Glue vs Productboard

By Priya Shankar, Head of Product at Glue

Linear has earned a devoted following among product and engineering teams looking for a Linear alternative to Jira's complexity. It is fast, opinionated, and beautiful. If you are comparing it to Glue, though, you are comparing two fundamentally different tools. Linear tracks what your team is doing. Glue understands the system your team is building.

This comparison will help product managers who want to understand which tool fits which need, and whether you need both.

Linear launched in 2019 as a response to Jira fatigue. Built by former Coinbase engineers, it prioritized speed, keyboard-first navigation, and opinionated workflows over configurability. It quickly became the default issue tracker for high-growth startups and design-conscious engineering teams. Product managers who have used both Jira and Linear typically describe the switch as going from a Swiss Army knife to a scalpel: less can go wrong, and what it does, it does well.

Glue is not an issue tracker. It does not track tickets, manage sprints, or visualize burndown charts. Glue is an AI codebase intelligence platform that helps product teams understand what the codebase contains and what working with it actually involves. The confusion arises because both tools serve product managers, but they serve them at different stages of the workflow.

Linear manages what happens after you decide what to build. Glue informs the decisions that come before: what does building this actually require? What complexity is hiding in the system? What dependencies will affect the timeline?

Linear is arguably the best-designed issue tracking tool on the market.

Speed and UX. Linear is fast. Not "fast for a project management tool" fast. Actually fast. Keyboard shortcuts, instant search, responsive UI. Engineers who resist adopting Jira actively enjoy using Linear. For teams where tool adoption is a challenge, this matters.

Opinionated workflows. Linear does not try to be everything. It provides cycles (sprints), projects, and a clear hierarchy of organization. The opinions are good ones: default to simplicity, surface what matters, and hide what does not. This reduces the configuration overhead that plagues more flexible tools.

GitHub and GitLab integration. Linear connects issues to pull requests, branches, and deployments. When an engineer opens a PR that references a Linear issue, the status updates automatically. This reduces the manual status-updating burden that creates friction between engineering work and project visibility.

Roadmapping basics. Linear's roadmap view provides a timeline-based visualization of projects. It is not as full-featured as Productboard or Aha!, but for teams that want planning and execution in one tool, it covers the basics.

Linear shows you what the team is working on. Glue shows you what the codebase looks like underneath.

Codebase understanding for planning. Before you create issues in Linear, you need to understand what the work involves. Glue answers the questions that come before issue creation: "What modules does this feature touch?" "What dependencies exist?" "How complex is this area of the code?" This context determines whether a project is one cycle or four, but Linear has no way to surface it.

Feature discovery. Linear tracks features you define. Glue discovers features that exist in the code. Many teams are surprised to find that their codebase contains features nobody documented, features that ship as side effects of other work, and features inherited from acquisitions or earlier teams.

Technical debt visibility. Linear can track tech debt issues if someone creates them. Glue surfaces tech debt automatically by analyzing code complexity, dependency tangles, and knowledge concentration across the codebase. The difference is between tracking debt you know about and discovering debt you did not.

Effort estimation support. Sprint planning is broken in part because estimation happens without codebase context. Glue provides that context: which files will change, what dependencies are involved, and what the code health looks like in the affected area. This makes the estimation conversation in Linear's cycle planning more grounded.

Choose Linear when your primary need is issue tracking and sprint management. If your team needs a clean, fast, well-designed tool for managing work items, tracking cycles, and maintaining project visibility, Linear is excellent. It is especially strong for teams that value speed, simplicity, and tight GitHub integration.

Linear is the right choice for teams where the challenge is execution management rather than system understanding.

If your team is under 30 engineers and the codebase is small enough that everyone has a reasonable mental model of the system, Linear alone may be sufficient. The friction point arrives when the system grows beyond what any single person can hold in their head. That is when execution tracking needs to be complemented by system understanding.

Linear is also a strong choice for teams migrating from Jira who want a simpler, faster alternative without adopting an entirely new category of tooling. The transition is straightforward, and the productivity gains from Linear's speed are immediate.

Choose Glue when your primary challenge is understanding the system you are building on top of. If estimates are consistently wrong, if roadmaps slip because of hidden complexity, if PMs spend too much time asking engineers for context, Glue addresses the information gap that project management tools cannot fill.

Glue is especially valuable for product managers who manage complex codebases, teams with significant tribal knowledge risk, and organizations where the gap between product planning and engineering reality creates recurring friction.

Yes, and this is the recommended approach for most teams. Glue provides the codebase intelligence that informs planning decisions. Linear manages the execution of those decisions. The workflow is: use Glue to understand what a project involves, then create and manage issues in Linear with that context.

Glue answers "what does this involve?" Linear answers "who is doing it and when?" Together, they close the gap between understanding and execution.

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Is Glue a project management tool?

No. Glue is an AI codebase intelligence platform, not a project management tool. It does not track issues, manage sprints, or assign work. It provides the codebase visibility that makes project management tools more effective. Think of it as the intelligence layer that informs your planning in Linear, Jira, or whatever tool your team uses for execution.

Can Glue replace Linear?

No. Glue and Linear solve different problems. Linear manages work execution: issues, cycles, projects, and team coordination. Glue provides system understanding: codebase Q&A, feature discovery, dependency mapping, and technical debt visibility. Replacing Linear with Glue would leave you without issue tracking. Replacing Glue with Linear would leave you without codebase intelligence. Most teams benefit from using both.

What is the best Linear alternative for product managers?

If you are looking for issue tracking alternatives, consider Jira (more configurable, larger ecosystem), Shortcut (similar philosophy to Linear), or Asana (stronger for cross-functional project management). If your actual problem is not issue tracking but understanding the codebase, Glue addresses the visibility gap that no issue tracker can fill. Clarify whether your challenge is execution management or system understanding before choosing a tool.