Choose Linear for software delivery. Choose Kanera when technical and non-technical teams need one board-led project system.
Already looking to move? Read the case for Kanera as a Linear alternative
Linear organises product development around issues, triage, cycles, releases, roadmaps, insights, and developer integrations. For an engineering-only team, that focus is hard to beat.
Kanera gives operations, client work, product, marketing, and delivery one modern system for planning, ownership, context, and progress.
Try the complete Pro product for 30 days, then choose Free or one full-featured hosted plan.
The decision is less about speed than shape: software issues and cycles, or flexible boards for broader project work.
| Feature | Linear Product development system |  Kanera |
|---|---|---|
| Views & Planning | ||
| Board view | Included. Board views organise issues by status or other properties inside team and project workflows. | Included. Kanban boards with drag-and-drop cards, collapsible lists, per-list sorting, list icons and colours, and card covers. |
| Table view | Included. List views are a primary issue surface with powerful filters, grouping, and saved views. | Included. An editable table on boards and across Global Work, with filtering, grouping, custom columns, Sum and Avg calculations, second-dimension breakdowns, saved setup, and Excel or JSON export. |
| Calendar view | Not available. Project timelines and date controls support planning, but Linear does not present a general card calendar like Kanera. | Included. A calendar for dated cards with month and week ranges, Today navigation, filtering, due-time slots, and card actions in place, on boards and across Global Work. |
| Overview, health, and cross-project visibility | Included. My issues, initiatives, project views, roadmaps, and cycles provide product and engineering rollups. | Included. Home covers daily focus. Every board adds automatic overdue, unassigned, inactive, due-soon, and per-list signals with card drill-downs. Global Work adds My Cards, Team Cards, Portfolio, and Work Done across accessible boards. |
| Personal and team priority queues | Partial or plan-gated. My Issues Focus orders assigned work automatically, while priority views support manual ordering within shared priority levels. Linear does not document a separate person-owned queue that managers curate independently of issue priority. | Included. Up next keeps one ranked order across boards. Open your drawer anywhere, add, reorder, complete, or remove assigned cards in My Cards, filter to queued work, and manage permitted teammate queues from a focused dock or Team Cards grid and table views. |
| Cards & Work | ||
| Work item detail | Included. Issues include status, priority, assignee, labels, estimates, projects, cycles, relations, comments, and activity. | Included. Cards hold markdown descriptions with change diffs, due dates and time slots, assignees, labels, custom fields, attachments, covers, comments, checklists, watchers, and attributed activity. |
| Custom fields | Partial or plan-gated. Linear uses opinionated issue properties and labels rather than general-purpose custom fields. | Included. Text, number, checkbox, date, URL, select, and user fields, with multi-value select and user fields, owned by one board or shared across a workspace. |
| Checklists | Partial or plan-gated. Markdown issue descriptions can contain checklist items, but Kanera models assigned, dated checklist work more deeply. | Included. Reusable checklist templates with item assignees, due dates, descriptions, and one level of sub-checklists. Assigned items surface in Home, My Cards, and focused Team Cards. |
| Bulk editing | Included. Multi-select and command menus support fast bulk updates across issues. | Included. Selected cards can change dates, labels, assignees, custom fields, completion, location, copies, or archive state together. |
| Structure & Workflow | ||
| Independent projects | Included. Issues belong to teams with their own workflows, cycles, labels, and templates. | Included. Standalone boards keep their own lists, labels, fields, templates, automations, permissions, and settings. |
| Shared structure | Partial or plan-gated. Projects, initiatives, views, and workspace settings connect work across teams without a Kanera-style shared board schema. | Included. Workspace boards can reuse lists, labels, fields, checklist templates, automations, and reporting. |
| Automation | Included. Workflow automations, integrations, templates, and API actions focus on software delivery processes. | Included. Six card triggers drive ordered actions across labels, assignees, checklist templates, due dates, custom field writes, moves, and completion, at board or workspace level. |
| Reporting | Included. Cycle analytics, project progress, initiative updates, and product insights are designed for development planning. | Included. Table calculations and breakdowns, Portfolio rollups and drill-downs, Work Done history, saved Global Work views, and Excel or JSON export cover operational reporting. |
| One-way board syncing | Not available. Custom views can show issues across teams, while each issue belongs to one team and one project at a time. Linear does not document native one-way copies between project boards. | Included. Selected source lists can feed linked copies on another board, keeping shared card content and mapped workflow context current one way. |
| Collaboration & Access | ||
| Collaboration | Included. Realtime issue comments, mentions, project updates, documents, and integrations keep product teams aligned. | Included. Comments with mentions, quote replies, and thumbs-up acknowledgement, plus attachments, realtime updates, presence, and an attributed activity history beside the work. |
| External access | Partial or plan-gated. Private teams and guests are included from the Business plan. | Partial or plan-gated. Pro keeps guests board-scoped: the first board is free, while a second or later board uses one purchased seat in total. Hosted Free has no guests, and self-hosted has no seat gate. |
