Choose Plane if: You want the closest Linear UI equivalent with minimal learning curve Your team is 5-50 developers migrating from Linear You want a focused tool (project management only, no chat/docs) You need the most polished import from Linear Choose Huly if: You want to consolidate multiple SaaS tools into one self-hosted platform Your team currently pays for Linear + Slack + Notion separately Built-in video office and real-time collaboration matter You're comfortable with more complex init

Best Open Source Linear Alternatives to Self-Host 2026

TL;DR

Linear costs $8/user/month (Standard) to $16/user/month (Plus). For a 10-person engineering team, that's $960–1,920/year for project management software. Plane is the closest open-source equivalent to Linear's interface and workflow — 30K+ GitHub stars, free to self-host, and actively maintained. Huly is the more ambitious option, replacing Linear plus Slack, Notion, and project tracking in one platform. Both self-host cleanly on Docker Compose.

Key Takeaways

Linear pricing: $8/user/month (Standard) — $0 for open-source alternatives
Plane: 30K+ GitHub stars, AGPL-3.0, direct Linear feature parity, Docker Compose self-host
Huly: 18K+ GitHub stars, EPL-2.0, all-in-one (Jira + Slack + Notion in one), self-hostable
Plane advantage: closest to Linear UX, best for teams migrating directly from Linear
Huly advantage: consolidates 3-4 SaaS tools into one — higher setup complexity, bigger reward
Both: free self-hosted, active development, no per-seat fees
Linear import: Plane has CSV import; GitHub sync works on both

Why Teams Leave Linear

Linear is excellent. The complaints that push teams toward alternatives are almost entirely about pricing and data control:

Linear pricing (2026):
  Free:     5 members, 250 issues — too limited for real teams
  Standard: $8/user/month — $960/year for 10 people
  Plus:     $16/user/month — $1,920/year for 10 people
  Enterprise: Custom (SSO, compliance, dedicated support)

Pain points:
  - No self-host option — cloud-only
  - Per-seat pricing scales linearly (obviously) with team growth
  - Data residency concerns — Linear's servers (US/EU), no on-prem
  - No full data export — issues, cycles, and metadata export but attachments are limited

Feature Comparison

Feature	Linear	Plane	Huly
GitHub Stars	—	30K+	18K+
License	Proprietary	AGPL-3.0	EPL-2.0
Self-host	❌	✅	✅
Cloud option	✅	✅	✅
Issues/tasks	✅	✅	✅
Cycles/Sprints	✅	✅ (Cycles)	✅
Kanban board	✅	✅	✅
Roadmap/Gantt	✅	✅	✅
Sub-issues	✅	✅	✅
Priority/Labels	✅	✅	✅
Custom workflows	✅	✅	✅
GitHub sync	✅	✅	✅ (deep)
Docs/Wiki built-in	⚠️ Basic	✅ Pages	✅ Notion-like
Team chat	❌	❌	✅ Slack-like
Video office	❌	❌	✅
CRM module	❌	❌	✅
AI features	⚠️ Limited	⚠️ Limited	✅ AI transcription
UI quality	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

1. Plane — Best Direct Linear Replacement

GitHub Stars: 30,000+ | License: AGPL-3.0 | Self-host: ✅

Plane's UI and workflow are the closest to Linear of any open-source alternative. If your team is switching from Linear and wants minimal cognitive adjustment, Plane is the answer.

What Plane Calls Things (vs. Linear)

Linear term    →  Plane term
Issues         →  Issues
Cycles         →  Cycles (same name)
Projects       →  Projects
Views          →  Views
Teams          →  Workspaces/Projects
Milestones     →  Modules
Triage         →  Intake

Self-Host Plane

# Quick start (development/testing)
git clone https://github.com/makeplane/plane.git
cd plane
./setup.sh
# Follow the prompts — sets up Docker Compose automatically
docker compose -f docker-compose.yml up -d

# Production docker-compose.yml (simplified)
version: "3.8"
services:
  web:
    image: makeplane/plane-frontend:stable
    command: node web/server.js
    restart: unless-stopped

  api:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-api.sh
    environment:
      SECRET_KEY: ${SECRET_KEY}
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://plane:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@plane-db/plane
      REDIS_URL: redis://plane-redis:6379/0
      EMAIL_HOST: ${EMAIL_HOST}
      EMAIL_HOST_USER: ${EMAIL_HOST_USER}
      EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: ${EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD}
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    restart: unless-stopped

  worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-worker.sh
    environment:
      SECRET_KEY: ${SECRET_KEY}
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://plane:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@plane-db/plane
      REDIS_URL: redis://plane-redis:6379/0
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    restart: unless-stopped

  beat-worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:stable
    command: ./bin/docker-entrypoint-beat.sh
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    restart: unless-stopped

  plane-db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: plane
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: plane
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  plane-redis:
    image: redis:6-alpine
    volumes:
      - redisdata:/data

  plane-minio:
    image: minio/minio:latest
    command: server /data
    environment:
      MINIO_ROOT_USER: ${AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID}
      MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}
    volumes:
      - uploads:/data

  nginx:
    image: nginx:alpine
    ports:
      - "80:80"
    volumes:
      - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

volumes:
  pgdata:
  redisdata:
  uploads:

