Linear's free plan and its 250-issue limit

Linear Free lists 250 issues, two teams and unlimited members. If the limit is making your team reconsider its tracker, compare the work you need to preserve and the workflow you want next. Gitsu is our recommendation for teams that want their issues in GitHub and a dedicated client for daily triage, filtering and bulk editing.

This guide distinguishes the allowance from the behavior documented for cancelling a paid subscription. It also explains automatic archiving, the paid alternative and a move to GitHub. Prices and billing behavior below come from official Linear pages checked on 7 October 2026. A limit alone is not a reason to discard your issue history.

What is Linear's free plan limit, and do archived issues count?

Linear's pricing page lists 250 issues, two teams and unlimited members on Free. The same page lists Basic with five teams and unlimited issues. Business has unlimited teams and issues. Compare the plan's workflow and access requirements as well as the issue count: a workspace may need a paid feature before it approaches the issue allowance.

The public pricing page says “250 issues”. It does not establish an active-versus-archived counting rule for every workspace. Check your in-app notice and Linear's current documentation before deciding that archived records are excluded. Keep a copy of that notice with your evaluation, including the account's plan and date, if the exact boundary determines your decision.

What happens when you exceed 250 issues?

Linear's billing documentation says that cancelling a paid subscription with more than 250 issues prevents creating new issues; it also says nothing is deleted when cancelling. That is a documented cancellation case, not proof of every workspace's behavior when creating issue 251.

Before cancelling, check the number of issues and which plan features the team uses. The billing page explains that subscription changes take effect at the end of the billing period. Do not assume a cancellation immediately changes the workspace or that deleting history is the necessary remedy. If the notice is unclear, resolve that with Linear before choosing a migration based on an uncertain counting rule.

Can you archive issues to stay on Free?

Linear archives automatically. Its archive documentation explicitly says there is no option to manually archive items. You can adjust the auto-archive period in team settings. The documentation explains that changes usually take effect on the next run, typically within 24 hours.

Closed issues must remain completed, cancelled or auto-closed and inactive for the configured period. A parent, sub-issue, active cycle or unfinished project can prevent archiving. Check those relationships when old closed issues remain visible; repeatedly looking for a manual Archive action will not solve the problem.

Automatic archiving can keep an established workflow manageable. It does not by itself prove which records count toward the commercial allowance. Separate those questions: first confirm archive eligibility, then confirm the billing notice for your workspace. Do not delete useful history just to make a counter smaller without understanding its rules.

Is paying for Linear Basic the right choice?

Paying fits a team that relies on Linear's workflows and wants to keep its planning record there. The pricing page, checked on 7 October 2026, lists Basic at $10 per user per month and Business at $16, billed yearly. Basic includes unlimited issues and five teams. Confirm the selected billing interval and current offer before comparing totals. To set Basic against Plane, Shortcut, Jira and Zenhub, read the Linear alternatives comparison.

For five members, Basic's displayed yearly-billed rate is $50 per month, or $600 for the year before tax and adjustments. Compare the actual yearly commitment with a monthly option rather than treating an annualised display as a monthly charge. Linear's billing documentation describes how adding or suspending users changes yearly billing; the initial seat count is not a guarantee that the entire year's invoice stays fixed.

When should you move the work to GitHub Issues?

Move when the team wants GitHub to hold its shared issue record and is ready to accept the migration's costs. GitHub Issues puts work beside the code and pull requests. Gitsu then provides a dedicated daily client for those GitHub Projects boards, so keeping work in GitHub does not mean relying on github.com's interface for every triage session.

Map the workflow before exporting: repositories, status, priorities, estimates, iterations, assignees and parent links. Choose which history must remain accessible. A CSV is an input to that plan, not evidence that every comment, attachment and relationship can be restored. The migration planning guide supplies a read-only planner and explains the data a real importer must preserve or report as lost.

Pilot one repository before committing the whole team. Reconcile the planned and imported counts, inspect a sample of descriptions and relationships, and agree on accepted losses. The Gitsu web app has a Linear importer (first 50 issues free); otherwise Gitsu becomes useful after the issues are in GitHub and included in a GitHub Project.

Where does Gitsu fit after the move?

Gitsu makes daily GitHub board work available through dense lists, keyboard controls, nested AND/OR filters and bulk edits. Its free web app works on the GitHub records your team already uses; paid Seats add the macOS app, agents and MCP access. One person can adopt it while colleagues keep using GitHub, or a small team can buy Seats only for the desktop users.

There is no commercial per-issue quota in Gitsu, but the client loads up to 2,000 items per project and shows one project at a time. A larger board is incomplete in the client. Check the size of the project you intend to use before treating Gitsu as a replacement for a workflow that needs every record loaded together.

Gitsu supports priorities, estimates, existing iteration fields and a single-project roadmap. It has no automatic cycle rollover, velocity report or triage inbox. The Linear comparison separates those specific differences from the everyday issue workflow. GitHub remains the system of record; Gitsu uses local caches, a web proxy and hosted AI processing as explained in data handling.

Which path should you take?

Try Gitsu on an existing GitHub project if your team wants its work beside the code and needs keyboard controls, filtering and bulk edits for daily use. If your issues are currently in Linear, evaluate the field map and migration pilot first. The free web app lets you assess the client separately from the paid desktop decision.

Keep Linear if the team depends on its automated cycles, triage or workspace features and the paid offer fits the budget. Check automatic archive settings if closed history is cluttering the workspace. In each case, choose from documented behavior and the team's actual requirements. Preserve the original export and accepted-loss record so a later question about missing history has a concrete answer.