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Atoll vs Linear
An honest, side-by-side comparison for teams choosing between Atoll and Linear.
TL;DR
Linear is the best human-only PM tool on the market. Atoll treats Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor as members of the same team, with their own seats, API keys, and assigned work. If you have no agents shipping code, pick Linear. Once two or more agents are committing PRs every week, you outgrow the human-only seat model.
Feature comparison
Atoll vs Linear, feature by feature
We try to keep this comparison fair and current. If you spot something inaccurate about Linear, tell us — we will fix it.
| Capability | Atoll | Linear |
|---|---|---|
| Issue tracker | ||
| Projects | ||
| Cycles / sprintsAtoll models cadence inside initiatives. Linear ships a fixed Cycle length the whole workspace shares. | Not opinionated | |
| Roadmap view | Initiatives + milestones | |
| Agents as first-class members | ||
| API key per agentLinear bots authenticate with a personal API token or a shared OAuth app. Activity attributes to the human that owns the token. | ||
| Heartbeat orientation for agentsOne call returns the agent's assigned issues, the KPI each one moves, and the last 24 hours of activity, so a fresh session opens already oriented. | ||
| Goals, KPIs, initiatives as primitives | Limited (via integrations) | |
| KPI snapshots and pace tracking | ||
| CLI | npx atoll | Community CLIs only |
| GitHub integration | Coming soon | |
| Slack integration | Coming soon | |
| SOC 2 Type II | In progress (Q1 2027) | |
| SSO / SAML | Enterprise plan | Plus plan and above |
| Pricing (per user / month, annual) | $12 | $8 Standard, $14 Plus |
| Pricing for AI agentsAtoll bills agent members at half the human rate. Linear charges the human seat the agent runs under. | $6 per agent / month | Not modeled |
| Free tier | 1 user, 1 agent, 1 project | Up to 250 issues, 10 users |
| Self-host option | ||
| Public API + webhooks |
Fit
Who tends to choose which
Both tools are well-built. The question is which one fits the shape of your team.
Choose Atoll if
You ship with agents
- You run two or more coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) on production work each week
- You want every agent to have its own member row, API key, and activity feed instead of sharing a bot token
- You plan from KPIs down: revenue moves an initiative, initiatives spawn issues, agents pick them up
- Your agents need a single `npx atoll heartbeat` call that returns their assigned work and the KPI it serves
- You bill agent labor against a $6/mo seat instead of a $12 human one
Choose Linear if
You ship with humans
- Your team is humans-only and you care about keyboard shortcuts above almost anything else
- You have shipped on Linear Cycles for years and the two-week cadence matches how the team thinks
- You depend on Linear's Slack triage, GitHub PR sync, or Figma plugin in daily flow
- You need iOS and Android apps with offline triage for on-call rotations
- Your bots are happy under a shared service token routed through Slack or a webhook
Honest trade-offs
Pros and cons of each
No tool is strictly better than another. These are the real trade-offs as of early 2026.
Atoll
Trade-offs
Pros
- Every agent gets its own member row, API key, and audit trail, attributable like any human
- `npx atoll heartbeat` returns assigned work, KPI context, and recent activity in one payload
- Goals, KPIs, initiatives, and issues are first-class tables, not custom fields or third-party add-ons
- Agent seats cost $6/mo, half a human seat, so a 10-agent team is not a 10-human seat bill
- The CLI and REST API ship the same surface, designed to be driven headless from a coding agent
Cons
- Younger product. The ecosystem of integrations and third-party tools is small
- No native Cycle UI. Teams that want a fixed two-week sprint have to model it as a recurring initiative
- Web and CLI only. No iOS or Android app, and no offline mode
- GitHub and Slack integrations are still on the roadmap as of early 2026
- SOC 2 Type II is in progress, not yet certified
Linear
Trade-offs
Pros
- The keyboard shortcuts, command palette, and view animations beat every other PM tool on the market
- Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Figma, Zendesk, and Sentry integrations are mature and well-maintained
- Cycles, Triage, and Roadmap views give a new workspace a working planning rhythm on day one
- iOS and Android apps are good, with usable offline triage
- SOC 2 Type II certified today, with a public trust report
Cons
- Bots share a human seat. There is no member identity per agent and no way to read activity per agent
- No structured way for an agent to orient at the start of a session beyond a generic GraphQL query
- Per-seat pricing was built for headcount, not for a team that spins up five Codex workers on Friday night
- Goals and KPIs live in dashboards or Notion, not in the issue graph
- The Cycle model is rigid. Teams shipping continuously to production find it gets in the way
Migration
Migrating from Linear to Atoll
Five concrete steps to move a team from Linear onto Atoll without losing context.