# Generate your .env file
cat > .env << 'EOF'
SECRET_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 16)
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=plane
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(openssl rand -hex 16)
WEB_URL=https://plane.yourdomain.com
EOF

# Start
docker compose up -d

# Create admin user
docker exec plane-api-1 python manage.py create_admin_user \
  --email admin@yourdomain.com \
  --password yourpassword

Plane Intake (Triage)

One of Plane's standout features is Intake — a triage queue where bug reports and feature requests arrive before being triaged into issues. This mirrors Linear's Triage mode directly.

Intake workflow:
  1. External form or API submits item to Intake
  2. Team reviews in Intake queue
  3. Accept → converts to Issue (with full metadata)
  4. Decline → archives with optional response
  5. Duplicate → links to existing issue

2. Huly — Best All-in-One Replacement

GitHub Stars: 18,000+ | License: Eclipse Public License 2.0 | Self-host: ✅

Huly is more ambitious than Plane. It aims to replace your entire collaboration stack — Linear for project tracking, Slack for team chat, Notion for docs, and Calendly/motion for scheduling — in one self-hosted platform.

What Huly replaces:
  Linear:   ✅ Issue tracking, cycles, roadmaps
  Slack:    ✅ Channels, threads, DMs, reactions
  Notion:   ✅ Wikis, databases, docs
  Calendly: ✅ Meeting scheduling
  Zoom/Meet: ✅ Built-in video office (Chunter)
  HR tools: ✅ Basic HR module

Self-Host Huly

git clone https://github.com/hcengineering/huly-selfhost.git
cd huly-selfhost

# Copy and edit environment config
cp .env.template .env
nano .env
# Set: HOST_ADDRESS, SECRET, MINIO_SECRET, etc.

# Start the stack
docker compose up -d

# Huly available at http://localhost:8083

# Huly services (simplified overview):
services:
  account:    # Authentication service
  front:      # Web UI
  transactor: # Real-time collaboration engine
  collaborator: # Document collaboration
  santeam:    # Team management
  love:       # Video office (WebRTC)
  mongodb:    # Database
  minio:      # Object storage
  elastic:    # Full-text search
  rekoni:     # Content extraction
  nginx:      # Reverse proxy

Huly's architecture is more complex than Plane (11+ services vs. Plane's 6), but the Docker Compose handles all of it automatically.

Huly's GitHub Integration

Huly's GitHub sync is deeper than most alternatives:

Bi-directional sync:
  - Create issue in Huly → creates GitHub issue
  - Comment on GitHub → appears in Huly
  - PR merged → closes linked Huly issue
  - GitHub project board ↔ Huly project board

Setup:
  1. Install Huly GitHub App on your org
  2. In Huly: Settings → Integrations → GitHub
  3. Select repositories to sync
  4. Map Huly projects to GitHub repos

Migrating from Linear

Export from Linear

# Linear: Settings → Import/Export → Export
# Downloads a ZIP with:
#   issues.csv     — all issues with metadata
#   comments.csv   — all comments
#   attachments/   — file attachments

# Structure:
# Issue ID, Title, Description, Status, Priority,
# Assignee, Labels, Cycle, Created, Updated

Import to Plane

# Plane → Workspace Settings → Imports → Linear
# Upload the CSV export
# Map fields: Linear Status → Plane State, etc.

# Plane's importer handles:
#   - Issues with descriptions
#   - Labels → Labels
#   - States (Todo/In Progress/Done) → mapped automatically
#   - Priority levels
#   - Assignees (if emails match)

# Manual check after import:
#   - Custom fields (may need recreation)
#   - Sub-issues (may need relinking)
#   - Attachments (download from Linear, re-upload to Plane)

Cost Comparison

Tool	Cost (10 users)	Self-host	Data control
Linear Standard	$960/year	❌	❌
Linear Plus	$1,920/year	❌	❌
Plane Cloud Pro	$960/year	✅	✅
Plane self-hosted	$120-300/year (VPS)	✅	✅
Huly Cloud	Free/$4/user	✅	✅
Huly self-hosted	$120-300/year (VPS)	✅	✅

Both Plane and Huly require a VPS with at least 4GB RAM for a production self-hosted deployment. A Hetzner CPX31 (~$8/month, 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM) handles 10-50 users comfortably.

Which to Choose

Choose Plane if:

You want the closest Linear UI equivalent with minimal learning curve
Your team is 5-50 developers migrating from Linear
You want a focused tool (project management only, no chat/docs)
You need the most polished import from Linear

Choose Huly if:

You want to consolidate multiple SaaS tools into one self-hosted platform
Your team currently pays for Linear + Slack + Notion separately
Built-in video office and real-time collaboration matter
You're comfortable with more complex initial setup

Full list of open-source Linear alternatives at OSSAlt.

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