I am going to spend the first part of this post praising a competitor, and I mean every word of it, because the honest version of this comparison starts there.
Linear is one of the best pieces of software in this category. It is fast in a way that you feel in your hands, keyboard-driven, beautifully considered, and it gets a team productive in hours instead of days because it has strong opinions and does not make you configure them. When people say they love their tracker, which is rare, they are usually talking about Linear. If you are an internal product and engineering team and Linear fits how you work, this post is not trying to pry you loose. Keep it. You have good taste.
What I want to do is mark the edges of that fit, because Linear is deliberately built for one kind of team, and outside that shape a couple of its choices stop being neutral and start being costs.
The viewer problem
Here is the one that catches people, and it caught me the first time I thought about using Linear for anything client-facing. Linear has no free read-only viewer. None. There is no watch-only seat for a stakeholder who just wants to follow along.
The guest accounts it offers only exist on the Business plan and above, they are billed as regular members at the full per-seat rate, and, importantly, a guest can edit. There is no read-only mode, no way to show someone a limited view of just their project. So if you want your CEO, your client, or the wider company to see the board, every one of those people is a full paid seat with write access. For an internal team where everyone is an editor anyway, that is a non-issue. For anyone doing client work, it is a wall. You cannot give a client a clean, watch-only window into their project, which is exactly the thing client work needs most.
The scrum problem, if scrum is what you run
Linear does not really do classic scrum, and it is upfront about this, which I respect. It has Cycles rather than sprints, it keeps them intentionally light, and it deliberately does not tie them to releases so you spend less time on date math. It supports estimates and it draws a progress chart for the current cycle, so it is not the case that Linear has no reporting at all.
What it does not have is the traditional scrum apparatus: the ceremonies, and crucially a cross-cycle velocity trend you can plan against over time. The graph is per-cycle. Velocity exists inside Linear only to auto-calculate capacity, not as a chart you watch across sprints. If your team runs by-the-book scrum, with story-point velocity as the number you plan around, Linear's opinionated model will feel like it is quietly disagreeing with you. Add that it offers limited customization and thin custom reporting by design, and you have a tool that is superb at its own way of working and firm about not bending to yours.
Where I landed
I started out assuming Linear was simply the answer for any software team, and I had to correct myself. The correction is not "Linear is worse." It is "Linear is specific." It is built for internal product teams who want speed, opinion and low overhead, and for them it is genuinely hard to beat.
Scrumpy is built for a different center of gravity: teams who run real scrum and teams who need people outside the core to watch. So the two differ exactly where Linear draws its edges. Viewers are free and unlimited, so clients and stakeholders follow the board without a seat, which makes it a natural fit for agencies and anyone client-facing. Sprints, story points, velocity and a burn-up chart are the standard model rather than a deliberately-avoided one. And the price is a flat $9 per editor with everything in the one plan.
If you are an internal team that loves Linear's speed and its way of working, the right move is to stay and enjoy it. If you keep bumping into the viewer wall or wishing your cycles were honest sprints with a velocity you could plan against, that is not you using Linear wrong. It is Linear being true to its design, and your team needing a different one. You can try the other shape and see which your work actually wants.
Frequently asked questions
Does Linear have a free read-only viewer?
No. Linear has no free read-only viewer role. Its guest accounts exist only on the Business plan and above, are billed as regular members, and can edit rather than just view. Anyone who needs to see a Linear board takes a paid seat.
Does Linear do scrum?
Linear uses Cycles rather than classic sprints, and deliberately keeps them light and not tied to releases. It supports estimates and shows a per-cycle progress chart, but it does not provide classic scrum ceremonies or a cross-cycle velocity trend chart. It is an opinionated take on agile, not a traditional scrum tool.
Is Linear good for agencies or client work?
Linear is built for internal software and product teams, and it shows. Guests get full read-write access with no read-only client mode, so it is a poor fit for giving a client a limited, watch-only view of their project. Tools with free read-only viewers suit client-facing work better.
Why would you choose a different tool over Linear?
Mainly if you need free read-only access for stakeholders or clients, classic scrum with velocity reporting, or more customization than Linear's opinionated workflow allows. Linear's speed and polish are excellent for an internal product team that fits its way of working.
