Web Cited Research / Head-to-Head

Linear vs Jira in AI search.

We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity 5 buyer questions about software engineering project management. Then we counted how often each brand showed up.

Published May 15, 2026 · Software project management (online-only / SaaS)
Linear
21 / 60
LLM responses cited Linear
Jira
29 / 60
LLM responses cited Jira

Jira is more visible in AI search across this prompt set, by 8 citations.

The finding in one paragraph

Software engineering teams choosing a project management tool increasingly start with a prompt to an AI assistant before clicking through to product pages. We tested 5 standardized buyer questions any engineering leader might plausibly type into ChatGPT or Claude, ran each one 3 times per engine across 4 engines, and counted how often Linear and Jira each appeared in the responses. The result, the per-engine breakdown, and a per-prompt comparison are below.

Per-engine breakdown

Engine Linear Jira Edge
ChatGPT3 / 155 / 15Jira by 2
Claude11 / 158 / 15Linear by 3
Gemini0 / 151 / 15Jira by 1
Perplexity7 / 1515 / 15Jira by 8

Per-prompt comparison

Each prompt was asked 12 times (4 engines × 3 trials). The cells show how often each brand showed up in those 12 responses.

Buyer prompt Linear Jira
What is the best issue tracking and project management tool for software engineering teams?2 / 126 / 12
What are the modern alternatives to Jira for fast-moving startups?4 / 123 / 12
What project management tools do high-performance engineering teams use in 2026?5 / 126 / 12
How should a Series B SaaS startup choose between Linear and Jira?8 / 1210 / 12
What is the best agile sprint planning tool for product and engineering teams?2 / 124 / 12

What the full audit would fix for a online-only / SaaS brand

The head-to-head above measures citation share on a single shared prompt set. The paid SXO Audit produces specific, copy-paste-ready fix recommendations across the categories below. Counts are the approximate number of distinct fix recommendations the audit pipeline can produce per brand; the exact count varies by site.

Fix category Fix recommendations
Core fix categories (every audit)
AI Search Visibility (LLM citations across 4 engines)8
Schema Markup & JSON-LD (Organization, Product, FAQPage)6
Buyer-Prompt-Matching FAQ + Content5
Technical SEO Foundations (crawlability, render, canonicals)7
Knowledge Graph & Entity Signals4
Citation Footprints (third-party signals)5
Core Web Vitals & Performance4
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA)5
Core subtotal~44
Total fix recommendations per brand~44

Every Web Cited audit produces this set of fix recommendations regardless of business type. Storefront and service-area brands get additional category coverage on top of these, reflecting the location-presence signals AI assistants consult for those business models. The Playbook ships every fix as a copy-paste-ready remediation with the file, code, or content change spelled out.

Methodology

Identical to the Web Cited AI Visibility Index methodology. Replicable by anyone with API access to the four engines.

Engines tested
OpenAI ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini)
Anthropic Claude (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001)
Google Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash-lite)
Perplexity (sonar)
Settings
temperature 0.2
max_tokens 800
N = 3 trials per (engine, prompt)
Total LLM calls
120
2 brands × 4 engines × 5 prompts × 3 trials
Match criteria
case-insensitive substring match of brand domain OR brand name anywhere in the response

The 5 standardized buyer prompts

  1. What is the best issue tracking and project management tool for software engineering teams?
  2. What are the modern alternatives to Jira for fast-moving startups?
  3. What project management tools do high-performance engineering teams use in 2026?
  4. How should a Series B SaaS startup choose between Linear and Jira?
  5. What is the best agile sprint planning tool for product and engineering teams?
Known limitations. Substring matching can miss paraphrased mentions. LLM responses vary; N=3 reduces but does not eliminate variance. Same domain-based methodology as the full Web Cited audit.

Want to know how your brand stacks up?

Web Cited runs the same measurement against your domain, your competitors, and your top buyer prompts. Citation Monitor reads those prompts every week and ships a click-to-copy Playbook your engineers ship from in the next sprint, from $49/mo.

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