Comparison
Forge vs LinearB
Feature matrices are spin by construction, so this page compares only what you can check yourself: how each side counts a billable person, what the published numbers say at a few team sizes, and which promises about per-person data exist in writing.
What LinearB is
LinearB is a software engineering intelligence platform — DORA and flow metrics, workflow automation, resource allocation, and AI-assist analytics. Some credit before the comparison:
- A broad, established platform — programmable workflow automation on pull requests is a real differentiator Forge does not have.
- Non-team viewers are free there too; on that point the models agree.
- They publish their pricing and their minimums, plainly.
Forge is narrower on purpose: the review tax read from merged pull requests, estimates with confidence bands graded against what work actually cost, and commitments sized to real capacity — as a layer beside the tracker you already run.
How each side counts a billable person
LinearB
contributors — developers included in a team LinearB builds metrics for; users outside teams are free.
Forge
a covered contributor — someone who authored or reviewed an analyzed pull request in the last 30 days, counted from the repo. Nobody provisions a list; bots are excluded; quiet months roll off; viewers are always free.
- Essentials is $29 per contributor per month, billed annually only, with a 30-contributor minimum — the smallest possible bill is $870/month, paid up front for the year.
- Enterprise is $59 per contributor per month with a 50-contributor minimum.
- The quote column uses Essentials and applies their published minimum where the team is smaller than it.
The published numbers, side by side
| Team size | LinearB · Essentials, $29/contributor/month billed annually | Forge Team · monthly |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | $870 — their 30-contributor minimum applies | $299 |
| 25 | $870 — their 30-contributor minimum applies | $419 |
| 40 | $1,160 | $599 |
| 60 | $1,740 | $839 |
The LinearB column is computed from the prices published at linearb.io/pricing, read on 2026-08-04 — check it there, since it may have moved. Currencies are shown as published, never converted. The Forge column is computed from the same pricing module the billing code uses. The team sizes assume every team member ships in a given month; under coverage a quieter month bills less, under a seat list it doesn’t.
The promise only one side publishes
Every tool in this category reads per-person activity; the question is what the org gets to see. Forge’s answer is structural and public: per-person review load is shown only as a distribution — concentration, counts, never a named ranking — and each person’s energy ledger lives in their own account, where no org-side query can reach it. The promise is written down, from the engineer’s side, at /privacy-for-engineers.
This page makes no claim about what LinearB shows a manager — go look, or ask them for the equivalent page. The comparison is simply that one side has put the promise in writing where every engineer can read it, and invites the other to.
What this page cannot tell you
- Whether LinearB’s breadth is worth more to you than Forge’s read. They do things Forge does not, and the reverse; a price table cannot weigh that.
- Whether the prices above are still current. They were read on 2026-08-04; vendors move pages and change tiers. The links are there to be followed.
- What a negotiated contract would actually cost you — published list prices are where a negotiation starts, not where it ends.
Why the pricing works this way: Why Forge doesn’t sell seats. Other comparisons: Swarmia · Jellyfish
The fastest way to judge Forge is the number itself: read a repository free — no account, nothing installed.