LinearB alternatives for teams under 50 engineers.
Sources last reviewed
Under 50 engineers, the closest LinearB alternatives are Swarmia (free under 10), Waydev and Weave, which bill per engineer with no minimum listed, and Zest, priced per workspace. LinearB Essentials bills at least 50 users at $29 each, so 5 engineers pay $1,450 a month.[1]
LinearB acts on pull requests with gitStream rules, AI code reviews and generated descriptions.[1][2] Zest doesn't touch pull requests: it reads each engineer's agent sessions and shows which ones ended in a merged pull request, with their tokens and cost.
Zest gets you:
Zest Pro: $49 a month for 5 engineers, seats included. LinearB, $1,450/mo for 5 engineers: Essentials at $29 a user a month, billed annually, for at least 50 users (read October 5, 2026).[1]
No 50-user minimum: Pro is $49 with 5 seats, then $19 a seat
Claude CodeFable 5.1 (max) (with fallback)70.4 · Coding Agent Index
CodexGPT-6 Astra (max)67.0 · Coding Agent Index
Muse CodeMuse Spark 1.3 (xhigh)64.2 · Coding Agent Index
Grok BuildGrok 4.5 (high)64.1 · Coding Agent Index
Kimi Code CLIKimi K362.6 · Coding Agent Index
OpencodeGemini 3.8 Flash (high)61.2 · Coding Agent Index
Cursor CLIComposer 2.5 Fast38.3 · Coding Agent Index
Demo setups use current model families. The pairings above are the combinations benchmarked by Artificial Analysis; rankings measure performance, not popularity.
GitHub pull requests and commits, and each engineer's agent sessions; no issue tracker, CI, incident, calendar or HR data.
Your Git host, plus Jira or Azure Boards on Enterprise only; releases come from tags, branch merges or its Deployment API.[1][3]
How it reads AI coding
A plugin or extension in each engineer's agent uploads every session: prompts, replies, model, tokens, tools, skills and MCP calls. Cursor's token counts come from Cursor's dashboard, only if the engineer turns that on.
Cursor's admin API, GitHub's Copilot metrics API (no token or cost data), Anthropic's APIs or OpenTelemetry for Claude Code, and Git signals: co-author trailers, branch prefixes such as codex/, and tool usage matched to commits.[4][5][6][7]
Facts from each vendor's own pages and AWS Marketplace listings, dated in the sources below. ✓ listed, – partly, × not listed on the pages we read, which is not proof the product lacks it.
LinearB's own size guidance
LinearB's pricing page has two plans, both billed annually: Essentials at $29 a user a month, “built for engineering teams with 50+ developers”, and Enterprise at $59, built for 100+. Each bills at least that many users, and a billable user is anyone assigned to a team. A 45-day trial needs no payment method, and its help center still offers a free DORA account for up to 50 repositories. Forecasting, resource allocation, capitalization, Jira and Azure Boards come with Enterprise only.
Automating pull requests vs reading the sessions behind them
gitStream rules live in a YAML .cm file in the repository and run on each pull request through GitHub Actions or LinearB's managed runner: they route reviewers, label, approve small changes and post AI reviews. LinearB pairs each AI tool's usage API with Git signals: co-author trailers, branch prefixes such as codex/ and copilot/, and tool usage matched to commits. GitHub's Copilot API gives it no model, token or cost data; Copilot metrics covers what GitHub itself reports.
Zest doesn't comment on, route or block a pull request. Its plugin reads the session inside the agent, so a Codex or Claude Code session counts with its model and tokens whether or not its commits carry a trailer. The two can run on the same repository.
Swarmia: no minimum, and free under 10
Swarmia has no 50-user floor, and its AI adoption and cost plan is $5 a developer a month, billed annually. Under 10 developers its free plan gives delivery and DORA metrics on GitHub or GitLab; past that, DORA starts on Productivity and AI impact at $23. It posts a daily team summary to Slack. Capitalization, an Enterprise feature at LinearB, is an $18 module.
Waydev: per contributor, on any Git host
Waydev bills each active contributor with no minimum listed: AI adoption on Pro at $29, AI impact and DORA on Premium at $49, and a free Start Up plan for 10 repositories. LinearB Essentials connects GitHub Cloud only; Waydev reads GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps and Gerrit too.
Weave: a free Starter, then $42 an engineer
Weave starts free with org-level numbers; Pro, at $42 an engineer a month billed yearly, adds per-engineer stats. LinearB automates review; Weave scores the work instead: a model estimates the expert hours behind each pull request.
Jellyfish and DX: past 50 developers
If you are past 50 and need what LinearB keeps on Enterprise, Jellyfish covers capitalization and delivery across Jira or Linear, CI and incident tools, by quote (its one public AWS bundle is $30,800 a year for 15 seats). DX, Atlassian's since November 2025, pairs surveys with system data and has capitalization and allocation reports, but no pull request rules.
Span: capitalization plus agent traces, at any size
Span prices “for every engineering team”, per contributor, with no minimum listed: $45 a month on a one-year contract. It adds capitalization and R&D tax credits to agent traces recorded on each laptop.
Zest: sessions, priced per workspace
Zest is ours. It bills per workspace with no user minimum, and Starter is free for 3 seats. A plugin in each engineer's coding agent records sessions with their model, tokens and cost, and the GitHub App links each to its pull request. No gitStream-style rules or AI review, surveys, DORA, forecasting or capitalization, and GitHub only.
How to choose a LinearB alternative
Start from your team's size and what you need from LinearB:
Fewer than 10 developers: Swarmia's free plan; Waydev (10 repositories), Weave (org-level numbers) and Zest (3 seats) have free tiers too.
Under 50 on GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps: Waydev.
Under 50 with delivery and DORA metrics: Swarmia or Waydev Premium.
A number per pull request: Weave.
Capitalization without LinearB Enterprise: Swarmia's module, Jellyfish or Span.
What each engineer's coding agent did, session by session: Span or Zest.
TRY IT ON YOUR TEAM
See what your team ships with AI.
Starter is free (3 seats, no credit card). Pro is $49 a month with 5 seats and Max is $149 a month with 10 seats — priced per workspace, not per engineer, with extra seats at $19 a month.
Essentials is $29 per user a month and Enterprise $59, both billed annually, for at least 50 and 100 users, per LinearB's pricing page (checked October 5, 2026).
Can a team under 50 engineers use LinearB?+
Yes, for 45 days: the trial needs no payment method. Once you buy Essentials, LinearB bills at least 50 users.
What is the best LinearB alternative for a small team?+
Under 10 developers, Swarmia's free plan covers delivery and DORA metrics on GitHub or GitLab. Between 10 and 50, Swarmia, Waydev and Weave bill per engineer with no minimum listed, and Zest bills per workspace.
What is gitStream?+
LinearB's pull request automation: YAML rules in a .cm file that run on each pull request through GitHub Actions or LinearB's managed runner. Both paid LinearB plans include it.
Does Zest review pull requests?+
No. Zest doesn't comment on or block pull requests; it measures the AI coding sessions behind them and what merged.
Winding / Teams
Zest