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

Linear MCP vs Redmine

Linear MCP scores 53.8 (D) on agent readiness against Redmine's 50.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Redmine leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do issues and tasks.

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Linear MCPLinear · MCP server D53.8/100#698 of 950 RedmineRedmine project · HTTP API D50.2/100#777 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.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 51 against 32
  • Security & auth, 71 against 51
  • Transparency & trust, 71 against 47

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where Redmine loses 4 points for them

Watch for

No published tool list, schemas or MCP error responses

Redmine D

Good for Teams that already run Redmine or want a free, self-hosted tracker with issues, time entries and wikis under their own control.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 69 against 60
  • Agent ergonomics, 51 against 38
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 73 against 57

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

No OpenAPI document or other machine-readable contract was found in the wiki or the source repository

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLinear MCPRedmineEdge
Reliability16%206069Redmine +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25132Linear MCP +19
Agent ergonomics13%16.23851Redmine +13
Security & auth14%17.57151Linear MCP +20
Payments & pricing10%12.53060Redmine +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85773Redmine +16
Transparency & trust7%8.87147Linear MCP +24
Negative events≤150-4
Total53.8 · D50.2 · D

Facts side by side

FactLinear MCPRedmine
KindMCP serverHTTP API
VendorLinearRedmine project
Hosted endpointhttps://mcp.linear.app/mcpno (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingYour planFree
x402nono
LicenceproprietaryGPL-2.0-or-later
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
MCP registryapp.linear/linearnot listed
Last release2026-08-132026-09-30
Terms last updated2026-06-09no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-03-17no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
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.

Redmine

Redmine's REST API covers issues, projects, time entries and 20 other resources, and versions 6.1 and later add OAuth 2 with one scope per permission. The software is free under the GPL. No OpenAPI document exists, most errors return a bare status code, and 24 security advisories were published in twelve months, two rated critical.

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

Redmine

  1. Ask an administrator to tick Enable REST API under Administration, Settings, API. It is off by default and every call fails until then
  2. Send the key in the X-Redmine-API-Key header, never as the key query parameter, and set Content-Type: application/json on every POST and PUT
  3. Add status_id=* to issue lists. The default returns open issues only, 25 a page with a maximum of 100
  4. Comment on an issue by sending notes in a PUT to /issues/<id>.json. There is no separate comment endpoint
  5. A DELETE on a project through the API skips the confirmation the web page asks for, so run the agent as a non-administrator user

Questions

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

Linear MCP scores 53.8 (D) on agent readiness against Redmine's 50.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Redmine leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Do Linear MCP and Redmine need an API key?

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

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

Linear MCP has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.linear.app/mcp. No hosted endpoint is listed for Redmine.

Are Linear MCP and Redmine open source?

No open-source release is listed for Linear MCP. Redmine is open source (GPL-2.0-or-later).

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