YouTrack vs Linear

From $4 per user/month (indicative, decreasing with volume)

From $8 per user/month (Basic, billed annually)

Among the cheapest per-user trackers, and the self-hosted licence is affordable.

Simple, transparent per-seat pricing with no app marketplace to inflate it.

Free for up to 10 users, cloud or self-hosted.

Free plan for small teams with unlimited members and limited issue history.

Established

JetBrains · since 2008

Widely used

Linear · since 2019

• The command and query syntax makes bulk triage dramatically faster than clicking.
• Self-hosting is genuinely supported and reasonably priced.
• Free for ten users including on-premises.

• Genuinely fast — the interaction latency is a feature, not marketing.
• Opinionated defaults mean it stays usable without an administrator.
• Excellent Git and Slack integration and a clean triage inbox.

• Smaller integration ecosystem than Jira.
• The interface is dense and takes time to learn.
• Less common, so new hires need onboarding.

• Deliberately inflexible; complex approval workflows and regulated processes do not fit.
• Weaker for non-engineering functions than Jira.
• No self-hosted option, which rules it out for some organisations.

Teams that triage a lot of issues and want self-hosting without enterprise pricing.

Product and engineering teams that value speed and hate configuration.