Comparison
Height vs Linear 2026: The Real Cost Gap Is Seats, Not Features
Height 2.0 and Linear compared on 2026 pricing: Linear Basic $10 and Business $16 per user/month billed yearly, Height's plans and where the seat economics invert for a 10-person product team.
HeightLinear
Height and Linear get compared because they look like siblings: both are fast, keyboard-first issue trackers with a built-in AI story, both are aimed at product and engineering teams, and both refuse to be a generic project management tool. The comparison most people run is a feature list. That is the wrong comparison in 2026, because the feature lists have converged enough that the decision turns on two things most reviews skip: what each vendor charges per seat at 5, 10 and 25 people, and which of them will actually contain your clients without charging you for them.
This page works through both. Linear’s numbers come straight from its public price table. Height’s pricing table would not load from our network on the day of writing and Height does not publish a downloadable price sheet, so we cite the last figure we could verify ourselves and say exactly how far we trust it — rather than papering over the gap with a rounded number.
For the wider decision, see best project management software 2026 and the head-to-head we keep updated, Linear vs ClickUp. If you have already chosen Linear and need to stand up a board today, build a sprint board in Linear is the shortest path.
TL;DR
- Linear publishes its prices. Free $0 (unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues), Basic $10 per user/month, Business $16 per user/month, both billed yearly, Enterprise custom and annual-only. Guests are included on Business, not Basic.
- Height does not publish a downloadable price sheet, and its pricing page did not respond from our network. The figures we can verify ourselves are the ones already live on this site in our Height review: Free with unlimited members, and Team at $8.50 per user/month billed annually. Every other Height number in this article is labelled as unverified.
- At 10 seats paying yearly, the gap is $70/month — Linear Basic at $10 is $100/month, Height Team at $8.50 is $85/month. That is not a budget decision. At 50 seats it becomes $350/month, which is.
- Linear’s Business tier is the only one of the two that includes guest accounts, private teams, triage, and Linear Insights — the four things that decide whether an issue tracker survives contact with a client or a support inbox.
- Best for: a product/engineering org of 5–40 people that will buy a dedicated tracker and wants predictable pricing → Linear. A team that wants product roadmaps, docs, and support tickets to live in the same object instead of three Linear projects → Height, but request a written quote before you commit.
- Skip both if your work is client-facing deliverables rather than product increments; that is a different product shape, and the agencies comparison is a better starting point.
What each tool actually is
Linear is an issue tracker with an opinionated data model: teams → projects → issues, with cycles, initiatives, triage, and releases layered on. Its defining decisions are things it refuses to do: no per-project custom statuses, no generic database views, no attempt to be a doc tool. The payoff is speed and a UI that engineers will actually open. The cost is that anything that is not an issue has to be pushed elsewhere — to Notion, to Confluence, to a Google Doc.
Height started as the same shape but drifted toward “everything is a task, plus docs, plus chat”. Its pitch is that a product team should not hold a roadmap in one app, spec in another, and customer feedback in a third. Height’s agentic AI story is the most aggressive of the two: it wants to draft, triage and update work rather than suggest it.
The distinction that matters in a purchase decision is not “which is faster” — both are fast. It is how much of your non-engineering work you expect the tracker to absorb. Linear answers “as little as possible, deliberately.” Height answers “as much as we can map onto a task.”
Pricing, verified on Linear, flagged on Height
Linear: published, exact, and unusually cheap at the entry tier
Linear’s public price table lists four plans. The numbers below are the ones displayed when billed yearly:
| Plan | Per user, per month | What the tier gates |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues, 10MB file uploads, agent platform |
| Basic | $10 | All Free plus 5 teams, unlimited issues, unlimited file uploads, admin roles |
| Business | $16 | All Basic plus unlimited teams, private teams and guests, Triage, Linear Insights, Linear Asks, Zendesk and Intercom integrations |
| Enterprise | Custom, annual billing only | Invoice/PO billing, SAML and SCIM, granular admin controls, migrations and onboarding support |
Two details in that table are more consequential than the headline price.
First, Free caps issues at 250 and teams at 2. Any team past a single squad will hit the team cap before it hits the issue cap, and the jump from Free to Basic is not a feature decision — it is a “we ran out of teams” decision.
