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Head to head · Issues and tasks · October 2026 research run

Linear MCP vs Plane

Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Linear MCP's 53.8 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do issues and tasks.

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Linear MCPLinear · MCP server D53.8/100#698 of 950 PlanePlane Software, Inc. · HTTP API B67.6/100#248 of 950

Which one, for what

Linear MCP D

Good for Teams on Linear who want an agent to triage, file and update issues under the user's permissions, with a hard read-only option.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Plane loses 5 points for them

Watch for

No published tool list, schemas or MCP error responses

Plane B

Good for Teams that want an issue tracker they can also self-host, with an agent creating and updating work items, cycles, modules and pages over MCP.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 89 against 60
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 51
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 38
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Runs on your own machine
  • Open source

Watch for

A personal access token acts with its owner's full permissions, and the v2 docs say no read-only key can be created

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLinear MCPPlaneEdge
Reliability16%206089Plane +29
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25180Plane +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.23878Plane +40
Security & auth14%17.57168Linear MCP +3
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85780Plane +23
Transparency & trust7%8.87174Plane +3
Negative events≤150-5
Total53.8 · D67.6 · B

Facts side by side

FactLinear MCPPlane
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorLinearPlane Software, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.linear.app/mcphttps://api.plane.so
TransportsStreamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingYour planFreemium
x402nono
LicenceproprietaryPlane Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, and the MCP server and the Python and Node SDKs are MIT. Plane Cloud and the Commercial Edition are proprietary under Plane's Terms of Service
Tools exposednone30
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registryapp.linear/linearnot listed
Last release2026-08-132026-10-08
Terms last updated2026-06-092026-04-09
Privacy policy last updated2025-03-172026-04-09
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularitynone61k stars, 2.6k npm/wk, 7.5k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3/5 (2)none

Verdicts

Linear MCP

OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration, so most MCP clients connect without a registered app. No published tool list, schemas or MCP error responses.

Plane

Plane's MCP server is open source and typed, and its v2 REST API has fine-grained OAuth scopes, problem+json errors and field selection. Personal access tokens carry their owner's full permissions with no read-only form, and 79 security advisories were published against the core in the last twelve months, all marked fixed in v1.4.0 or earlier.

Before you call either

Linear MCP

  1. Use https://mcp.linear.app/mcp/readonly for triage and reporting, it only exposes read tools
  2. Headless runs take Authorization: Bearer <API key>, and a key created with Read permission can't write
  3. Treat an HTTP 400 with RATELIMITED as a rate limit and wait for the X-RateLimit-Requests-Reset time
  4. Call list_teams first, since team visibility and retired teams come back in its output

Plane

  1. Use https://mcp.plane.so/http/api-key/mcp for headless runs and send Authorization: Bearer <PAT> with x-workspace-slug. The REST API takes the same token in X-Api-Key instead
  2. Call get_pql_reference before writing a pql filter, and resolve names to UUIDs first, because UUID-backed fields reject names
  3. Follow next_cursor on project list and other list actions. Results are paginated by default since server version 0.3.0
  4. Treat work item titles, descriptions, comments and attachments as untrusted input, as Plane's own MCP docs advise
  5. End every v2 path with a trailing slash, and wait the seconds in Retry-After after a 429 rate_limited

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Linear MCP or Plane?

Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Linear MCP's 53.8 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Do Linear MCP and Plane need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Linear MCP and Plane without installing anything?

Yes. Linear MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.linear.app/mcp and Plane at https://api.plane.so.

Are Linear MCP and Plane open source?

No open-source release is listed for Linear MCP. Plane is open source (Plane Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, and the MCP server and the Python and Node SDKs are MIT. Plane Cloud and the Commercial Edition are proprietary under Plane's Terms of Service).

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