Non-EU vendorProject ManagementHeadquarters: US

Linear: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Linear is a product-development platform with which teams plan and build software. It covers issue tracking, roadmaps, initiatives, projects, documents, cycles, triage and insights. For building and shipping, it offers Git automations, code reviews and releases, along with AI agents that can take on tasks or whole issues. Linear is aimed at product and engineering teams and is delivered as SaaS, through a web app and downloadable and mobile apps.

Linear is developed by Linear Orbit, Inc., a privately held US company founded in 2019 and based in San Francisco. The product is proprietary; no open-source edition or self-hosting option is mentioned. Since May 2024, you can choose when creating a workspace whether its data is stored in the EU or the US. Because the provider is a US company, US jurisdiction (the CLOUD Act) deserves attention alongside the storage location.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Linear pre-selected

Mastodon LinkedIn Bluesky X Email

Sovereignty score

27 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-210
Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-320
Key management with a non-European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-615
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026

Headquarters	US (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decision	Only for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	US, EUVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CLOUDFLARENET - Cloudflare, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	Project Management
Type	Product
Website	linear.app ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Linear

The European alternatives to Linear come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

34 European Project Management vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Linear one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Linear

Linear is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Linear hosts data in US, EU. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Linear is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Linear together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Linear?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Linear include Kanboard, OpenProject and Planka. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Linear?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Linear include Kanboard, OpenProject, Redmine (self-host), Taiga, Tuleap, WeKan and Wiki.js. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Linear GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Linear is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Project Management

Project Management: Project planning, issue tracking, knowledge management, team collaboration. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

See all →

Open in the alternatives dashboard Missing a vendor? Submit it Are you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Project Management page — with no effect on your score