Get an audit

Head to head · Tasks create · October 2026 research run

Plane vs Shortcut

Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Shortcut's 60.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do tasks create.

PlanePlane Software, Inc. · HTTP API B67.6/100#204 of 722 ShortcutShortcut Software Company · HTTP API C60.2/100#411 of 722

Which one, for what

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 64
  • Schema & documentation, 80 against 75
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 57
  • Security & auth, 68 against 54
  • Maintenance & community, 80 against 73

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

Shortcut C

Good for Software teams already on Shortcut that want an agent to search, create and update stories, epics, iterations and docs, and coding agents that pick up assigned stories.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • No incidents deducted, where Plane loses 5 points for them

Watch for

The v3 docs still allow the API token as a token query parameter, marked deprecated with no removal date

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runPlaneShortcutEdge
Reliability16%208964Plane +25
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28075Plane +5
Agent ergonomics13%16.27857Plane +21
Security & auth14%17.56854Plane +14
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88073Plane +7
Transparency & trust7%8.87473Plane +1
Negative events≤15-50
Total67.6 · B60.2 · C

Facts side by side

FactPlaneShortcut
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorPlane Software, Inc.Shortcut Software Company
Hosted endpointhttps://api.plane.sohttps://api.app.shortcut.com
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdioHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicencePlane 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 ServiceProprietary service under Shortcut's terms of service. The JavaScript client and the archived MCP server on GitHub are MIT
Tools exposed30none
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-09-22
Terms last updated2026-04-092025-09-18
Privacy policy last updated2026-04-092025-07-11
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity61k stars, 2.6k npm/wk, 7.5k PyPI/wk142 stars, 103k npm/wk

Verdicts

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.

Shortcut

REST API v3 and the hosted MCP server are included on the Free plan, with downloadable OpenAPI files and OAuth scopes down to story or comment writes on the MCP side. The API still accepts the token in a query string, and no idempotency keys, Retry-After header, uptime SLA or API changelog were found in the reviewed documentation.

Before you call either

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

Shortcut

  1. Send the v3 token in the Shortcut-Token header. v4 (alpha) takes Authorization: Bearer with sct_ro_ or sct_rw_ tokens, and v3 tokens don't work there.
  2. Create a story with name and workflow_state_id. Sending both workflow_state_id and project_id, or neither, is rejected.
  3. Use GET /api/v3/search/stories with detail=slim, page_size (1 to 250) and the next token. Many other v3 list endpoints return every record at once.
  4. Stay under 200 requests a minute and add your own backoff on 429, because no Retry-After header is documented.
  5. For MCP, connect to https://mcp.shortcut.com/mcp and request only the scopes needed, such as read or story-write.

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Plane or Shortcut?

Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Shortcut's 60.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Do Plane and Shortcut need an API key?

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

Can an agent call Plane and Shortcut without installing anything?

Yes. Plane has a hosted endpoint at https://api.plane.so and Shortcut at https://api.app.shortcut.com.

Are Plane and Shortcut open source?

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). No open-source release is listed for Shortcut.

Other comparisons with Plane or Shortcut

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report