What is Linear and what is it used for?
Linear is project management and issue tracking software built for product and software engineering teams to plan and follow development work.
Work in Linear is organized in four levels. The issue is the basic unit: a bug, a task, an improvement. Cycles are time-boxed work periods that belong to each team, similar to sprints. Projects group several issues when a delivery needs coordination and progress tracking. Initiatives bring several Projects together to follow larger efforts that span teams or phases.
What shapes daily use is the link to code. With the GitHub integration, putting the issue ID in the branch name or pull request title connects the two, and the issue status moves as the PR moves. Requests from outside engineering, such as a bug reported by support, can land in a Triage queue before they become planned work.
Who uses it: software teams that want an issue tracker shaped around the engineering workflow, and companies leaving Jira, Asana, Shortcut or GitHub Issues, all of which have a built-in importer in Linear.
The Free plan allows unlimited members, capped at 2 teams and 250 issues. That is enough to trial it with a small team before paying.






