- GitHub Projects is genuinely good for solo developers who live in GitHub all day, but it has no deployment visibility and weak filtering once your backlog grows past 50 items. - Linear is the best pure issue tracker available right now, with a keyboard-first interface that feels built for developers, not project managers. - Plane is the open-source alternative worth considering if you want Linear's workflow without Linear's pricing or data residency concerns. - The real question isn't which tool has more features. It's which tool you'll actually open every morning without resenting it. - None of these tools know whether your Vercel build succeeded or your PostHog funnel broke. That context gap is where solo developer workflows actually fall apart. - If you want your issue tracker, deployment status, and GitHub activity in one place, AdeptDev was built specifically for that use case. Try it free for 7 days at adeptdev.io.

## The Wrong Question Everyone Asks Most comparisons of issue trackers ask which tool has the most features. That's the wrong question. The right question is which tool creates the least friction between thinking "I need to fix this" and actually fixing it. For a solo developer or a two-person team, friction is the killer. You don't have a Scrum Master to run your standups. You don't have a project manager to keep your board clean. Every minute you spend triaging cards or configuring workflows is a minute you're not shipping. So let's be honest about what GitHub Projects, Linear, and Plane actually are, where each one breaks down, and which one fits the way solo developers actually work.

## GitHub Projects: The Honest Assessment GitHub Projects is the obvious starting point because you're already in GitHub. Zero additional accounts, zero additional cost, and your issues live right next to your code. For a developer who pushes code every day and wants a lightweight board to track what's next, it's genuinely good enough. The real problem shows up around week six. Your backlog hits 60 items, you want to filter by label and milestone simultaneously, and you discover that GitHub Projects' filtering is limited in ways that feel arbitrary. The views are flexible but the query language is not deep, and the board can start to feel like a spreadsheet pretending to be a kanban. The other gap is context. GitHub Projects knows about your issues and pull requests. It does not know that your Vercel build failed at 2am, or that your deployment to production is sitting in a pending state while you're triaging cards. You'll find yourself switching tabs constantly, and that context-switching is the real cost.

## Linear: Why Developers Actually Like It Linear is the best pure issue tracker built for developers right now. Not because of any single feature, but because every interaction feels fast. The keyboard shortcuts are real, not decorative. The interface loads instantly. Creating an issue takes three seconds, not thirty. The opinionated workflow is a feature, not a limitation. Linear nudges you toward cycles (sprints, essentially) and projects, and for a solo developer that structure is useful because it forces you to decide what you're actually working on this week versus what's just noise in your backlog. Most developers resist this until they try it for a month and realize their backlog has shrunk from 200 items to 40. The honest objection is pricing. At $8 per user per month for the Pro plan, it's not expensive by enterprise standards, but for a solo developer pre-revenue it's a real line item. The free tier is usable but limited to a small number of members and lacks some integrations. And Linear still doesn't know about your deployments. It's an issue tracker, not a developer dashboard.

## Plane: The Open-Source Case Plane is what you get when someone looks at Linear and asks what it would look like if you could self-host it and own your data. The interface is clearly Linear-inspired, the workflow is similar, and the core experience is solid enough that it's not just a clone trying to catch up. The self-hosting angle is genuinely compelling for developers who have data residency concerns, work on client projects with NDA requirements, or just don't want to pay SaaS pricing forever. You can run Plane on a $6 Hetzner VPS and own everything. That's a real advantage that Linear can't match by design. The trade-off is maintenance overhead. Self-hosting means you're responsible for updates, backups, and uptime. For a solo developer who already manages their own infrastructure, this might be nothing. For someone who just wants a tool that works without thinking about it, it's a real cost. The cloud version of Plane removes that burden but brings you back into the SaaS pricing conversation.

## The Feature Comparison That Actually Matters Forget the full feature matrix. These are the dimensions that actually affect how a solo developer works day to day. | Dimension | GitHub Projects | Linear | Plane | |---|---|---|---| | Setup time | 2 minutes | 10 minutes | 20 min (cloud) / 1+ hour (self-hosted) | | Keyboard-first interface | No | Yes | Partial | | GitHub integration | Native | Good | Basic | | Vercel / deployment visibility | No | No | No | | Free tier | Yes (unlimited) | Yes (limited) | Yes (unlimited cloud) | | Self-hosting | No | No | Yes | | Backlog filtering | Weak | Strong | Strong | | Cycle / sprint support | No | Yes | Yes | | Best for | GitHub-native solo devs | Developers who want speed | Developers who want control |

## The Gap None of Them Fill Here's the thing nobody mentions in the comparison posts. All three of these tools are issue trackers. They track issues. What they don't do is give you the full picture of a shipping product. When you're a solo developer or a two-person team, your mental model of "what's happening with my product" includes more than open issues. It includes whether the last deployment succeeded, what your error rate looks like in PostHog, whether a GitHub Actions workflow is stuck, and what's sitting in review. That context lives in four different tabs. You're the one stitching it together in your head. This is where the workflow actually breaks, not in the issue tracker itself. The issue tracker is fine. The gap is everything around it.

