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 then Linear shipped a coding agent of its own, so evaluating coding agents for Linear in 2026 means choosing between seven 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; the Linear coding sessions entry was added after publication. 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 six 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: 1 task at a time, plus 1 queued, on your own key; Pro $20/mo per workspace, any number of people; never bills model usage |
| 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, or self-hosted in your VPC | 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 |
| Linear coding sessions | Delegate the issue to the Linear Agent | Linear-managed sandbox | PR on GitHub; review continues in Linear's Reviews tab | Prepaid credits: tokens at provider rates, no markup, plus $0.25 per 20-minute sandbox block |
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; it runs your configured test command and tries to fix what fails before marking the PR 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 asks questions or proposes a plan before writing code, and it's BYOK, so you bring an Anthropic or OpenRouter key or connect a Claude or ChatGPT subscription you already pay for, and Sinatra never bills for model usage. Free is 1 task at a time, plus 1 queued, with no daily limit, on your own key; Pro is $20 a month for the whole workspace, with 3 tasks at a time, plus 10 queued.
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 or a self-hosted instance in your VPC (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 has one now, and it belongs on the list. Linear Agent launched in March 2026 as a workspace agent that finds related issues and drafts project updates, and on June 11, 2026 Linear added coding sessions: delegate an issue to the Linear Agent and it writes the code in a sandbox Linear runs, using Claude Code or Codex, then opens a pull request on GitHub. Sessions are available on the Basic, Business, and Enterprise plans and draw on prepaid AI credits, with model tokens at provider-published rates and sandbox time at $0.25 per 20-minute block. There is nothing to install, which makes it the obvious first thing to try if your backlog is entirely in Linear; we wrote up how coding sessions work and what they cost and put it side by side with Sinatra separately. Everything else in this post still plugs into the same agents platform.
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, and the platform fee is one flat price for the whole workspace, so heavy usage doesn't compound through a vendor's token markup and a growing team doesn't add seats. And the loop is built for tickets as they arrive: vague ones get questions or a proposed plan 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?
Yes, since June 2026. Coding sessions let you delegate an issue to the Linear Agent, which writes the code with Claude Code or Codex and opens a pull request, billed from prepaid AI credits at provider token rates plus sandbox time. It has no GitHub-issue trigger and no way to run on a key or subscription you already hold, which is where the third-party agents above still differ.
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 one flat monthly price for the workspace.
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.