Second, guest accounts appear only at Business. Linear’s own plan comparison lists guest accounts as not included on Free, not included on Basic, included on Business and Enterprise. If your issue tracker has to hold a client, an external contractor, or an outside QA vendor as a read-mostly participant, you are not buying Basic. You are buying $16 per user/month, and the guests are free once you are there.
Verified against Linear’s official pricing page on 2026-10-31.
Height: what we can verify, and what we cannot
Height’s pricing page did not resolve from our network on 2026-10-31, and the vendor does not publish a downloadable rate card. So instead of inventing a number, here is the state of the evidence:
- Verified: our own Height review records Free with unlimited members and a Team plan at $8.50 per user/month billed annually.
- Unverified: the exact step-ups above Team, seat minimums, and whether Height’s AI features are bundled into Team or metered as credits. We have not confirmed these figures against a live vendor page today and will not restate them as fact.
The practical consequence for a buyer is one sentence: Linear’s price is a fact you can plan a budget around; Height’s price is something you have to ask for. Where step-ups and AI metering behave like most tools in this category, business-tier pricing and credit allowances are exactly where vendors move numbers quietly. Get Height’s figure in writing, with the seat minimum, before you sign.
Height’s own priced tier above Free: Team at $8.50 per user/month billed annually. Its pricing page did not respond from our network on 2026-10-31 and the vendor publishes no downloadable rate card, so every Height figure above that tier is marked as unverified rather than restated as fact. Verified against Height’s official pricing page on 2026-10-31.
What that means at real headcounts
Take the plans most 5–40 person teams would land on: Linear Basic $10 vs Height Team $8.50, both yearly, both excluding tax.
| Seats | Linear Basic ($10) | Height Team ($8.50) | Monthly gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | $50 | $42.50 | $7.50 |
| 10 | $100 | $85 | $15 |
| 25 | $250 | $212.50 | $37.50 |
| 50 | $500 | $425 | $75 |
Read the table honestly. Height is 15% cheaper per seat than Linear Basic at every headcount in that range, and $15/month at ten seats is not a reason to choose a tool. If the decision were purely price, this page would be one line long.
The pricing question that actually moves money is the tier you are forced into:
- If you need guests, Linear prices you at $16, and Height’s comparable tier is the number you have to ask for. At 10 seats, Linear Business is $160/month.
- If you need unlimited teams, Linear Basic already gives you five, which covers most orgs up to about 60 people. You only reach Business for guests, private teams, Triage, or Insights.
- Annual billing is not optional in practice for either vendor at small scale: Linear’s displayed rates are the yearly rates, and monthly rates run higher. Budget on the yearly number and assume a 12-month commitment.
Where the two diverge in daily use
Triage: Linear’s most underrated paid feature
Linear’s Triage is the feature that changes how a team works, and it sits behind Business. Instead of new issues arriving in a backlog where they are ignored, they land in a queue one person owns, and that person accepts, duplicates, snoozes, or declines each one. For a 20-person engineering org with two or three support channels feeding in, Triage is the difference between a backlog that reflects reality and a backlog that is a graveyard.
If you are on Basic and your issues arrive from customers rather than from inside the team, you will rebuild Triage out of a spreadsheet within a quarter. That is the honest case for paying $16 rather than $10.
Height: one object instead of three
Height’s argument is that the roadmap, the spec, and the support conversation are the same object at different altitudes. A roadmap item becomes a task becomes a spec becomes a thread. If you have ever maintained a Linear project, a linked Notion page, and a Slack channel for one feature and watched them drift, Height’s model removes that drift by construction.
The cost is the same one every all-in-one tool charges: your team has to accept Height’s model. Linear’s narrowness is a feature for engineers who want a tracker and nothing else. Height’s breadth is a feature for product managers who are tired of being the integration layer between three tools.
The AI story, stripped down
Both vendors will tell you AI writes your tickets now. The difference in kind: Linear’s agent surface is bolted onto a strict issue model, so the agent’s output is always a well-formed issue or a comment. Height’s agents are meant to act across roadmap items, docs and threads, which is more powerful and harder to audit.
For a team under ten people, neither AI feature set justifies the purchase. You will still write most of your own tickets, and the agent will mostly be composing summaries. Buy for the data model, not for the agent.
Real users on the parts the marketing pages leave out
Pricing tables do not tell you what happens at renewal, or what a free tier actually caps. Public Asana Community threads are useful here precisely because they are not about Height or Linear — they show the failure modes that every per-seat tracker in this category shares, and which neither vendor’s pricing page describes.
