The best coding agents for Linear, compared (2026)
The coding agents for Linear compared for 2026: how you trigger each, where the code runs, what comes back, and what every option costs.
Open the assignee picker in a Linear issue and there's a decent chance it lists more agents than people. Linear built a platform for delegating issues to agents, vendors joined it, and the result is that evaluating coding agents for Linear in 2026 means choosing between six real products making the same promise: give us the issue, get a pull request back. What actually differs is how you trigger each one, where the code runs, what comes back, and how it's priced. That's what this post compares.
Product details checked August 2026. Vendors change; check their docs for current specifics.
One disclosure up front: Sinatra is our product. That entry is a vendor describing itself. Every claim about the other five links to the page where we verified it.
(One name you won't find below: Codegen, the earliest mover in this category, shut down in January 2026 after ClickUp acquired it. If you're migrating from it, we wrote a separate guide.)
The coding agents for Linear, at a glance
| Tool | Trigger in Linear | Where the code runs | What comes back | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sinatra | Assign the issue or mention @sinatra | Isolated per-task sandbox, shut down after the run | PR linked to the issue; revisions from your review comments | Free: 5 tasks/day on your own key; $20/member/mo; no token markup |
| GitHub Copilot coding agent | Assign to GitHub Copilot or mention @GitHub | Ephemeral GitHub Actions environment | Draft PR; progress in the issue timeline | Copilot Pro and up; one premium request per session plus Actions minutes |
| Devin | Assign, mention @devin, or add the devin label | Devin's cloud workspace | Linked session and PR, with confidence estimates | Free tier; Pro $20/mo; Max $200/mo; Teams $80/mo + $40/seat |
| Cursor cloud agents | Assign to Cursor or mention @Cursor | Cursor's cloud infrastructure | PR; steer with follow-up mentions | Pro $20/mo and up, drawing on plan usage credits |
| Tembo | Assign the issue to Tembo | Tembo's cloud sandbox | PR linked to the issue; status sync | Credit plans from $20/mo |
| Charlie | Mention @Charlie | Charlie's hosted environment | Implementation plan, then a PR referencing the ticket | Plans with daily/weekly usage limits, plus overage credits |
Sinatra
You assign the issue to Sinatra like a teammate, or mention @sinatra in a comment. It checks out the repo in an isolated sandbox, posts progress into the issue, and opens a draft PR linked to the ticket while it works; your configured test command decides when the PR is marked ready for review. It reviews its own PR before asking for yours, and it responds to your review comments by pushing revisions to the same branch. Two things set it apart in this list: when a ticket is vague it brainstorms requirements and posts them for approval before writing code, and it's BYOK, so you bring an Anthropic or OpenRouter key or connect a ChatGPT subscription you already pay for, with no markup on tokens. Free is 5 tasks a day on your own key; the paid tier is $20 per member per month.
GitHub Copilot coding agent
Assign an issue to GitHub Copilot from the Linear assignee menu, or mention @GitHub. The agent works in an ephemeral GitHub Actions environment, opens a draft PR, streams progress into the issue timeline, and requests your review when it finishes. It went GA for Linear in July 2026 (GitHub's changelog now calls it Copilot cloud agent) and comes with Copilot Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise; each session uses one premium request plus the GitHub Actions minutes it consumes.
Devin
Assign a Linear issue to Devin, mention @devin, or add the devin label, and it scopes the issue and starts a session; the session and any PRs it opens are linked back to the issue, with confidence estimates as it works. Cognition positions Devin toward larger engineering orgs. Pricing runs from a free tier through Pro at $20/mo and Max at $200/mo, with Teams at $80/mo plus $40 per developer seat.
Cursor cloud agents
Delegate an issue to Cursor from the assignee menu or mention @Cursor, and a cloud agent spins up in Cursor's infrastructure to work the task; you steer it with follow-up mentions in the issue. It's the natural pick when your team already lives in Cursor, since one plan covers the editor and the cloud agents. Cloud agents are included from the Pro plan ($20/mo) up and draw on each plan's usage credits.
Tembo
Assign a Linear issue to Tembo and it reads the ticket and its linked context, implements in its cloud sandbox (across multiple repos if the change needs it), and opens a PR linked to the issue; status syncs back to Linear as it works. Its distinguishing choice: you pick which underlying agent does the work (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and others). Pricing is credit-based, from an Indie plan at $20/mo through per-developer team tiers.
Charlie
Mention @Charlie in a Linear issue and it proposes an implementation plan; approve it and Charlie opens a branch and a GitHub PR that references the ticket. It's built for TypeScript codebases, which makes it the specialist of this list: narrower, and deliberately so. Plans are based on daily and weekly usage limits, with overage credits available.
What about Linear's own agent?
Linear shipped its own agent in March 2026, and the name causes confusion: Linear Agent is a workspace agent, not a coding agent. It synthesizes context, finds related issues, extracts requirements from customer requests, and drafts project updates, but it doesn't write code or open pull requests. For code, Linear's answer is delegation: it built the agents platform that every tool above plugs into. (A Code Intelligence capability that reads your codebase to answer questions is in beta on Business and Enterprise plans; it's still not a PR-writing agent.)
How to choose
Most of the decision is about what you already pay for and what you want to pay for. If your org has Copilot seats, the Copilot coding agent is the cheapest experiment: assign one issue and you've spent a premium request. If your team works in Cursor, its cloud agents ride on the plan you have. Charlie is worth a look if and only if you're a TypeScript shop. Devin fits orgs that want an enterprise vendor relationship around the agent, and Tembo fits teams that want to choose the underlying agent per task rather than commit to one.
Sinatra's case is the economics and the loop. BYOK means your model spend goes to your provider at cost, with the platform fee flat at $20 per member, so heavy usage doesn't compound through a vendor's token markup. And the loop is built for tickets as they arrive: vague ones get a requirements write-up to approve before any code exists, and every PR shows up already self-reviewed. Side-by-side pages against specific tools live at alternatives, and the workflow itself is described at Linear tickets to PRs.
Common questions
Does Linear have its own coding agent?
Not in the PR-writing sense. Linear Agent (beta since March 2026) handles workspace tasks like finding related issues and drafting project updates, and Linear's Code Intelligence beta answers questions about your codebase. Code changes are delegated to third-party agents through Linear's agents platform.
Can I use more than one coding agent in the same Linear workspace?
Yes. Agent integrations install independently and each agent shows up as its own assignable entity, so nothing stops you from connecting two and splitting tickets between them.
What does one task cost?
It depends on the pricing model more than the task. Copilot charges one premium request plus Actions minutes per session; Devin, Tembo, and Charlie meter work against plan quotas or credits; Cursor draws down plan usage credits. Sinatra doesn't meter tokens at all: you pay your model provider directly at their rates, plus the flat per-member fee.
What happened to Codegen?
ClickUp acquired it in December 2025 and the standalone service was discontinued on January 9, 2026, with a full shutdown on April 30, 2026. Its technology now powers ClickUp's AI coding features. We covered the shutdown and migration options in a separate post.
The fastest way to settle a comparison is to stop reading comparisons. Pick two agents from the table, hand each the same small ticket, and read both PRs; they'll tell you more than any table, including this one. If Sinatra makes your shortlist, you can start for free or skim the docs to see what setup involves.