Height vs Plane

Height was an AI-powered project management tool that aimed to automate the busywork of tracking tasks. It combined a fast, keyboard-friendly interface with list, kanban, calendar and Gantt views, chat threads on every task, GitHub and Slack integrations, and an AI layer that triaged incoming bugs, wrote status updates and groomed backlogs.

The company announced in March 2025 that it would wind down, and the service went offline on September 24, 2025, roughly seven years after it started. Customers were given several months to export tasks and projects before the shutdown; no acquisition was announced, and the product is no longer available to new or existing users. Before closing, Height 2.0 had repositioned the product around autonomous AI features, with agents meant to handle project chores in the background.

This page remains as a record and to help former users choose a replacement. Linear is the closest match for engineering teams that liked Height's speed and keyboard-driven design. Shortcut, which published a guide for teams leaving Height, is a close alternative for product and engineering teams that work with stories, epics and iterations. ClickUp suits teams that want an all-in-one workspace with docs and goals, Asana suits cross-functional teams, and Plane is an open-source option that can be self-hosted, so a vendor shutdown cannot take your project data offline again.

Plane is an open-source project management and issue tracking tool founded in 2022 that sits between Jira's flexibility and Linear's simplicity. Teams organise work into issues, cycles (sprints), modules for larger initiatives and saved views, and can switch between list, kanban, calendar, spreadsheet and Gantt layouts. Pages provide built-in documentation and Intake collects requests for triage.

The Community edition is free to self-host under the AGPL with Docker or Kubernetes. Plane Cloud has a free plan for small teams and paid Pro and Business tiers per user that add time tracking, custom workflows and work item types, bulk operations, dashboards, advanced permissions, SSO and Plane AI, while Enterprise covers self-managed deployments with support and audit logs. Importers from Jira, Linear, Asana and GitHub ease migration, and an API, webhooks and Slack and GitHub integrations connect it to the rest of the stack.

Plane fits engineering and product teams who want Linear-style workflows with data ownership, a self-host option or lower per-seat prices. It is less polished than Linear, its integration ecosystem is smaller than Jira's, self-hosting requires maintenance and reporting is still maturing. Linear remains the benchmark for speed and design, Jira for enterprise reporting and marketplace apps, and Huly or OpenProject are other open-source options. The project has grown quickly, with a large GitHub following and frequent releases.