Linear vs Jira, and PostHog vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude: What a 40-Engineer Team Pays in 2026
By Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CEO of Visiting Media, former CMO of Mozilla and BitTorrent
Last updated October 29, 2026 · 8 min read
Choose Linear Business for a product engineering team that wants speed and velocity reporting without a Jira admin, and Jira Standard if price or time tracking decides it, since it is the cheapest paid tracker here at about $8.48 a seat. For product analytics, choose PostHog if engineers own it and most traffic is anonymous, Mixpanel if product managers own it and every event belongs to a logged-in user, and Amplitude if you want the largest free tier (2M events a month).
These are two separate purchases, and teams tend to make them in the same quarter: the month the company hires its twentieth engineer and its first full-time product manager. One is priced per seat. The other is priced per event. That difference matters more than any feature on either list, because a seat bill grows with your headcount and an event bill grows with your customers.
The tracker gets the attention. An engineering lead can burn three weeks of Slack threads on Linear versus Jira, a decision worth about $300 a month at 40 seats, and then accept whichever analytics SDK the first growth hire happened to install. At 10M events a month, that second choice can move the bill by more than $750.
Linear figures come from linear.app/pricing, Jira figures from Atlassian’s Jira pricing page, and analytics figures from the PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude pricing pages, all checked October 28 and 29, 2026. PostHog’s volume math reuses the per-event bands in our PostHog vs Mixpanel comparison.
Linear vs Jira pricing for 40 engineers
| Feature | Linear | Jira |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Unlimited members, 250 issues, 2 teams | Up to 10 users, 2 GB storage |
| Entry paid plan | Basic, $10/user/mo billed yearly, up to 5 teams | Standard, $8.48/user/mo |
| Plan most growing teams need | Business, $16/user/mo billed yearly | Premium, $15.56/user/mo |
| 40 seats, entry plan | $400/mo ($4,800/yr) | About $339/mo (about $4,070/yr) |
| 40 seats, upper plan | $640/mo ($7,680/yr) | About $622/mo (about $7,469/yr) |
| Velocity and throughput reporting | Cycle progress on every plan; Linear Insights on Business | Velocity chart and sprint reports on scrum boards |
| Cross-team planning | Initiatives and projects; unlimited teams on Business | Advanced planning (Plans) on Premium |
| Automation allowance | Built-in workflow automations, such as auto-close and PR-driven status changes | 150 steps/mo on Free, 400 per user on Standard, 750 per user on Premium |
| Biggest trade-off | No native time tracking; custom fields are curated | Needs an admin; Marketplace apps add cost |
Two things in that table will surprise anyone working from an older comparison, including a few of ours. Linear no longer sells an $8 Standard tier. Its plans are Free, Basic and Business, and the cheapest paid seat is now $10. Jira, meanwhile, is the cheapest paid option on this page.
Atlassian prices per user on a sliding scale, and the $8.48 and $15.56 figures are the monthly rates its pricing page publishes. Run your exact headcount through Atlassian’s calculator before you put a number in a budget, and add whatever you spend on Marketplace apps, which Linear mostly replaces with built-in GitHub and Slack integrations.
The real Linear price for most teams is $16. Basic caps you at five teams and leaves out Insights, private teams, Linear Asks and the Zendesk and Intercom integrations. Forty engineers usually means six or more teams, and someone will ask for a throughput chart within a month.
Velocity: what each tracker actually measures
Jira’s velocity chart is the familiar one, story points committed against story points completed, sprint by sprint, and a director can run a staff meeting off it for years. Linear’s cycles run on a schedule whether or not anyone holds a planning ceremony, and on Business, Insights slices cycle time and throughput by team or project.
Neither number tells you whether the team is fast. Points are a planning currency each team mints for itself, so comparing velocity across two teams compares two exchange rates. Engineers who move from a mature Jira instance to Linear tend to report that they feel faster within a week, and the honest explanation is less time spent filling in fields, which no velocity chart was ever going to capture.
That is where the analytics tool comes in, and why we put both decisions on one page. The tracker tells you a feature shipped on the Thursday of cycle 14. Only PostHog, Mixpanel or Amplitude tells you whether anyone clicked it the following Monday.
