Mainline vs Linear
Linear is the most polished sprint-based project management tool on the market. The interface is fast, the keyboard shortcuts are excellent, the design is restrained, the engineering culture behind it is serious. If you have decided your team should run sprints, and you want the best sprint tool, the answer is Linear.
Mainline is for teams that have decided their team should not run sprints.
The two tools share an aesthetic and a set of customers who appreciate craft. They do not share a worldview. Linear's data model is the issue: organised into cycles and projects, assigned to one person, sized in story points if you want them. Mainline's data model is the user story on a story map: activated by two people, sized only by the lead-time distribution of stories your team has already finished. Linear assumes your planning unit is the sprint. Mainline assumes it is the next thing that will reach a real user.
Both tools refuse to be everything. They just refuse to be different things.
| Mainline | Linear | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary unit of work | User story on a story map | Issue on a sprint board |
| Estimation model | Lead-time distributions from your team's actual history | Story points (optional but encouraged) |
| Backlog | None. A backlog is a landfill. | First-class concept |
| People per story | As many as are working on it. Solo, pair, or ensemble. | One assignee. You cannot put a second person on an issue. |
| What "done" means | Released to users | Configurable, usually "merged" or "deployed to staging" |
| Deploy / release lifecycle | Deploy and release are separate events. A story cannot be released until it has been deployed. | No native distinction |
| Who can see what | Every view is the same view, including the manager's | Configurable views, manager dashboards available |
| Per-developer metrics | None. Surveillance is not a feature. | Available via the analytics surface |
| WIP enforcement | One active story per person - enforced as a database-level unique constraint, not a soft limit | Suggested via WIP limits in board settings |
| Pricing model | Flat. Free for one person. $99 / 8 people. $179 / 16 people. | Per seat. $8-$16 / user / month. |
| What happens if your team grows past the price band | Start a second Mainline | Per-seat cost grows with headcount |
| Data export | Full JSON export including complete event history | CSV and JSON export |
| Worldview encoded in the data model | Continuous flow with paired delivery | Sprint-based execution with high polish |
When to choose Mainline
Your team has explicitly chosen continuous flow over sprints. Pairing and ensemble story ownership is something you actually do, not just a value statement. You measure cycle time and lead-time distributions instead of velocity. You want a project tool that disappears into the practice, not one that adds another framework on top.
When to choose Linear
Your team has chosen to run sprints, and you want the best implementation of that. You value design polish and keyboard-first interfaces above almost everything else. Your engineering org is bigger than 16 people and growing, and you need a tool that will scale with you. For these situations, Linear is the right answer.
We also have comparisons against Jira and Asana. If you'd like to see Mainline compared to a tool we haven't covered, email us.
Or see Mainline running in the demo -- no signup, read-only.
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