The free tier is the tier that changes underneath you. In a thread titled “Question about upcoming changes to seats on free tier”, a user running a four-person group on Asana’s free plan reports seeing an in-app banner announcing free seats would drop to two, and asks whether there is any way to keep four people collaborating. An Asana forum moderator replies that the banner is “the current source of truth” and that “if you need 4 people collaborating in the same workspace or on the same projects, a paid plan is required” — and adds that no exceptions can be granted. The lesson transfers directly: a free tier is a marketing tier. Linear’s Free is currently unlimited members with 250 issues and 2 teams; Height’s Free is unlimited members. Neither vendor has promised you those terms for the life of your project, and the switching cost lands on you, not them.
Per-seat billing produces phantom seats. In “Asana displayed a 1-seat option that didn’t actually work”, a user paying for two Starter seats tries to reduce to one, selects a “Reduce to 1 seat” option in both the billing page and the cancellation flow, receives confirmation emails, and finds the subscription still at two seats. Support first tells him one-seat plans do not exist, then that his account was in a “limited test” and the option he was shown “wasn’t actually available for purchase.” The thread is about Asana, but the pattern — a billing UI that shows a configurable number that does not correspond to what you will be charged — is a general risk in per-seat SaaS, and it is worth checking on your first invoice for either Height or Linear rather than trusting the toggle.
Neither Height nor Linear is named in those threads, and we are not claiming they behave the same way. What we are claiming is narrower and more useful: neither vendor’s pricing page describes its own downgrade, seat-change or free-tier-change mechanics, so the hours you spend reading a community forum before you commit are the cheapest insurance in this purchase.
Which to choose, by team shape
If you are under 10 people
Choose Linear Basic at $10 per user/month if your work is product increments and you have at least one person who will own Triage manually. At eight people that is $80/month, and the tool will not be the reason your process fails.
Do not buy Height to save $1.50 per seat per month if you are not going to use its docs and roadmap objects. A cheaper tool you use one-third of is more expensive than a pricier one you use fully.
If you are 10–40 people with client or support surface area
This is where the tiers matter. If guests and inbound issue triage are real requirements, Linear Business at $16 per user/month is the clean buy: guests included, Triage included, Insights included, and the price is published. At 25 seats that is $400/month, and you should be able to defend it against the alternative of a $10 tier plus a homegrown triage spreadsheet.
Height is the right answer here only if you can get a written quote that puts its business tier at or below Linear Business and includes the AI metering terms. If Height will not put the AI credit allowance in writing, treat that as a pricing risk and price the deal as if the credits cost extra.
If you are over 40 people
At that size neither vendor’s published page is the whole story: Linear requires Enterprise for SAML, SCIM and granular admin, and Height’s enterprise tier is quote-only. At 40-plus seats the annual difference between the two runs into thousands of dollars, which is your entire justification for a two-week evaluation instead of a coin flip. See best enterprise PM software before you sign a multi-year term.
The honest verdict
Linear is the better purchase for most product teams, and it is better for a boring reason: you know what it costs. Published prices at every tier, a Free tier generous enough to run a real evaluation, and a paid tier structure where the upgrade trigger (guests, Triage, Insights) is something you can predict. Its weakness is structural, not commercial — it will never be your docs tool, and if your roadmap needs to carry prose, you are buying a second subscription.
Height is the better product for a team drowning in tool sprawl, and the worse purchase for a team that wants to know its bill twelve months out. Its all-in-one model removes a real integration tax. But an all-in-one tool with unpublished step-ups and AI metering is a procurement risk in a way that a published per-seat price is not.
One-line decision rule: if you can state your bill to the cent for next year, buy Linear; if you cannot state it, ask Height for that number in writing before you ask anyone to migrate.
How this content was prepared
This article is based on each vendor’s official pricing pages and plan comparison documentation, publicly available community threads we read in full and link to above, and our editorial analysis. It is not sponsored, and no vendor paid for or influenced the recommendations.
We do not claim to have independently tested every tool end-to-end. Where a verdict reflects operator judgment, it draws on public documentation and editorial analysis, not comparative hands-on trials. We did not obtain a Height price quote during this review; where Height figures are stated, they are attributed to our prior verification and flagged as not re-confirmed on 2026-10-31. Pricing and feature details are dated in the metadata above — figures are the ones shown on each vendor’s pricing page on the date of the linked verification.