The best issue trackers, according to hackers
9 issue trackers were recommended on Hacker News between November 2025 and November 2026. We rank them by how many separate people recommend each one, and 4 earn the Hacker Approved badge.
Top picks
The three most recommended issue trackers with the badge. Each figure is 10 people. RecommendsCriticizes One comment
Fast and snappy
A fast, keyboard-driven issue tracker that people find far simpler than Jira and well suited to AI agent workflows; critics report creeping complexity, memory use and hard-to-find features.
Stores issues in Git refs
Stores issues inside Git so tracking stays with the code and no hosted service is needed. Most common caveat: no pull request support.
Git-native, lives in your repo
Git-native, vendor-agnostic issue tracker kept in your repo with an auditable event log, though its terminal interface is hard for whole teams.
All 9 issue trackers, ranked
Select a column heading to sort. Approval share is recommenders out of everyone who gave an opinion; the tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs. Months counts the months, out of 13, in which someone recommended it.
| Rank | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Linear | 148 | 66 | 69% | 12 | 4 yrs6 owners | Approved |
| 2 | Jira | 128 | 399 | 24% | 12 | 10 yrs7 owners | — |
| 3 | git-bug | 36 | 9 | 80% | 8 | — | Approved |
| 4 | GitHub Issues | 29 | 28 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| 5 | Epiq | 19 | 2 | 90% | 5 | 1.5 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| 6 | JetBrains YouTrack | 14 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| 7 | Bugzilla | 9 | 12 | 43% | 6 | — | — |
| 8 | Trac | 6 | 4 | 60% | 2 | — | — |
| 9 | beads_rust | 5 | 1 | 83% | 5 | — | — |
How we rank
Rank is the number of separate people who recommend a product in a Hacker News comment over the past year. Someone who praises the same issue tracker in five threads counts once.
The badge goes to issue trackers that at least 10 people recommend, with recommenders outnumbering critics at least 2 to 1, recommended in at least 4 of the 13 months.
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