Compare
Onward vs Linear
Beautiful for shipping tickets. Not for shipping yourself home intact.
Start your free trialLinear is the darling of product and engineering teams who want fast, focused issue tracking. It is sleek, opinionated, and genuinely pleasant to use—for the work part.
What Linear will never ask is how you are doing. No shutdown routine when you close your laptop. No Rest mode when your energy is shot. No weekly snapshot on whether your pace is sustainable.
Onward is built for teams who want strong project management and wellbeing in the same tool—not a specialized dev tracker.
Pricing at a glance
Onward
$12/seat/mo or $120/yr
Everything included. 14-day free trial.
Linear
Business ~$18/seat/mo
Work tools. Wellness not included.
Feature comparison
Same kind of work basics as the big names—then we go further on wellbeing and sustainability.
| Feature | Onward$12/seat/mo or $120/yr | LinearBusiness ~$18/seat/mo* |
|---|---|---|
| Work basics | ||
Project management Projects, tasks, and deadlines in one place | ||
Tasks, boards & calendar | ||
Team collaboration | ||
| Wellness & sustainability | ||
Morning routine Start the day with intention, not inbox panic | ||
Shutdown routine Close the loop so work stays at work | ||
Adaptive UI based on your bandwidth Rest, Ready, and Flow modes that match your energy | ||
Weekly wellness snapshots | ||
Mood tracking & journal | ||
Team health check Keep your team healthy, not just productive | ||
Performance guide Keeps you sane and away from burnout so you can perform highly for a long time | ||
Onward AI Guidance Capacity-aware planning and nudges that work for you | ||
| The human stuff | ||
A platform that cares about you as a human | ||
Single transparent price, all features included | ||
*Top published self-serve tiers, per seat/month, annual billing where applicable (their sites; monthly billing is higher). Enterprise tiers are custom—often well above these list prices. Freelancer tools like Moxie may price per user rather than per seat. Onward is $12/seat/month or $120/seat/year. Comparison reflects publicly available product info.
The honest take
What Linear does well
- Best-in-class UX for issue tracking
- Fast, keyboard-driven workflows for dev teams
- Clean, focused scope—no feature bloat
What's missing for real humans
- —Purpose-built for engineering issue tracking, not whole-team PM
- —No wellness routines or burnout prevention
- —No adaptive UI for varying bandwidth
- —No mood, journal, or team health features
Work tools and wellness in one place—for $12/seat/mo or $120/yr.
Linear was built to move tasks. Onward was built to move you forward—without burning out along the way.
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Solid freelancer ops. Still treats wellness like a nice-to-have.
vs Notion
A wiki that grew up pretending to be PM. Still no morning routine.