## Which One Should You Actually Use If you're pre-revenue and every dollar counts, start with GitHub Projects. It's free, it's already where your code lives, and it will handle your workflow until you're shipping fast enough that its limitations actually hurt you. You'll know when you've outgrown it. If you're past that point and you want a tool that respects your time, use Linear. Pay the $8 a month. The speed improvement is real and the opinionated structure will make you more deliberate about what you're actually working on. Don't use the free tier if you can afford not to; the Pro features are where Linear earns its keep. If you're self-hosting your stack anyway, or you have data residency requirements, give Plane a serious look. The cloud version is a reasonable Linear alternative at a lower price point. The self-hosted version is genuinely good if you're comfortable running it.

## Wrap Up The tool you'll actually open every morning is the right tool. That's it. GitHub Projects, Linear, and Plane are all capable of tracking your work. None of them are capable of giving you deployment context, analytics visibility, and issue tracking in the same place without tab-switching. If that context gap is the thing that actually slows you down, that's the problem worth solving. AdeptDev connects your GitHub issues, Vercel deployments, and analytics into one workspace so you're not stitching it together manually. Try it free for 7 days at adeptdev.io.

## Is GitHub Projects good enough for a solo developer? Yes, for most solo developers starting out, GitHub Projects is genuinely good enough. It's free, it lives where your code already is, and the basic kanban workflow handles a small backlog well. The limitations show up when your backlog grows past 50 items and you need stronger filtering, or when you want to see deployment status next to your tasks. At that point it starts to feel like a workaround rather than a workflow. ## What makes Linear better than GitHub Projects for developers? Linear's main advantage is speed and keyboard-first design. Creating an issue, moving it through a workflow, and searching your backlog all happen faster in Linear than in GitHub Projects. Linear also has proper cycle support, which forces useful prioritization discipline. The trade-off is that it costs money and it still doesn't surface deployment or infrastructure context. It's a better issue tracker, not a broader developer dashboard. ## Can Plane replace Linear for a small team? For most small teams, yes. Plane covers the core workflow: issues, cycles, modules, and views. The interface is clearly influenced by Linear and the experience is solid. The self-hosted option is a genuine differentiator if data ownership matters to you. Where Plane falls short is polish and speed. Linear still feels faster and more refined. But if you're choosing between Plane cloud and paying Linear pricing for a five-person team, Plane is worth a serious evaluation. ## What's the best free issue tracker for indie developers? GitHub Projects is the strongest free option if you're already using GitHub. Plane's cloud tier is also free with no member limit, which makes it worth considering for small teams who want more structure than GitHub Projects offers. Linear's free tier works but caps team size and removes some integrations. For a solo developer, GitHub Projects or Plane cloud will handle most use cases without costing anything. ## How do I track Vercel deployments alongside my GitHub issues? None of the major issue trackers, including Linear, GitHub Projects, and Plane, natively surface Vercel deployment status inside your task board. The typical workaround is keeping the Vercel dashboard open in a separate tab, which works but adds context-switching overhead. AdeptDev integrates Vercel deployment tracking directly into your workspace alongside your kanban board and GitHub issues, so you can see build status, logs, and environment info without leaving your project view. ## Is Linear worth paying for as a solo developer? If you're shipping regularly and context-switching between tools is slowing you down, yes. The $8 per month Pro plan is the point where Linear's integrations and filtering become genuinely useful. If you're pre-revenue and watching every expense, start with GitHub Projects or Plane's free tier and switch to Linear when the friction of your current tool is measurable. Don't pay for tooling before you have a reason to. ## Does AdeptDev replace Linear or GitHub Projects? No. AdeptDev integrates with GitHub and tracks your Vercel deployments, but it's not trying to replace dedicated issue trackers or your existing GitHub workflow. It's built for solo developers and small teams who want their roadmap, bug tracker, deployment status, and analytics in one workspace instead of four separate tabs. If Linear is your issue tracker of choice, AdeptDev sits alongside it by pulling in GitHub activity and deployment context that Linear doesn't have.