Linear MCP Server vs Slack MCP Server

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Linear MCP Server MCP Servers	Slack MCP Server MCP Servers
Tagline	Open-source MCP server bridging LLM agents to Linear's issue tracker (now deprecated in favour of Linear's official remote MCP)	Archived reference MCP server that lets Claude and other MCP clients read and post in a Slack workspace via a bot token.
Category	MCP Servers	MCP Servers
Pricing	Free· Free and open source (MIT). Requires a Linear account and personal API key; Linear itself is free for small teams, $8/user/mo Standard, $14/user/mo Plus.	Free· Free / open-source (MIT). Requires a Slack workspace and a Slack bot token; Slack itself is free/paid.
Model	—	—
Editorial score	—	—
Use cases	Filing bugs from Claude Desktop or Cursor without leaving the editorAgent-driven triage of the inbox projectBulk relabeling or reprioritising issues via natural languageStandup summaries of a user's assigned Linear workAdding comments to tickets from a coding agent's PR reviewReference implementation for building a custom Linear MCP server	Channel triage and summarisationAutomated thread digestsPosting AI-generated status updatesCross-channel search and reportingStandup and retro note postingOn-call escalation repliesUser and profile lookup for routingReaction-based workflow signallingMCP server reference implementation
Pros	Open source (MIT) and small enough to read end-to-end in an afternoon One-line install via Smithery or straight npx in Claude Desktop config Covers the create / update / search / comment loop that 90% of ticket workflows need Works with any MCP client, not just Claude Desktop (Cursor, Zed, Continue, custom agents) Clear tool schemas make it a good reference implementation for building your own MCP servers Uses Linear's official GraphQL API, so permissions and audit trails stay intact	Official reference implementation from the modelcontextprotocol project — small, readable TypeScript that documents the MCP tool pattern well Covers the eight highest-value Slack primitives (list, post, reply, react, history, thread, users, profile) with minimal ceremony Ships as both an npx package and a Docker image, so it drops straight into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client with a JSON config snippet Standard Slack bot-token auth (xoxb-) with clearly scoped OAuth permissions — easy to reason about and to revoke Open-source under MIT, so forking or vendoring for internal hardening is straightforward Good starting point for learning how to write your own MCP server against a REST API
Cons	Officially deprecated by its author in favour of Linear's own remote MCP server at mcp.linear.app/sse Runs as a local stdio process, so it has to be installed on every workstation and cannot be shared across a team Uses a personal API key, meaning every action shows up as the key owner rather than the actual LLM user Tool coverage is narrower than the official server: no cycles, projects, roadmaps, or workflow state management Error handling and rate-limit backoff are minimal; heavy agent loops can trip Linear's API limits	Archived by the maintainer on 29 May 2025 — no upstream bug fixes, security patches, or Slack API compatibility updates Read-only surface for channels (public channels only by default) and no DM, private-channel, search, files, or canvas support out of the box No pagination helpers or rate-limit backoff beyond what the Slack SDK provides, so bulk history pulls in large workspaces can be fragile Requires a workspace admin to install a bot app and mint a token, which is a real blocker in locked-down enterprise Slack tenants Bot-token model means every action is attributed to the bot user, not the human operating the assistant, which complicates audit trails
Website	github.com	github.com

Pick Linear MCP Server if

✅ Open source (MIT) and small enough to read end-to-end in an afternoon
✅ One-line install via Smithery or straight npx in Claude Desktop config
✅ Covers the create / update / search / comment loop that 90% of ticket workflows need
✅ Works with any MCP client, not just Claude Desktop (Cursor, Zed, Continue, custom agents)

Pick Slack MCP Server if

✅ Official reference implementation from the modelcontextprotocol project — small, readable TypeScript that documents the MCP tool pattern well
✅ Covers the eight highest-value Slack primitives (list, post, reply, react, history, thread, users, profile) with minimal ceremony
✅ Ships as both an npx package and a Docker image, so it drops straight into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client with a JSON config snippet
✅ Standard Slack bot-token auth (xoxb-) with clearly scoped OAuth permissions — easy to reason about and to revoke

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