PostHog vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude: free tiers and event pricing
| Feature | PostHog | Mixpanel | Amplitude |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free events / month | 1M | 1M | 2M |
| Free session replays / month | 5K web, 2.5K mobile | 10K | 10K |
| Other free allowances | 1M feature flag requests; surveys and error tracking metered separately | Unlimited seats, up to 10 active feature flags | Feature flags, web experiments, guides and surveys included |
| Billing model | Per product, per event; identified events cost extra | Events per month in volume bands, one rate per event | Event-based; Plus starts at $0 and scales to 70M events |
| Cost at 2M events / month | About $50 anonymous, about $248 identified | $185 (Growth, annual billing) | $0 (inside the Free plan) |
| Cost at 5M events / month | About $153 anonymous, about $560 identified | $438 | Not published; Amplitude estimator |
| Cost at 10M events / month | About $324 anonymous, about $1,080 identified | $840 | Not published; Amplitude estimator |
| Published ceiling before sales | None; every band is published | 20M events on Growth | 70M events on Plus |
| Data retention | Replays: 1 month free, 90 days paid | Replays: 30 days on Free and Growth | Events: 1 year on Free, 2 years on Plus |
| Biggest trade-off | Identified events can cost more than Mixpanel | No published price above 20M events | No per-volume price on the page |
Amplitude’s 2M free events is the most generous number here, and it is a real advantage for a seed-stage product doing a few thousand weekly actives. Past 2M you lose the ability to price it from the website. Amplitude’s page says Plus “starts at $0,” asks for a credit card, and points you to an estimator. That is fine for a buyer with a growth lead who enjoys vendor calls. It is annoying for a CTO who wants a number for next year’s plan by Friday.
PostHog is the only one of the three that publishes every band, which is why its column has numbers all the way down. The catch is the identified-events add-on. If every event in your B2B app is tied to a logged-in user, PostHog at 10M events costs about $1,080 against Mixpanel’s $840. If most of your traffic is an anonymous marketing site and signup flow, PostHog drops to about $324. Find out your split before you read anyone’s pricing table, including this one.
Check one thing before you compare anything else. Mixpanel’s startup program gives companies founded less than five years ago, with $8M or less in total funding, a free first year with 1 billion events and 1 million session replays. If you qualify, take it.
Then plan for month thirteen.
The combined bill at three stages
| Feature | Tracker (monthly) | Analytics (monthly) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 engineers, 2M events: Jira Free + Amplitude Free | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| 10 engineers, 2M events: Linear Basic + PostHog, mostly anonymous | $100 | About $50 | About $150 |
| 40 engineers, 5M events: Jira Standard + Mixpanel Growth | About $339 | $438 | About $777 |
| 40 engineers, 5M events: Linear Business + PostHog, mostly anonymous | $640 | About $153 | About $793 |
| 40 engineers, 10M events: Linear Business + PostHog, all identified | $640 | About $1,080 | About $1,720 |
| 40 engineers, 10M events: Jira Premium + Mixpanel Growth | About $622 | $840 | About $1,462 |
The row worth staring at is the fifth one. A team that bought Linear Business for the right reasons and PostHog for the right reasons, then attached a person profile to every event because the SDK made it easy, ends up as the most expensive stack on the page. PostHog lets you turn profiles off for anonymous traffic. Do it in week one.
Mixpanel figures are annual-billing list prices. Jira figures are Atlassian’s published monthly rates. None of the totals include Jira Marketplace apps or PostHog session replay overages. Amplitude past 2M events is missing too, because Amplitude doesn’t publish it.
A migration plan that covers both tools
If you are leaving Jira, the hard part is everything your team built on top of the issues. Our Linear vs Jira switching guide covers the field audit, JQL rebuilds and who should stay. The short version, in order:
- Pull every Jira custom field and mark which ones a saved filter or dashboard actually uses. Delete the rest from the import.
- Name an owner for each JQL filter leadership opens weekly. Usually there are three or four.
- Pilot one team in Linear for a full cycle, starting at a cycle boundary.
- Import open work and the last few months. Leave the archive in read-only Jira.
- Wire Linear’s GitHub integration on day one, since automatic PR status changes are most of the speed people notice.
Analytics migrations go wrong in a different way. Run the old and new SDKs side by side for at least one full month before you switch dashboards, or your retention cohorts will start from zero and the board deck will show a cliff that never happened. Write down your event names before you send the first event to the new tool. Every analytics vendor will happily ingest “Signup,” “SignUp,” “signed_up” and “user_signup” as four separate events and bill you for all of them.
