Short answer: Linear is not open source. It's proprietary SaaS, priced per seat, with no self-hosted edition and no public source repo. If you need the code, your two serious options today are Plane (AGPL-3.0) and Huly (EPL-2.0). Everything below is the detail: licenses, tradeoffs, and the self-host bill nobody puts on a pricing page.
Linear is a great tool. It's also $8 to $14 per seat per month, closed source, and runs on someone else's servers. For a lot of engineering teams, that's fine. For others — regulated industries, self-host shops, anyone whose CFO just discovered the SaaS line item — it's a non-starter.
So you start searching for a Linear alternative, ideally open source, and the SERP fills up with the same three lists ranking the same five tools in the same order. Most of them haven't been updated in a year.
This is the comparison we wanted to read when we were figuring out where Zoobbe fits. It includes us, two genuinely open source options, and the tradeoffs nobody puts in the marketing pages.
Key takeaways
- Linear is closed source. There is no community edition, no self-host tier, and no source repo. The public API and SDK let you build against Linear, not run it.
- Truly open source Linear alternatives exist — Plane and Huly are the two serious ones today.
- Self-hosting is not free. You pay in DevOps time, on-call, and upgrade pain instead of seat fees.
- If you want the open-source philosophy (data portability, transparent pricing, no lock-in) without running Postgres yourself, hosted alternatives like Zoobbe are worth a look.
- None of these are 1:1 Linear clones. Each makes a different bet on issue tracking vs. broader collaboration.
- For most teams under 50, the real decision isn't features. It's whether you have someone who genuinely wants to maintain the deployment.
Is Linear open source?
No. Linear is a closed-source, proprietary SaaS product priced per seat, and there is no self-hosted edition. You cannot read its source, run it on your own servers, or fork it. Linear does publish a public API and SDK, which people sometimes mistake for open source. Those let you build integrations. They don't let you host it.
There's also no source-available middle ground here — no BSL, no "open core" server you can run in a private VPC. It's hosted or nothing.
If you need the source, jump to Plane or Huly below. If what you actually want is data portability and transparent pricing rather than source access, a hosted tool may serve you better than running Postgres yourself.
Why teams leave Linear in the first place
Talking to engineering teams who've migrated off Linear, the reasons cluster into three buckets:
- Cost at scale. Linear's per-seat price is fair. But at 30+ engineers plus contractors and PMs, the annual bill starts looking like a junior hire.
- Data residency and compliance. Healthcare, fintech, defense, EU public sector. Sometimes the contract literally says "your data lives on hardware you control."
- Breadth. Linear is laser-focused on engineering issue tracking. Teams that want issues and docs and async planning end up gluing Linear to Notion to Slack and wondering if one tool could do it all.
The first two push you toward open source. The third pushes you toward a broader workspace. Worth knowing which one you are before you start a migration.
The honest comparison table
| Feature | Linear | Plane | Huly | Zoobbe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open source | No | Yes (AGPL-3.0) | Yes (EPL-2.0) | No |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Free hosted tier | Limited | Yes | Yes | Yes, free forever |
| Kanban boards | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in docs / pages | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes, with live co-editing |
| Real-time collaborative editing | Partial | Partial | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in time tracking | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automation rules | Yes | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| MCP server for AI agents | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Runs without DevOps | Yes | No, if self-hosted | No, if self-hosted | Yes |
Licence note: Plane is AGPL-3.0, which carries network-copyleft obligations — if you modify it and offer it as a service, you must publish your changes. Huly is EPL-2.0, which is more permissive. Check with your legal team before self-hosting either commercially.
Values above reflect each product as of July 2026. Open-source projects move fast — check the repo before you commit.
Plane
License: AGPL-3.0. Hosting: Self-host or their cloud. What it is: The closest spiritual successor to Linear's core issue-tracker experience, built open source from day one. Cycles, modules, views — the vocabulary will feel familiar.
Where it shines: If you want Linear's shape — issue-centric, keyboard-driven, sprint-aware — Plane is the most direct match. Active community, frequent releases.
The catch: AGPL is a copyleft license. Fork it, offer it as a network service, and you have to release your changes. That's intentional, but it matters if you plan to build commercial extensions. Self-hosting needs Postgres, Redis, and a small fleet of Docker containers. Not impossible. Still a real ops surface.
Huly
License: EPL-2.0. Hosting: Self-host or their cloud. What it is: Ambitious all-in-one platform — issues, docs, HR, CRM, messaging. Think "open source ClickUp" more than "open source Linear."
Where it shines: Breadth. If you're consolidating five tools into one and the platform has to be open source, Huly's scope is genuinely impressive.
The catch: Broader surface means more to learn, and the project is younger. Some modules are polished, others feel like 0.x. If you only want issue tracking, you'll feel the weight of features you're not using.
Zoobbe
License: Proprietary (hosted SaaS). Hosting: We run it. What it is: Kanban boards, Notion-style pages, real-time collaborative editing, automations, AI — built for teams who outgrew Trello but find Notion too freeform.
