Linear (Project management for software teams)
Created by: Karri Saarinen, Tuomas Artman, Jori Lallo

Linear's pricing reads like a quiet refusal to compete on price. Two paid tiers, no enterprise theatrics, premium positioning baked into the simplicity.

TL;DR: Linear's pricing is minimalist: Free, Basic, Business, plus a custom Enterprise. The page itself is shorter than most competitors' single-tier descriptions. The simplicity is a positioning move: Linear is for design-conscious teams that resent over-complicated tools, including over-complicated pricing pages. The lesson: pricing-page minimalism can BE the positioning.

What they sell: Issue tracking and project management built for high-velocity software teams.
Who it's for: Software engineering teams from startups to scale-ups who reject Jira's complexity.
Pricing model: Per-seat tiered subscription with minimalist tier structure
Payment frequency: Monthly or annual, with annual discount
Free trial behavior: Free tier is the trial; paid tiers have no separate trial period required for evaluation.
Number of tiers: 4

Anchor pattern: Restraint as anchor
There is no anchor tier in the traditional sense because there is no tier designed to look expensive. The Business tier at approximately $14/user/mo is the implicit center. The page's psychological anchor is its own brevity: the pricing decision feels low-stakes because the page itself feels low-stakes.

Upgrade trigger: Issue-count cap plus team-feature need
Free's 250-issue limit is the structural trigger. Beyond that, the upgrade from Basic to Business is driven by cross-team planning needs (cycles, roadmaps, sub-teams). The trigger is layered: first volume, then workflow complexity. Both triggers map to natural team growth, not arbitrary feature gates.

What's working:
Page minimalism IS positioning. Linear's audience resents enterprise pricing-page theatrics, and the brevity speaks to that audience without copy.|Issue-count cap on free tier creates a structural upgrade trigger that aligns with team growth.|Business tier features (cycles, projects, roadmaps) are the specific things growing software teams actually adopt, so the upgrade trigger is feature-matched.|Enterprise tier is a single sales-contact line, no theater, which matches the audience's preference for direct dealing.|Annual discount captures price-sensitive teams without forcing the choice on the monthly buyer.

What to adapt:
Pricing-page minimalism can BE the positioning when your audience resents tooling complexity. Brevity reads as confidence.|Use a volume cap on free tier (not a feature gate) when your buyer's volume scales with team success.|Layer upgrade triggers: volume first (mechanical), then workflow (intentional). Each tier should solve a different scaling problem.

What to avoid:
Do not adopt minimalist pricing if your buyer needs the per-feature breakdown to justify procurement. Some audiences require the long page.|Do not skip an Enterprise tier if your audience includes companies with mandatory procurement review. The Enterprise tier exists for the procurement department, not the user.

Brunson lens:
Stack: Restrained stack — minimal feature lists per tier, trusts the buyer to recognize what is included.
Value ladder: Four-rung ladder (Free → Basic → Business → Enterprise) with intentional simplicity at each rung.
Decoy/anchor: No decoy. Business tier sits as the implicit center. Restraint substitutes for explicit anchor mechanics.
Payment mechanics: Per-user monthly or annual with annual discount; no usage metering, no add-ons.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-17