A cycle is a cadence, not an outcome
Linear cycles are the cleanest implementation of iteration in any tracker: they start and end automatically, unfinished work rolls forward without a ceremony, and the team never spends a Monday morning administering them. That design is deliberate and it is correct for what a cycle is meant to do, which is keep a steady flow of shipped work.
What a cycle cannot tell you is whether the flow went anywhere. Linear insights report velocity, scope change, completion rate and cycle time - all measures of throughput. Every one of them stays true in the quarter where the team shipped forty issues and moved nothing. That is not a flaw in Linear; a tracker measuring throughput is a tracker doing its job. It only becomes a problem when it is the only measurement in the building.
WorkThroughLine runs sprints with carry-over tracking too, but the sprint report answers a second question next to velocity: which OKRs did the completed work link to, and what happened to those key results. Work with no goal link is not hidden or penalised - it shows up honestly as development outside a goal, or as maintenance when it is reactive. The number that matters is what share of a cycle went into moving something you said you wanted to move.
A project description is not evidence
A Linear project carries a lead, a target date, milestones and a description. The description is the only place the reasoning can live, and it is free text that one person writes once, usually in the week the project is created. Nothing in the model asks it to be updated when the project is extended, rescoped or half-abandoned, and nothing links it to the research that motivated it.
So the reasoning decays on a predictable schedule. Month one it is accurate. Month three the scope has moved twice and the description describes a project that no longer exists. Month six the person who wrote it has left the team and the paragraph is the only artefact of a decision nobody can reconstruct.
The alternative is not more discipline about writing descriptions. It is making the reasoning structural: an interview produces insights, insights reinforce an opportunity, a solution is a bet on that opportunity, and the work item carries typed links to all of it. Nobody writes a paragraph to keep the chain true, because the chain is a side effect of doing the work. When the scope changes, the links change with it.
Why the OKR spreadsheet next to Linear never stays true
Almost every Linear team we talk to keeps objectives somewhere else - a spreadsheet, a Notion page, an OKR SaaS - because Linear models initiatives and projects and does not pretend to model OKRs. That arrangement fails in the same way every time, and the failure is structural rather than a discipline problem.
The copy runs one way. Someone reads Linear, types progress into the sheet, and does it the week before the review because that is when it is needed. Between reviews the sheet is a snapshot of a past state presented as the current one. Nobody notices, because the only moment anyone reads it is the moment right after it was refreshed. Meanwhile the direction of causation is backwards: the sheet reports on work that already happened instead of deciding what happens next, so the backlog is prioritised in Linear on entirely separate reasoning.
Keeping OKRs in the same system as the work removes the copy step. A key result moves because a linked work item closed, and an OKR with no linked work at all is visible as exactly that - a stated intention nobody is working on, which is the single most useful thing an OKR tool can show you and the one thing a manually updated spreadsheet structurally cannot.
How your data maps across
Linear and WorkThroughLine model delivery closely enough that a CSV export maps almost one to one - a Linear team can be up and running here in an afternoon. The gap is above delivery: initiatives are the closest thing Linear has to a goal, and they carry no measurable target, so that is the one layer you write rather than import.
| Linear | WorkThroughLine | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Issues | Work items | Single table with a type field and parentId - no separate epic and story tables to reconcile. |
| Projects | Parent work items (epics) | Sub-issues keep their nesting; the parent chain is what child items inherit trace links through. |
| Cycles | Sprints | Carry-over is tracked explicitly, and the sprint report adds goal linkage next to velocity. |
| Estimates | Story points | Direct equivalent; used in sprint planning and carry-over reporting. |
| Labels | Labels | Direct equivalent, organisation-wide. |
| Triage | Intake | Intake adds stages and assignment, and a submission can be pushed straight to delivery. |
| Initiatives | Annual goals and OKRs | The one thing to write rather than import: an initiative has no measurable target, an OKR does. |
Pricing
Linear Basic is $10 per user/month, Business $16 (annual billing); a solid free tier exists. WorkThroughLine has a free plan (up to 3 makers, unlimited stakeholders and guests); Team is 17,900 RSD/month for up to 10 makers and Growth is 34,900 RSD/month for up to 30 makers - and everything is free during early access (registration requires no credit card).
Pricing as of July 2026; check vendor sites for current plans.
Frequently asked
Is WorkThroughLine as fast as Linear?
Linear sets the bar for raw speed and keyboard-first UX and we will not pretend otherwise. WorkThroughLine is a fast web app, but its edge is the layer Linear does not model: goals, discovery and traceability.
Can I use Linear and WorkThroughLine together?
Yes - keep Linear for engineering execution and run strategy → discovery in WorkThroughLine, linking delivery at the OKR level. Full two-way sync is not built yet, so most small teams simply run delivery in WorkThroughLine.
Does Linear have OKRs?
Linear models initiatives and projects, not OKRs. Teams typically keep OKRs in a spreadsheet or a separate OKR tool next to Linear - which is exactly the gap WorkThroughLine closes.
WorkThroughLine is our product. Competitor information comes from public sources and is reviewed when vendors change their products or pricing. Last updated: August 2026