Migrating from Jira to Linear
The main reason teams move from Jira to Linear is roadmapping. Linear's approach — exceptionally fast and responsive ui — keyboard-first design makes it the fastest issue tracker to use day-to-day, widely praised for buttery-smooth performance — suits startup and scaleup teams that have outgrown Jira's model. Here's how to migrate without losing historical context.
At a Glance
- Industry standard for software development teams — most PMs will encounter Jira in their career
- Deepest configurability of any project management tool with custom fields, workflows, and screens
- 3,000+ marketplace integrations covering virtually every tool in the product stack
- Exceptionally fast and responsive UI — keyboard-first design makes it the fastest issue tracker to use day-to-day, widely praised for buttery-smooth performance
- Opinionated, clean design reduces configuration overhead — teams can get productive within hours, not weeks
- Cycles (sprints) and Projects provide well-structured planning workflows with automatic progress tracking and burndown insights
You leave behind
- −time tracking
Migration Steps
Audit and export your current workspace
Before touching Linear, document what lives in Jira: issues, epics, and sprints, custom fields, automations, integrations, and team permissions. Export a full CSV backup — most tools support this from Settings → Export. Pay particular attention to any custom fields and workflow automations that your team relies on daily.
Set up your Linear workspace
Create your Linear workspace and replicate your project structure using issues and cycles. Linear starts at $8/user/mo/user/mo with a free tier available — budget $0.08999999999999986/user/mo more per user. Run with a single pilot team before migrating everyone.
Map your workflow equivalents
Find the closest Linear equivalent for each Jira feature your team relies on. issues, epics, and sprints in Jira maps to issues and cycles in Linear. Linear supports custom fields — recreate your Jira field schema here first. Prioritise the critical path: task creation, status tracking, and assignment.
Import your data
Linear supports CSV import for tasks and projects and has 20+ native integrations. After importing, rebuild your key automations — Linear's automation engine can replicate most rules you had in Jira. Start with your most active project rather than importing everything at once.
Onboard your team
Run a 30-minute walkthrough covering the daily workflow: how to create issues and cycles, update status, and find your board. Linear has a gentle learning curve — most PMs are fully productive within 1–2 days. Focus the session on the UI differences rather than feature training.
Run Jira in parallel for two weeks
Keep Jira read-only while your team works primarily in Linear. This reduces risk and lets people reference historical context — old decisions, archived tickets, past sprint data — without slowing the migration. After two weeks with no new work going into Jira, archive the workspace and make Linear the official home.
Ready to switch?
Read the full Linear review for pricing, integrations, and team fit details.