Where each option wins
Linear wins for product engineering teams whose Jira instance, if they have one, is mostly tickets and sprints. Jira wins on price at the Standard tier, for teams that need time tracking or share an instance with Jira Service Management, and for orgs that plan across many teams with Advanced planning. Our Linear vs Jira vs Shortcut comparison covers the third tracker that gets shortlisted.
PostHog wins for engineer-owned analytics with mostly anonymous traffic, and for teams that want replay, feature flags, experiments and surveys on one bill. Mixpanel wins for analyst and PM-led teams whose events nearly all belong to logged-in users, and for anyone eligible for its startup program. Amplitude wins on free volume up to 2M events, and for growth teams that expect to buy an enterprise contract anyway. For marketing analytics next to these, see Google Analytics vs Mixpanel vs Amplitude.
Linear: Strengths and Weaknesses
✓Pros
- ✓Fast enough that engineers keep the tracker open instead of avoiding it
- ✓Branch names and PR status link to issues automatically
- ✓Almost no administration, so no senior engineer moonlighting as Jira admin
- ✓Free plan has no member cap
✗Cons
- ✗Cheapest paid seat is now $10, above Jira Standard
- ✗Insights and more than five teams require Business at $16
- ✗No native time tracking
Jira: Strengths and Weaknesses
✓Pros
- ✓Lowest paid per-seat price on this page at $8.48
- ✓Velocity chart and sprint reports are standard on scrum boards
- ✓Advanced planning across teams on Premium
✗Cons
- ✗A mature instance needs a dedicated admin
- ✗Automation is metered: 400 steps per user per month on Standard
- ✗Marketplace apps add cost that never shows up in the seat price
- ✗Slower day-to-day for engineers who live in it
The Verdict
For a growing product engineering team in 2026, our pick is Linear Business paired with PostHog, with person profiles switched off for anonymous traffic. Pick Jira Standard instead if the $300 a month at 40 seats matters or you need time tracking, and Mixpanel instead of PostHog if product managers own analytics and nearly every event belongs to a logged-in user. Amplitude is the right first install for a product under 2M events a month that expects to sign an enterprise contract later. Before you sign either, count two things: how many teams you will have in a year, and what share of your events need a person attached.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Linear cost compared with Jira in 2026?
Linear's paid plans are Basic at $10 per user per month and Business at $16, both billed yearly. Atlassian lists Jira Standard at $8.48 and Jira Premium at $15.56 per user per month. For 40 engineers that is $400 (Linear Basic), $640 (Linear Business), about $339 (Jira Standard) and about $622 (Jira Premium) a month. Jira Free covers up to 10 users; Linear Free covers unlimited members but only 250 issues.
Which product analytics tool has the biggest free tier: PostHog, Mixpanel or Amplitude?
Amplitude, on raw event volume. Its Free plan includes 2M events a month and 10K session replays. Mixpanel Free includes 1M events, 10K session replays and unlimited seats. PostHog's free allowance is 1M events, 5K web recordings and 1M feature flag requests, with each product metered separately. Prices checked October 29, 2026.
What does 10M events a month cost on PostHog, Mixpanel and Amplitude?
About $324 a month on PostHog if the events are anonymous, or about $1,080 if every event is attached to a person profile. Mixpanel Growth lists $840 a month on annual billing. Amplitude does not publish a price at that volume: its Plus plan starts at $0, includes the first 2M events, scales to 70M events, and sends you to an estimator for the number.
Does Linear have velocity reports like Jira?
Partly. Linear shows cycle progress on every plan, but Linear Insights, its reporting tool for throughput and cycle time, is listed on the Business plan at $16 per user per month. Jira's velocity chart and sprint reports come with Jira's scrum boards. If your engineering manager runs a weekly velocity review, price Linear at Business, not Basic.
How long does a Jira to Linear migration take?
The import itself takes an afternoon. The work around it takes longer: an audit of custom fields and JQL filters before the import, then one team piloting Linear for a full cycle while everyone else stays in Jira. Switch at a cycle boundary, never mid-sprint, and import open work plus recent history rather than the whole archive.
Related Comparisons
Browse every head-to-head in all SaaS comparisons, or start with these:
- Linear vs Jira switching guide: what stays behind when a Jira team moves
- PostHog vs Mixpanel: session replay pricing and warehouse integration in detail
- Linear vs Jira vs GitHub Issues: if you are tempted to skip a tracker entirely
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