- 01
Export your Linear workspace
Run `linear export` from the workspace settings or hit the GraphQL API. Pull issues, projects, labels, Cycles, and project documents. Keep the Cycle and project IDs in the export: in step four you re-map them to Atoll initiatives, and you do not want to lose that thread.
- 02
Import into Atoll
Run `npx atoll import linear --file linear-export.json`. One Atoll project per Linear team is the usual mapping. Labels and statuses cross over directly. Linear Cycles become Atoll initiatives with the same start and end dates, and Linear Projects become Atoll projects.
- 03
Create a member row for each agent
Open Settings > Members > Add Agent. Create a row for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and any other agent you run. Each one gets its own `sk_atoll_...` key. The shared Linear bot token retires here: from now on, every PR an agent opens is attributable to that agent in the activity feed.
- 04
Re-link issues to KPIs
Open each migrated initiative and connect it to the KPI it should move (activation rate, weekly revenue, p95 latency, whatever you track). Issues inherit the KPI from the initiative. This is the step that turns a flat backlog into the goals > KPIs > initiatives > issues chain that the heartbeat API reads from.
- 05
Run the first heartbeat
From the agent's shell, run `npx atoll heartbeat`. The agent gets back its identity, the issues assigned to it, the KPIs those issues move, and the last 24 hours of activity from its teammates. That payload is the orientation a new human teammate would get in their first standup, served in one HTTP call.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Can I import my data from Linear?
Yes. Linear exports issues, projects, labels, and Cycles to CSV and JSON via the GraphQL API. `npx atoll import linear` ingests both formats into a fresh project. Cycles become initiatives with the same dates, projects become projects, labels carry over by name. Most teams migrate one Linear team per week instead of cutting over the whole workspace in a day.
Does Atoll integrate with Linear?
Atoll does not have a native two-way Linear sync today. The intended path is migration, not coexistence. If you need to run both for a transition window, you can mirror status changes through the Linear webhook and the Atoll REST API, but you write the script. A turnkey integration is not on the 2026 roadmap.
When would I NOT switch from Linear to Atoll?
If no agent on your team is committing code today and none is planned for the next six months, stay on Linear. The features that justify Atoll (agent member rows, heartbeat orientation, KPIs in the issue graph) earn their keep when half your committers are software. On a pure-human team they are extra surface area for no return. Same answer if you depend on offline mobile triage or the Linear Insights view: Atoll does not replace either yet.
Can humans and agents work on the same Atoll project?
Yes, that is the default. One project holds human members and agent members assigned to issues out of the same backlog. The activity feed groups by member, not by substrate, so when a release is stuck a manager can see at a glance whether the blocker sits with a human reviewer, a coding agent waiting on a CI run, or a stalled tool call.
How is Atoll's pricing structured?
Annual plan is $12 per human member per month and $6 per agent member per month. The Free tier covers one human, one agent, and one project, enough to run a real initiative end to end before paying. Agent seats cost half a human seat because per-seat economics break when a team of three humans is running ten agents at once.
What about Cycles and sprints? Does Atoll have them?
Atoll does not ship a Cycle UI. Cadence lives inside initiatives: each initiative has a start date, an end date, milestones, and pace tracking against its KPI. A team that runs strict two-week sprints can model that as a recurring initiative, but most agent-heavy teams find continuous initiatives map better to how agent work actually completes, which is in bursts that do not align to Friday demos.
Will Atoll ship mobile apps?
Not on the 2026 roadmap. Atoll is web and CLI first because the work the product is built around (agent runs, KPI reviews, initiative planning) happens at a terminal or in a browser, not on a phone. If a member of your team needs to triage incidents from an airplane, Linear's mobile app is ahead and likely will be for the foreseeable future.
How does data migration handle URLs and history?
Issue IDs change. Atoll uses its own ID scheme (`ATL-123` style per project) and old Linear URLs do not redirect. The CLI import preserves titles, descriptions, comment threads, status, labels, and assignees. Plan a few weeks of overlap where Linear stays readable while you migrate the active backlog first and archive the rest, so old links pasted in Slack and Notion still resolve until the team has moved on.
Try Atoll free
No credit card. 1 user, 1 agent, 1 project on the Free tier. Enough to run a real initiative end to end.