Both products file tasks, but they are built for different rooms. ClickUp is a work OS that tries to hold projects, documents, chat, dashboards and automation in one place, and it prices itself against suites. Linear is an issue tracker with a strong point of view about speed and keyboard-driven workflow, and it stays inside the engineering organisation.
TL;DR
ClickUp is a general-purpose workspace: lists, boards, Gantt, docs, whiteboards, chat, dashboards, time tracking and AI, free forever with unlimited tasks and members, then Unlimited at $10 per user per month monthly or $7 yearly and Business at $19 monthly or $12 yearly. Linear is an issue tracker first: Free for up to 250 issues across two teams, Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly, Business at $16, and Enterprise by quote with SAML and SCIM. Pick ClickUp when one tool has to serve every function; pick Linear when engineering wants a fast, opinionated tracker and nothing else.
ClickUp's free plan gives unlimited tasks, unlimited members, 60MB of storage, collaborative docs and two-factor authentication. Unlimited costs $10 per user per month billed monthly or $7 billed yearly and opens unlimited spaces, folders, forms, Gantt charts, integrations, storage, custom fields, native time tracking, goals and portfolio management, and guests with permission control. Business costs $19 monthly or $12 yearly and adds unlimited dashboards and message history, webhooks, 5,000 automations per month, mind mapping, sprint points and reporting, portfolio workload management, Google SSO and SMS two-factor authentication. Enterprise is quoted and adds SAML SSO, SCIM, an audit log, session management, 250,000 automations per month and data residency. ClickUp's current release, 4.0, adds Agents, a workspace knowledge layer called Brain and built-in chat.
Linear's pricing page is shorter on purpose. Free covers unlimited members, two teams and 250 issues with 10MB file uploads. Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly lifts that to five teams, unlimited issues, unlimited file uploads and admin roles. Business at $16 per user per month billed yearly opens unlimited teams, private teams and guests, triage intelligence, loops and code intelligence. Enterprise is custom and sold annually only, adding invoice and PO billing, SAML and SCIM, granular admin controls, advanced org modelling and priority support. Linear states on the same page that it is trusted by more than a threshold it publishes as a figure, and its comparison table shows file upload rising from 10MB on Free to unlimited on paid tiers.
| Feature | ClickUp | Linear |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Unlimited tasks and members, 60MB storage, collaborative docs | Unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues, 10MB uploads |
| Entry paid plan | Unlimited $10 per user monthly, $7 per user yearly | Basic $10 per user per month, billed yearly |
| Mid tier | Business $19 per user monthly, $12 per user yearly | Business $16 per user per month, billed yearly |
| Top published tier | Enterprise by quote, SAML, SCIM, audit log, 250K automations | Enterprise custom, annual only, SAML, SCIM, PO billing |
| Billing cadence | Monthly or yearly, up to 33% off with yearly billing | Annual billing only across paid tiers |
| Product surface | Tasks, docs, chat, dashboards, whiteboards, time tracking, AI | Issues, cycles, projects, triage, integrations, code intelligence |
| Automation | 5,000 automations per month on Business, 250,000 on Enterprise | Workflow automations and integrations, no published monthly cap |
| Best fit | Teams that want one subscription for every kind of work | Engineering teams that want a focused, fast issue tracker |
Pick ClickUp if
ClickUp is the right call for companies that do not want separate subscriptions for docs, chat, dashboards and task tracking, and for teams that need Gantt, time tracking and portfolio views today. The free plan is generous enough to run a real team, and the yearly rates of $7 and $12 per user keep the per-seat math reasonable while the team is small.
Pick Linear if
Linear fits product and engineering organisations that live in issues and want the shortest path from a keyboard shortcut to a shipped change. Its free plan is a genuine evaluation for small teams, and Business at $16 per user billed yearly adds the private teams, loops and code intelligence that larger engineering groups need. It is the wrong tool if non-engineering departments expect docs, chat and dashboards in the same place.
No review aggregates, ratings or user quotes appear on this page: we did not collect a public review corpus for this pair. Figures come from clickup.com/pricing and linear.app/pricing, read on 2026-10-12.
At the entry tier they meet: ClickUp Unlimited is $7 per user billed yearly and Linear Basic is $10 per user billed yearly. At the mid tier ClickUp Business is $12 per user yearly against Linear Business at $16, so ClickUp is cheaper per seat, though Linear bundles more of its workflow into that price.
Rarely. Linear has issues, cycles and projects, but no docs suite, chat, whiteboards or dashboard builder. Marketing and operations teams that need those usually run ClickUp or a similar workspace alongside their tracker.
ClickUp's free plan has unlimited tasks, unlimited members and 60MB storage; Linear's has unlimited members but caps at 250 issues and 10MB uploads. For a small team that expects to stay under 250 issues, Linear's free tier is still workable.
ClickUp does: both Unlimited and Business list a monthly price and a discounted yearly price. Linear's paid tiers are annual only, and its pricing page marks Enterprise as annual billing only as well.
ClickUp includes Google SSO on Business and moves to SAML SSO with SCIM provisioning on Enterprise. Linear includes SAML and SCIM on its Enterprise tier.
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