Shortcut
FreemiumProject management for software teams
About Shortcut
Shortcut (formerly Clubhouse) is a project management tool built by engineers for engineering teams. Stories, epics, and iterations map cleanly to how software teams actually work — it does not try to force PM frameworks onto developers. The workflow is fast: create a story, set points, assign it, move it through states. GitHub and GitLab integrations auto-update story status when branches and PRs are created. The API is well-documented and teams regularly build custom integrations or automation scripts on top of it. Shortcut sits between the simplicity of GitHub Issues and the complexity of Jira — more structure than Issues, far less configuration overhead than Jira. Pricing is $8.50/user/month for Teams (up to 25 users) and $11.50/user/month for Business, with a free tier for up to 10 users. Downsides: it lacks the portfolio-level views that growing organizations need, and non-engineering teams find the story/epic model confusing. If your product and design teams also need to track their work in the same tool, Shortcut starts showing cracks. Scaled to 100+ engineers, you will want better cross-team reporting.
Key Features
Pricing Plans
Free
- 10 users
- Unlimited stories
- Kanban boards
- Basic integrations
Team
- Unlimited members
- Iterations
- Reporting
- Custom fields
Business
- Everything in Team
- Objectives
- Skill-based assignments
- Enterprise integrations
Enterprise
- Everything in Business
- SSO/SAML
- SLA
- Dedicated support
Pros
- Purpose-built for software development workflows
- Simple enough to use without training
- Excellent GitHub and GitLab integration
- Clean Kanban boards with good filtering
- Strong API for automation and custom tooling
- Affordable pricing for engineering teams
Cons
- Less suitable for non-engineering teams
- Reporting is less detailed than Jira
- Smaller ecosystem of integrations
- Roadmapping features are still evolving
- No built-in time tracking
- Limited resource management capabilities
Best For
- Engineering teams of 5-50 that find Jira too heavy and GitHub Issues too light
- Startups running agile sprints with tight GitHub or GitLab integration
- Backend and full-stack teams comfortable with the story/epic/iteration model
- Teams that want a clean API to build custom workflow automation
Not Ideal For
- Cross-functional teams where design, marketing, and engineering share one tool
- Large engineering orgs (100+ engineers) needing portfolio-level reporting
- Non-technical stakeholders who need executive dashboards
Potential Deal Breakers
- No native roadmap or portfolio view for multi-team planning
- Non-engineers find the story/epic model unintuitive
- Reporting is basic — no burndown customization or advanced analytics
Data & Privacy
Project management for software teams. AI features process stories and tasks. No customer data used for training. SOC 2 Type 2 certified. Full data export available.
Who Is This For?
Hands-on tested May 2026
Signup Experience
Email or Google signup. Free for up to 10 users with no credit card required. Onboarding imports existing projects or starts fresh with a template. Stories, epics, and iterations are set up through a guided flow. The workflow is immediately familiar to anyone who has used Jira or Linear.
For Home Users
Not suited for personal or home use. Built around software development team workflows.
For Business Users
Free tier for up to 10 users makes it accessible for small teams with no budget friction. Team at $8.50/user/mo adds advanced reporting, priority support, and admin controls. More flexible than Linear for teams with non-standard workflows -- custom fields and workflow states are easier to configure. Linear wins on speed and opinionated simplicity; Shortcut wins when teams need more customization.
Our Verdict
Shortcut is the sweet spot for engineering-first teams that outgrew GitHub Issues but refuse to deal with Jira's configuration overhead. At $8.50/user/month it is cheaper than Jira Software and meaningfully faster to use daily. The tradeoff is limited cross-functional tooling — if your PM and design teams need to live in the same system, Shortcut will frustrate everyone outside engineering.