Software engineering teams are crucial for the organization. They build high-quality products, gather and analyze requirements, design system architecture and components, and write clean, efficient code. Hence, they are the key drivers of success.

Measuring their success and considering if they are facing any challenges is important. And that’s how Engineering Analytics Tools comes to the rescue. One of the popular tools is LinearB which engineering leaders and CTOs across the globe have widely used.

While this is usually the best choice for the organizations, there might be chances that it doesn’t work for you. Worry not! We’ve curated the top 6 LinearB alternatives that you can take note of when considering engineering analytics tools for your company.

What is LinearB?

LinearB is a well-known software engineering analytics platform that measures GIT data, tracks DORA metrics, and collects data from other tools. By combining visibility and automation, it enhances operational efficiency and provides a comprehensive view of performance. Its project delivery forecasting and goal-setting features help engineering leaders stay on schedule and monitor team efficiency. LinearB can be integrated with Slack, JIRA, and popular CI/CD tools. However, LinearB has limited features to support the SPACE framework and individual performance insights.

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Worry not! We’ve curated the top 6 LinearB alternatives that you can take note of when considering engineering analytics tools for your company.

However, before diving into these alternatives, it’s crucial to understand why some organizations seek other options beyond LinearB. Despite its popularity, there are notable limitations that may not align with every team's needs:

• Limited Customization for Certain Metrics: LinearB offers a range of engineering metrics but falls short when it comes to tailoring these metrics for advanced or niche use cases. This can be a hurdle for teams with specific requirements.

• Steep Learning Curve: Teams new to engineering analytics tools might find LinearB's features and functionalities complex to navigate, potentially leading to a longer adjustment period

• No code quality related insights for the team

• Limited Benchmarks and Historical Data: Users have pointed out that LinearB lacks extensive historical data and external benchmarks, making it challenging to measure long-term performance against industry standards.

• Lacks Advanced Engineering Management Features: While LinearB excels in providing engineering metrics, it may not offer the comprehensive project management capabilities found in tools like Jira, necessitating the use of additional software for full project tracking.

• Expensive tool for small teams with premium plans starting from USD 50 / Git Contributor / month billed annually.

Understanding these limitations can help you make an informed decision as you explore other tools that might better suit your team's unique needs and workflows.

LinearB Alternatives

Besides LinearB, there are other leading alternatives as well.

Take a look below:

Typo

Typo is another popular software engineering intelligence platform that offers SDLC visibility, developer insights, and workflow automation for building high-performing tech teams. It can be seamlessly integrated into the tech tools stack including the GIT version (GitHub, GitLab), issue tracker (Jira, Linear), and CI/CD (Jenkins, CircleCI) tools to ensure a smooth data flow. Typo also offers comprehensive insights into the deployment process through key DORA and other engineering metrics. With its automated code tool, the engineering team can identify code issues and auto-fix them before merging to master.

Features

• DORA and other engineering metrics can be configured in a single dashboard.

• Actually using AI agents to create summaries for Sprint Retros, PRs, Insights & Recommendations

• Captures a 360-degree view of developers’ experience i.e. qualitative insights and an in-depth view of the real issues.

• Offers engineering benchmark to compare the team’s results across industries.

• Effective sprint analysis tracks and analyzes the team’s progress throughout a sprint.

• Reliable and prompt customer support.

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Pros

• Strong metrics tracking capabilities

• Quality insights generation

• Comprehensive metrics analysis

• Responsive customer support

• Effective team collaboration tools

• Highly cost effective for the RoI
  

Cons

• More features to be added

• Need more customization options

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G2 Reviews Summary - The review numbers show decent engagement (11-20 mentions for pros, 4-6 for cons), with significantly more positive feedback than negative. Notable that customer support appears as a top pro, which is unique among the competitors we've analyzed.

Link to Typo's G2 reviews

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Pricing

Freemium plan with premium plans starting from USD 16 / Git contributor / month billed annually.

Jellyfish

Jellyfish is a leading GIT tracking tool for tracking metrics by aligning engineering insights with business goals. It analyzes the activities of engineers in a development and management tool and provides a complete understanding of the product. Jellyfish shows the status of every pull request and offers relevant information about the commit that affects the branch. It can be easily integrated with JIRA, Bitbucket, Gitlab, and Confluence.

Features

• Provides multiple views on resource allocation.

• Real-time visibility into engineering organization and team progress.

• Provides you access to benchmarking data on engineering metrics.

• Includes DevOps metrics for continuous delivery.

• Transforms data into reports and insights for both management and leadership.

Pros

• Comprehensive metrics collection and tracking

• In-depth metrics analysis capabilities

• Strong insights generation from data

• User-friendly interface design

• Effective team collaboration tools

Cons

• Issues with metric accuracy and reliability

• Complex setup and configuration process

• High learning curve for full platform utilization

• Challenges with data management

• Limited customization options

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G2 Reviews Summary - The feedback shows strong core features but notable implementation challenges, particularly around configuration and customization.

Link to Jellyfish's G2 reviews

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Pricing

Quotation on Request

Swarmia

Swarmia is a popular tool that offers visibility across three crucial areas: business outcome, developer productivity, and developer experience. It provides quantitative insights into the development pipeline. It helps the team identify initiatives falling behind their planned schedule by displaying the impact of unplanned work, scope creep, and technical debt. Swarmia can be integrated with tech tools like source code hosting, issue trackers, and chat systems.

Features

• Investment balance gives insights into the purpose of each action and money spent by the company on each category.

