Points and hours are not rival religions; they answer different questions. Points ask how big a piece of work is relative to others. Hours ask how long it will take and what it will cost. Linear is built around the first, Kavanah around the second (it accepts points too), and the right one depends on who reads the plan.
1. How Linear Estimates
Linear's docs describe estimates as the complexity or size of an issue, on an exponential, Fibonacci, linear or t-shirt scale, with an optional extended scale. By default an unestimated issue counts as 1 point, which you can turn off. Linear even reserves the label name hours, among others, as duplicative of existing features. Capacity for an upcoming cycle is calculated from the velocity of the previous three completed cycles, with a rough estimate from team size for a new team.
2. Why Points Work for Engineers
Relative sizing is fast, it avoids false precision, and velocity absorbs a team's consistent optimism. A stable team shipping code in regular cycles gets a good forecast from points with very little ceremony. If that describes you and nobody downstream needs hours, there is no reason to change.
3. Where Points Stop Helping
Points do not convert into money or into a date for one person's work. An agency billing a client, a finance team planning a close, or a manager balancing people across several projects needs hours. On Linear that means a second tool: its integrations directory offers Harvest, which starts a timer from an issue's sidebar and keeps the entries on a Harvest timesheet linked back to the issue. The hours exist, but the plan in Linear does not read them.
4. How Kavanah Plans With Hours
Kavanah estimates in time, as minutes, hours or days (story points are still accepted, at 4 hours a point when planning), and logs time against tasks natively, on every plan. Its sprint planner takes each person's completed tasks from the last 90 days that carry both an estimate and logged time, measures how far their estimates usually miss, and says what fits in the sprint at the median and at the 90th percentile. The forecast is never written back over the estimate, and committing the sprint stays a human decision. The point is not to punish bad estimates but to plan with the ones you have.
5. Choosing
Use points if the plan is read only by the team doing the work and the work is code. Use hours if anyone else reads the plan, a client, a finance lead or a manager across projects, or if you want estimates to get better over time. Plenty of companies run both: engineers in Linear with points, and the rest of the business in Kavanah with hours.
Points tell a team how big the work is; hours tell the business when and at what cost. For the full dated comparison of Kavanah, Linear, Jira and ClickUp, see our Linear alternative page.