Where it shines: Real-time collaborative page editing built on Yjs CRDT, which most competitors don't have. Threaded comments with @mentions, multiple assignees, custom fields, board-level automations, page templates by category, and a public REST API at /v1/*. White-label is supported if you need your own domain and branding.
The catch: We're not open source. If "the source must be open" is your top criterion, stop reading and try Plane. We're on this list because some teams want the spirit of leaving Linear — transparent pricing, data export, broader collaboration than just issues — without taking on a self-host project.
The self-host tax nobody talks about
Open source is free in license. It is not free in time.
A realistic self-host commitment looks like this: someone on your team owns the deployment. They handle backups, version upgrades, database migrations, the day the SSL cert silently fails, the day Postgres needs a major version bump, and the day a contributor PR renames the env variables. None of this is hard. All of it is real work.
The bill has four line items, and only one of them shows up on an invoice:
- Infrastructure. App containers, Postgres, Redis, object storage for attachments, plus backups. Small, but not zero, and it grows with attachments.
- Setup time. Getting to a working, backed-up, TLS-terminated deployment your team trusts.
- Ongoing maintenance. Upgrades, migrations, dependency bumps, restores you hopefully never need.
- Incident risk. The board being down during a launch week is a different kind of cost than a seat fee.
For a five-person startup with an infrastructure engineer who genuinely enjoys this, self-hosting Plane is fantastic. For a fifteen-person team where nobody wants to own it, self-hosting becomes the thing that breaks the week you can least afford it.
Rule of thumb: if you can't name the person who'll own the deployment in your next meeting, you don't want to self-host.
Migrating off Linear: what actually moves
Whichever tool you land on, plan the migration around what survives the trip.
Moves cleanly: issue titles, descriptions, status, assignees, labels, and comments. Every serious destination can take these.
Moves badly or not at all: cross-issue relations, custom workflow states that don't map, integration wiring (Slack, GitHub, CI hooks), saved views, and anything living in a third-party app that pointed at Linear.
Never moves: muscle memory. Your team knows Linear's keyboard shortcuts. Budget two weeks of grumbling and pick a quiet sprint to switch.
Two practical notes. First, export before you decide, not after. An export you can actually open tells you more about a vendor than any docs page. Second, don't migrate history you'll never read. Closed issues from two years ago can stay in the archive.
How to actually decide
Here's the decision tree we'd run if we were you:
- Is open source a hard requirement? (compliance, philosophy, contract language) → Plane or Huly. Plane for issue-tracking focus, Huly for broader scope.
- Do you have a willing owner for the deployment? If no, use their managed cloud instead of self-hosting. The open source benefit becomes "we could leave" rather than "we run it."
- Do you want broader collaboration than just issues? Pages, real-time docs, automations, AI? Look at Huly or Zoobbe.
- Is your bottleneck Linear's price, not its philosophy? Hosted alternatives are usually cheaper per seat, and you skip the ops work entirely.
Where Zoobbe fits — and where it doesn't
We'll be direct. Zoobbe is not the right answer for teams whose primary criterion is open source. Plane is. Use Plane.
Zoobbe is the right answer if you're tired of Linear's narrow scope, you want Kanban + pages + real-time collab + automations in one tool, you don't want to run servers, and you'd rather pay a transparent monthly seat price than wrestle with Docker Compose every three weeks.
If that's you, our homepage walks through the Kanban and Pages flow, and you can import a Trello board to try it without typing anything.
FAQ
Is Linear open source?
No. Linear is closed-source, proprietary SaaS. There's no self-host option and no public source repository. Its public API and SDK are for building integrations, not for running your own instance. That's part of why teams who need self-hosting look elsewhere.
Can you self-host Linear?
No. Linear offers no on-premise, community, or enterprise self-hosted edition. If self-hosting is a compliance requirement, Linear is off the table and you're choosing between Plane and Huly.
What is the best open source Linear alternative?
For engineering teams who want Linear's issue-tracking shape, Plane is the closest match. For teams who want a broader open-source workspace (issues + docs + more), Huly is the more ambitious option. Both are actively maintained.
Can I self-host Plane for free?
Yes — Plane's community edition is AGPL-3.0 and you can run it on your own infrastructure at no license cost. You'll need Postgres, Redis, and Docker, and you'll own ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
Is AGPL a problem for my company?
Usually not for internal use. Running Plane unmodified for your own team triggers nothing. It matters if you modify it and offer it as a service to outside users — then you must publish your changes. Huly's EPL-2.0 is more permissive on that front. Ask legal before you build a commercial product on either.
How is Zoobbe different from Linear?
Linear is laser-focused on engineering issue tracking. Zoobbe is a broader workspace — Kanban boards, Notion-style pages with real-time collaborative editing, automations, AI, and white-label. Different bets. Use Linear if you only need issues; use Zoobbe if you want issues plus docs and async collaboration in one tool.
Do open source alternatives have feature parity with Linear?
Not exactly. Plane covers most of the issue-tracking core (cycles, views, modules) but the polish gap on small details is real. Huly is broader but younger. Neither will feel like a pixel-perfect Linear clone — and frankly, you probably don't want one.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash