- GitHub Projects is free and lives where your code lives, but it has no deployment visibility, weak automation, and a UI that punishes you for wanting simplicity. - Linear is the best pure issue tracker available right now, but it's overkill for a solo developer and doesn't know whether your build passed. - The right choice depends less on feature lists and more on whether you need a tool that talks to your deployment pipeline. - For teams already on GitHub with no Vercel or deployment complexity, GitHub Projects is genuinely good enough and costs nothing. - For teams shipping fast on modern stacks where build status, PR state, and task status need to move together, Linear wins on UX but still leaves a tab-switching gap. - AdeptDev closes that gap by connecting GitHub issues, Vercel deployments, and your Kanban board in one workspace, which is the thing neither tool does.

## The Real Question Isn't Which Tool Has More Features Most comparisons between GitHub Projects and Linear read like spec sheets. They count columns, list integrations, and declare a winner based on who has more checkboxes. That's the wrong frame. The question isn't which tool has more features. It's which tool gets out of your way while you're actually building something. Solo developers and small teams don't need enterprise project management. They need to know what's next, what's broken, and whether the last deploy succeeded. Those three things should live in one place and they almost never do.

## What GitHub Projects Actually Gets Right GitHub Projects is better than its reputation suggests, especially if you've only seen the old version. The current iteration has real Kanban views, custom fields, and automation that can move cards when you close an issue or merge a PR. For a solo developer who lives in GitHub all day, it's genuinely compelling. The killer advantage is zero context-switching on the issue side. Your tasks, your PRs, and your issues are the same objects. You don't maintain a separate system that mirrors your GitHub state because GitHub Projects *is* your GitHub state. That's a real thing, not a marketing claim. The automation is also underrated. You can write a workflow that moves a card to "In Review" when a PR is opened and to "Done" when it's merged. It's not as polished as Linear's, but it works and it costs nothing.

## Where GitHub Projects Breaks Down The UI is the first problem. GitHub Projects has improved significantly, but it still feels like a feature bolted onto a code hosting platform, because it is. Filtering is clunky. Bulk editing is painful. The roadmap view is functional but not fast to work in. If you're spending more than thirty seconds trying to find a task, the tool is failing you. The bigger problem is what GitHub Projects doesn't know. It has no concept of your Vercel deployment. It doesn't know if the build for the branch attached to that card failed. It doesn't surface environment information or build logs. You close an issue, the card moves to Done, and somewhere in another tab your production deploy is sitting in a failed state. The tool has no way to tell you. For small teams shipping frequently, this gap is where things fall apart. You think a feature is done because the issue is closed. It isn't done. The deploy failed three hours ago and nobody caught it because nobody was watching the right tab.

## What Linear Actually Gets Right Linear is the best-designed issue tracker available right now. That's not a controversial take among developers who've used it. The keyboard shortcuts are real, the speed is real, and the opinionated workflow (cycles, priorities, statuses) actually pushes teams toward better habits without feeling like a lecture. The GitHub sync is solid. Link a Linear issue to a PR and the status updates automatically. The two-way sync means your Linear board reflects what's happening in your repo without manual updates. For a team that wants a clean, fast issue tracker with good GitHub integration, Linear is the obvious choice. The cycle feature is worth calling out specifically. It's Linear's version of a sprint, but lighter. You pull issues into a cycle, work through them, and Linear tracks your completion rate over time. It's a simple feedback loop that helps small teams see whether their estimates are getting better. Most teams ignore it at first and then find it genuinely useful around month two.

## Where Linear Falls Short Linear costs money. The free tier is limited to 250 issues, which sounds like a lot until you've been shipping for six months. At that point you're looking at $8 to $14 per user per month depending on your plan. For a solo developer, that's not ruinous, but it's not nothing either. The deeper issue is the same one that hits GitHub Projects from the other direction. Linear doesn't know about your deployments. It knows about your issues and your PRs. It does not know that the feature you marked "Completed" is sitting behind a failed Vercel build on the staging environment. The issue is closed. The feature is not live. Linear cannot tell the difference. This is the thing nobody mentions in reviews. Both tools solve the issue-tracking problem reasonably well. Neither tool solves the "is this thing actually shipped" problem. That's a different problem, and it's the one that bites small teams most often.

## The Honest Head-to-Head Here's a direct comparison across the dimensions that actually matter for solo developers and small teams: | Dimension | GitHub Projects | Linear | |---|---|---| | Cost | Free | $8-14/user/month | | UI quality | Functional, slow | Fast, polished | | GitHub integration | Native (same objects) | Solid sync, not native | | Automation | Basic, works | Better, more reliable | | Vercel / deploy visibility | None | None | | Roadmap view | Yes, clunky | Yes, clean | | Keyboard-first UX | No | Yes | | Best for | Solo devs on GitHub, tight budget | Small teams wanting fast UX | The table doesn't declare a winner because there isn't one in the abstract. There's only a winner for your specific situation.

## How to Actually Choose If you're a solo developer, your code lives on GitHub, you're not paying for hosting that has a deployment dashboard, and you want to spend zero dollars on tooling, use GitHub Projects. It's good enough. The UI will frustrate you occasionally but not enough to justify a subscription. If you're a team of two to five people, you're shipping frequently, and the speed of your issue tracker actually affects how fast you move, use Linear. The UX difference is real enough to justify the cost. You'll move faster through your backlog, your standups will be shorter, and the cycle tracking will give you data you didn't have before. If you're on a modern stack where Vercel deployments, GitHub PRs, and task status need to move together, and you're tired of the tab-switching that comes with using any single-purpose tool, that's the gap that neither GitHub Projects nor Linear closes on its own. AdeptDev connects all three in one workspace: your Kanban board updates when you push code or merge a PR, and your Vercel build status lives next to the task it belongs to. Try it free for 7 days at adeptdev.io.

## Wrap Up GitHub Projects and Linear are both good tools solving slightly different problems for slightly different teams. GitHub Projects wins on cost and native integration. Linear wins on speed and UX. Neither wins on deployment visibility, because neither was built to care about it. Pick the one that matches where your team is right now, not the one with the longest feature list, and don't let the choice slow you down more than the tool itself would.

## Is GitHub Projects good enough for a solo developer? Yes, genuinely. If you're solo, your issues and tasks are already in GitHub, and you don't want to pay for another tool, GitHub Projects covers the basics well. The automation moves cards when PRs merge, the Kanban view is functional, and the cost is zero. The UI is slower than Linear's and the deploy visibility is nonexistent, but for a solo developer with a simple workflow, it's a reasonable default. ## Why do developers prefer Linear over Jira? Speed and focus. Linear loads fast, the keyboard shortcuts are real, and the opinionated structure (issues, cycles, priorities) pushes you toward a workflow without requiring a Scrum Master to configure it. Jira was built for large teams with dedicated project managers. Linear was built for developers who want to track work without the tool becoming a second job. The difference is obvious within the first week. ## Does Linear integrate with GitHub? Yes, and the integration is solid. You can link Linear issues to GitHub PRs and branches, and the status syncs both ways. When you open a PR, the linked issue moves. When you merge, it moves again. It's not native the way GitHub Projects is (where issues and tasks are the same objects), but it's reliable enough that most teams stop thinking about the distinction after a few days. ## Can GitHub Projects replace Linear for a small team? For some teams, yes. If your team is two or three people, you're already in GitHub all day, and your workflow is simple, GitHub Projects is a legitimate choice. The moment you want faster UX, better keyboard navigation, cycle tracking, or cleaner roadmap views, Linear pulls ahead. The honest answer is that GitHub Projects has a ceiling and Linear's ceiling is higher, but most small teams never hit GitHub Projects' ceiling. ## What's missing from both GitHub Projects and Linear? Deployment visibility. Neither tool knows whether your Vercel build passed, what environment a feature is deployed to, or whether a "Completed" issue is actually live in production. You need a separate tab open for that, which means context-switching every time you want to confirm something shipped. AdeptDev addresses this by connecting your Kanban board, GitHub integration, and Vercel deployment status in one workspace, so task status and build status live in the same place. ## Is Linear worth the cost for a solo developer? It depends on how much the UX friction of GitHub Projects costs you in practice. If slow filtering and clunky bulk editing add up to ten or fifteen minutes of frustration per day, Linear at $8 a month is a reasonable trade. If you're disciplined, your backlog is small, and you mostly care about not paying for another tool, GitHub Projects is genuinely good enough. The free tier of Linear (250 issues) buys you several months to decide before the cost question becomes real. ## How does AdeptDev differ from GitHub Projects and Linear? GitHub Projects and Linear are issue trackers. AdeptDev is a developer workspace that connects issue tracking, GitHub automation, and Vercel deployment visibility in one place. Your Kanban board has two views: a Roadmap for features and a Bug Tracker for GitHub issues. Cards move automatically when you push code or merge a PR. Vercel build status, logs, and environment info appear inside the workspace next to the tasks they belong to. It's built for solo developers and small teams on modern stacks who want one place instead of three.