A translated interface is not a translated support line
Jira’s own language list runs to twenty-eight entries, with United States English kept as a separate line from United Kingdom English. Four of those twenty-eight — Croatian, Serbian in both its Latin and Cyrillic scripts, Slovenian and Slovak — reach only the help center or the customer portal, never the application a user actually works in. Documentation and support, meanwhile, exist only in English and Japanese, regardless of which of the twenty-eight the interface itself renders.
Linear answers the same question by not asking it
Linear publishes no interface language at all: its preferences page lists nine settings, none of them for language or locale, and its documentation carries no localization page. The product exists in American English only, a narrower but at least uncontradicted position next to Jira’s twenty-eight-language claim.
The government cloud draws its own, separate line
Atlassian names a FedRAMP Certification at Class C and a GovRAMP Moderate authorization, reached through its AGC offering; a HIPAA BAA is available from the Standard tier but absent from AGC itself. Atlassian’s own pages disagree on the FedRAMP claim itself, one describing it as already achieved, another as still coming soon — a contradiction this comparison reports without resolving. Linear draws a smaller version of the same line: a HIPAA BAA opens only on Enterprise, and choosing between a United States or European Union workspace is made once, at creation, and is not reversible, with some data — accounts, API keys, analytics — always kept in the United States regardless of that choice.
Sales tax lists more states than either product needs to justify
Atlassian charges United States sales tax on Jira based on the billing address, across thirty-six named states and territories including Colorado, New York and Texas, with an exemption requiring documentation and no nexus allocation stated. Linear charges the same kind of tax across a shorter, dated list — effective January 2026 — of named states including Arizona, Colorado and Texas, with no statement addressing economic nexus at all. Neither company sells anything related to sales itself; the tax sits on the subscription regardless.
Buying through a purchase order runs into a number that keeps changing
Atlassian accepts wire transfer, card, PayPal or check, opening net-14 terms between one thousand and fifty thousand dollars pre-tax and net-30 above fifty thousand dollars on one page — but a separate FAQ states the thresholds as ten thousand dollars and fifty thousand dollars instead. A purchase order itself is accepted only for reference, and a W-9 is provided. Linear opens the same kind of billing, invoice or purchase order, only at Enterprise; below it, buyers pay by card or by ACH, at ten or sixteen dollars per user per month depending on the tier.
What each one still won’t tell a buyer
Neither vendor states a support response time in writing for its standard tiers: Linear offers only a web form and an email address, with no published hours; Jira states nine business hours of support on Standard and twenty-four-hour coverage only from Premium, but in English and Japanese alone, whatever interface language a user has selected.
