Linear vs Railway
Linear and Railway are both developer tools tools. Linear is aimed at developers and small businesses, while Railway is aimed at developers. Railway costs less, from $5/mo versus $10/mo for Linear. Both have a free plan.
| Pricing | Freemium · $10 | Freemium · $5 |
| Starting price | $10/mo | $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | 30 days |
| Built for | Developers, Small businesses | Developers |
| Platforms | web, macos, windows, ios, android | web |
| Country | US · 2019 | US · 2020 |
| Rating | — | — |
Choose Linear if
Product and engineering teams from 3 to a few hundred people who ship continuously and want speed over configurability.
- Fastest issue tracker in day-to-day use; keyboard-first design
- Opinionated structure keeps teams consistent without configuration
- Excellent GitHub, Slack and Sentry integrations
Look elsewhere if: Organizations that need bespoke workflows, custom issue hierarchies, or a single tool for marketing, HR and engineering.
Choose Railway if
Developers and small teams who want Heroku-like simplicity with modern pricing.
- Fastest path from repo to running backend
- Transparent usage pricing with limits
- Great DX and templates
Look elsewhere if: Workloads needing many managed cloud services or extreme cost optimization.
Linear vs Railway pricing
Linear
- Free$0Unlimited members, 2 teams, 250 issues
- Basic$10/user/moBilled yearly; 5 teams, unlimited issues and uploads, admin roles
- Business$16/user/moBilled yearly; unlimited teams, private teams, Insights, Asks
- EnterpriseCustomAnnual only; SAML, SCIM, advanced security
Railway
- Free$030-day trial with $5 credit, then $1/mo; 0.5 GB RAM
- Hobby$5/moMinimum usage, $5 credit included; single developer
- Pro$20/moMinimum usage, $20 credit; unlimited workspace seats
- EnterpriseCustomSSO, RBAC, HIPAA BAAs, dedicated VMs
Linear · Key features
- Cycles (sprints) with automatic rollover and capacity view
- Projects and initiatives with milestones, updates and roadmap views
- Triage inbox for bugs and requests from Slack, Intercom, Zendesk and Sentry
- GitHub/GitLab automation: branch naming, PR links and auto-close on merge
- Insights dashboards for velocity, scope change and cycle time
- Local-first sync engine; the app works offline and feels instant
Cons
- Limited customization compared with Jira (no custom issue types)
- Reporting is improving but still lighter than enterprise tools
- Not designed for non-engineering departments
Railway · Key features
- Deploy from GitHub or Docker with automatic builds
- Managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis, MongoDB templates
- Environments, PR environments and private networking
- Visual project canvas and config as code
- Per-second usage billing with spend limits
- Cron jobs, volumes, custom domains and metrics
Cons
- Can be more expensive than a VPS for steady loads
- Fewer managed services than big clouds
- Regions limited compared with AWS
Linear vs Railway: FAQ
Which is cheaper, Linear or Railway?
Railway starts at $5/mo and Linear at $10/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.
Do Linear and Railway have a free plan?
Yes, both Linear and Railway have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.
Which is better for small businesses, Linear or Railway?
Linear lists small businesses as a core audience, while Railway is aimed more at developers.