Project Management & Collaboration · Risk Score 77 · Severe
Is Linear a Scam or Legit? Here's What the Record Shows.
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Short answer: Not technically — but it's complicated.
Our read
Linear isn't a "scam" in the criminal sense — it's a real company with real software — but the complaint record raises serious questions about its sales practices, billing, and the gap between what's advertised and what's delivered.
The strongest "this feels like a scam" signals tend to come from one of two places: marketing claims that don't match reality, or billing practices that make leaving harder than joining. Below are the 2 flags in those two categories we've documented for Linear.
Marketing & billing complaints
Billing Problems
MEDIUM
Source: Reddit · Nov 14, 2024
Added 6d ago
Annual Plan Cancellations Often Result in No Prorated Refunds
Multiple Linear users on Reddit and G2 have reported that canceling an annual plan mid-cycle yields zero refund, with the account simply downgrading at the end of the paid period. At $8–$14 per seat per month billed annually, teams of 20–50 can be locked into thousands of dollars with no exit. Linear's terms permit this, but users say the policy isn't surfaced clearly during checkout.
"We tried to cancel three months into our annual plan after the product didn't fit our workflow, and support told us the $1,800 we'd paid was non-refundable. No exceptions, no partial credit."
Misleading Marketing
LOW
Source: Trustpilot · Jun 17, 2024
Added 6d ago
Free Tier Advertised Broadly but Caps Data After 250 Issues
Linear's free tier is promoted on its homepage without prominent disclosure of the 250-issue limit, which applies across all active projects. Teams evaluating the product over a 30–60 day trial period routinely cross this threshold and are prompted to upgrade before they've had time to complete a meaningful evaluation. Several Trustpilot and Reddit threads from 2024 describe the cap as a 'bait and switch' that compresses the decision window.
"By week six of our trial we'd hit the 250-issue wall. We either paid or lost access to everything we'd built. That's not really a free trial, that's a hostage situation."
Our AI scanner searches Reddit, Trustpilot, BBB, and news sources for fresh complaints from the past year, paraphrases what it finds, and adds anything new to this page. Takes up to 90 seconds.
Everything else worth knowing
For the full record — lawsuits, churn signals, support failures, and BBB filings — see the complete complaints page.