| Notes and context | Partial or plan-gated. Project documents and issue descriptions hold product context; Linear is not a broad nested notes or wiki system. | Included. Scratchpad keeps autosaved work in progress private to one person. Personal and shared Notes add nested trees, attachments, search, and card backlinks for durable context. |
| Notifications | Included. Inbox, email, desktop, mobile, and integration notifications are tuned for issue workflows. | Included. An in-app drawer plus per-type delivery to email, browser push, ntfy, Gotify, or your own signed webhook, with per-workspace pause and scoping rules, card and board watching, mentions, assignments, and due dates. The drawer, email, push, and rules are on every plan; ntfy, Gotify, and personal webhooks need Pro or self-hosted. |
| Data & Migration | ||
| API and webhooks | Included. GraphQL API, webhooks, OAuth applications, integrations, and an official SDK support extensibility. | Included. Scoped API keys, a REST API, event-selective webhooks, and built-in Slack, Discord, Telegram, and Zulip chat destinations, all with delivery history, retries, pausing, and secret rotation. Included in Pro and self-hosted; hosted Free has none of them. |
| AI integration | Included. Linear documents an agent platform, Triage and Code Intelligence on paid plans, and a native MCP server for supported clients. | Partial or plan-gated. A native MCP server with OAuth gives compatible AI clients scoped access to live Kanera context and documentation search; AI is not built into the app. |
| Deployment | Not available. Linear is cloud hosted and does not offer a self-hosted edition. | Included. Hosted plans, or a source-available Docker Compose deployment under Elastic License 2.0 with full feature parity and no Kanera per-seat self-hosting fee. |
| Import and export | Included. Linear provides importers and exporters for common development tools. Kanera has no native Linear importer. | Partial or plan-gated. Reviewable Trello JSON, CSV, and Kanera archive import; Excel and JSON export; plus APIs for custom migrations. |
| Where each tool draws the line | ||
| Timeline, Gantt, and dependencies | Partial or plan-gated. Projects, initiatives, and roadmaps carry dates and progress, and issue relations express blocking. Linear does not present a Gantt chart with schedule dependencies. | Not available. Not included. Kanera plans with due dates, Calendar, and Table. There are no Gantt bars, baselines, or dependency links between cards. |
| Time tracking and workload | Partial or plan-gated. Estimates and cycle capacity guide planning; Linear does not run a timer or a workload board. | Not available. No timer and no capacity planning. Numeric custom fields hold estimates or hours, and Table can sum or average them by group. |
| Request forms | Partial or plan-gated. Linear Asks, available from Business, handles intake through Slack rather than a form builder. | Not available. No form builder. Intake arrives through cards, one-way board syncing, or the REST API. |
| Sign-in and provisioning | Included. Enterprise adds SAML and SCIM with granular admin controls. | Partial or plan-gated. Email and password sign-in with organisation, workspace, and board roles. No SAML, OIDC, or SCIM for user accounts yet; AI clients authenticate to MCP with OAuth. |
| Apps and offline use | Included. Native macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android apps. | Partial or plan-gated. Installable PWA on desktop, iOS, and Android with offline board browsing, push notifications, and share-to-card. No native app-store builds. |
| Interface languages | Not available. Linear does not document a localised multi-language interface. | Not available. English only today. |
Competitor details checked August 11, 2026. Linear pricing, Linear priority, Linear display options, Linear features, Linear documentation. Features and packaging can change.
Work Done shows a 60-day daily history of created, moved, and completed cards plus finished checklist items.
Use Home for today, per-board health for local risk, My Cards and Team Cards for execution, and Portfolio for cross-board drill-downs.
Open one keyboard palette to create a card, navigate, change theme, or search cards, notes, comments, and attachment names.
Use Scratchpad for private work in progress, then move durable material into personal or team Notes.
Keep boards fully independent, or reuse lists, labels, fields, checklist templates, and automations across a workspace.
Map source lists into another board so an internal team gets working copies, with local assignees and dates and no custom API bridge.
Use scoped API keys, managed webhooks, and MCP, and export reports to Excel or JSON. Self-host the same product when deployment control matters.
Start with CSV when issue rows are enough. Cycles, releases, project structure, history, and attachments need an explicit migration plan because they do not map directly.
Yes, for teams that want board-led project management across product, operations, marketing, client delivery, and other functions. Kanera uses workspaces, boards, custom fields, automations, and connected views rather than Linear cycles, initiatives, and release workflows.
Kanera can model recurring work with boards, lists, dates, fields, templates, and automations, but it does not have Linear cycles or velocity-based cycle capacity.
Yes. Both products document MCP access. Kanera also provides scoped workspace API keys and managed webhooks.
Linear provides issue triage, cycles, initiatives, releases, roadmaps, cycle analytics, Linear Asks intake, an agent platform, native desktop and mobile apps, and SAML with SCIM on Enterprise.
Kanera has no cycles, no dependency planning, and no SAML or SCIM today, but it covers non-engineering project work with boards, custom fields, Calendar, Table reporting, notes, and cross-board views.
Kanera can import issue rows from CSV and map titles, workflow states, people, dates, labels, comments, and custom fields.
Projects, cycles, releases, history, and attachments need separate mapping decisions when they are not represented in the CSV.
Try the full product for 30 days. No card required.
No card required, 30-day Pro trial, free plan available