer. The cost of moving years of ticket history, custom workflows, and team habits is high. Pick Linear when starting a new team, project, or company.