• User-friendly dashboard.

• Working agreement features include 20+ work agreements used by the industry’s top-performing teams.

• Tracks healthy software engineering measures such as DORA metrics.

• Automation feature allows all tasks to be assigned to the appropriate issues and persons.

Pros

• Strong insights generation and visualization

• Well-implemented Slack integration

• Comprehensive engineering metrics tracking

• User-friendly interface and navigation

• Effective pull request review management

Cons

• Some issues with metric accuracy and reliability

• Integration problems with certain tools/platforms

• Limited customization options for teams

• Key features missing from the platform

• Restrictive feature set for advanced needs

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G2 Reviews Summary - The reviewsgives us a clearer picture of Swarmia's strengths in alerts and basic metrics, while highlighting its limitations in customization and advanced features.

Link to Swarmia's G2 reviews

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Pricing

Freemium plan with premium plans starting from USD 39 / Git Contributor / month billed annually.

Waydev

Waydev is a software development analytics platform that uses an agile method for tracking output during the development process. It puts more stress on market-based metrics and gives cost and progress of delivery and key initiatives. Its flexible reporting allows for building complex custom reports. Waydev can be seamlessly integrated with Gitlab, Github, CircleCI, AzureOPS, and other well-known tools.

Features

• Provides automated insights on metrics related to bug fixes, velocity, and more.

• Allows engineering leaders to see data from different perspectives.

• Creates custom goals, targets, or alerts.

• Offers budgeting reports for engineering leaders.

Pros

• Metrics analysis capabilities

• Clean dashboard interface

• Engineering practices tracking

• Feature set offering

• Management efficiency tools

Cons

• Learning curve for new users

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G2 Reviews Summary - The very low number of reviews (only 1-2 mentions per category) suggests limited G2 user feedback for Waydev compared to other platforms like Jellyfish (37-82 mentions) or Typo (20-25 mentions). This makes it harder to draw reliable conclusions about overall user satisfaction and platform performance.

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Link to Waydev's G2 Reviews

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Pricing

Freemium plan with premium plans starting from USD 29 / Git Contributor / month billed annually.

Pluralsight Flow (formerly Git Prime)

Pluralsight Flow provides a detailed overview of the development process and helps identify friction and bottlenecks in the development pipeline. It tracks DORA metrics, software development KPIs, and investment insights which allows for aligning engineering efforts with strategic objectives. Pluralsight Flow can be integrated with various manual and automated testing tools such as Azure DevOps, and GitLab.

Features

• Offers insights into why trends occur and what could be the related issues.

• Predicts value impact for project and process proposals.

• Features DORA analytics and investment insights.

• Provides centralized insights and data visualization for data sharing and collaboration.

• Easy to manage configuration.

Pros

• Strong core metrics tracking capabilities

• Process improvement features

• Data-driven insights generation

• Detailed metrics analysis tools

• Efficient work tracking system

Cons

• Complex and challenging user interface

• Issues with metrics accuracy/reliability

• Steep learning curve for users

• Inefficiencies in tracking certain metrics

• Problems with tool integrations

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G2 Reviews Summary - The review numbers show moderate engagement (6-12 mentions for pros, 3-4 for cons), placing it between Waydev's limited feedback and Jellyfish's extensive reviews. The feedback suggests strong core functionality but notable usability challenges.

Link to Pluralsight Flow's G2 Reviews

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Pricing

Freemium plan with premium plans starting from USD 38 / Git Contributor / month billed annually.

‍Sleuth

Sleuth assists development teams in tracking and improving DORA metrics. It provides a complete picture of existing and planned deployments as well as the effect of releases. Sleuth gives teams visibility and actionable insights on efficiency and can be integrated with AWS CloudWatch, Jenkins, JIRA, Slack, and many more.

Features

• Provides automated and easy deployment process.

• Keeps team up to date on how they are performing against their goal over time.

• Automatically suggests efficiency goals based on teams’ historical metrics.

• Lightweight and adaptable.

• Accurate picture of software development performance and provides insights.

Pros

• Clear data visualization features

• User-friendly interface

• Simple integration process

• Good visualization capabilities

Cons

• High Pricing Concerns

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G2 Reviews Summary - Similar to Waydev, Sleuth has very limited G2 review data (only 1 mention per category). The extremely low number of reviews makes it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the platform's overall performance and user satisfaction compared to more reviewed platforms like Jellyfish (37-82 mentions) or Typo (11-20 mentions). The feedback suggests strengths in visualization and integrations, but the sample size is too small to be definitive.

Link to Sleuth's G2 Reviews

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Pricing

Quotation on Request.

Integrating Engineering Management Platforms

Engineering management platforms streamline workflows by seamlessly integrating with popular development tools like Jira, GitHub, CI/CD and Slack. This integration offers several key benefits:

• Out-of-the-box compatibility with widely used tools minimizes setup time.
• Automation of tasks like status updates and alerts improves efficiency.
• Customizable integrations cater to specific team needs and workflows.
• Centralized data enhances collaboration and reduces the need to switch between applications.

By leveraging these integrations, teams can significantly improve their productivity and focus on building high-quality products.

Conclusion

Software development analytics tools are important for keeping track of project pipelines and measuring developers’ productivity. It allows engineering managers to gain visibility into the dev team performance through in-depth insights and reports.

Take the time to conduct thorough research before selecting any analytics tool. It must align with your team’s needs and specifications, facilitate continuous improvement, and integrate with your existing and forthcoming tech tools.

All the best!