FigJam
7.3Figma's whiteboard with AI sticky clustering, an official MCP server that reaches FigJam boards, and a $3 Collab seat — free tier caps at 3 boards
FigJam is the whiteboard product inside Figma — sticky notes, timer, music, stamps and emotes, voting sessions, one-click AI that sorts and summarises stickies, and 300+ ready-made templates including community retro boards. Design and product teams already living in Figma get retros without buying a second tool, backed by Figma's SAML/SCIM, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and Enterprise data residency in the EU, Australia, India, Brazil and Japan. Figma's official MCP server reads FigJam boards on every plan; letting an agent write to them is a beta that needs a Full seat. Voting sessions, open guest sessions, audio chat and webhooks all require a paid team; publishing custom templates requires Organization.
Full review →
QRetro
6.3Manage team health, not sticky notes
QRetro is a completely free retrospective tool with no seat or team caps, built by solo developer Roman Ermilov and shipping since January 2023. It runs a fixed seven-stage session — optional health check, optional icebreaker game, cards, grouping, voting, discussion, results — and closes with an OpenAI-generated summary, a ROTI score, suggested next steps and an analysis layer that clusters the cards by topic, sentiment and urgency. An official hosted MCP server exposes 29 read/write tools so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can query boards, health trends and actions directly.
Full review →Summary
FigJam scores 7.3 overall and is best for design and product teams already on Figma who want retros on the same platform as their design files, with playful engagement, AI sticky clustering and an agent-accessible canvas. It offers a free tier.
QRetro scores 6.3 overall and is best for small agile teams and independent squads that want a genuinely well-equipped retro — 52 templates, health checks, ROTI, timer, in-board surveys, icebreaker games and MCP access — at zero cost, and can accept a solo-maintainer vendor with no SSO, no PDF or spreadsheet export and no certifications. It offers a free tier.
FigJam leads on fun factor, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, value and AI & insights.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, FigJam edges ahead with an overall score of 7.3. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | FigJam | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Mid-market | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Starter: 3 FigJam files per team (unlimited personal drafts), 150 AI credits/day up to 500/month, 300+ templates, timer, music, AI Sort/Summarize/Generate, REST API and 20 MCP tool calls/month, 30-day version history — no voting sessions, audio chat, open (no-account) sessions or webhooks | Everything is free with no seat or team caps — 52 templates, unlimited public and team boards, planning poker, team games, health checks, ROTI, summaries and MCP access |
| Starting price | $3/user/mo (Collab seat, billed annually; $5 billed monthly) | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $72/mo (24 Collab seats × $3, billed annually; $120/mo billed monthly at $5) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2012 | 2023 |
| HQ | San Francisco, US | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Australia · IN · BR · JP | — |
| Languages | 7 (English, Japanese, Korean, …) | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Image · CSV | Markdown · Email · JSON |
| Features | 42 | 39 |
| Integrations | 10 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | FigJam | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | — | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Independent voting | ✓note | ✓ |
| Polling | ✓ | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | ✓note | ✓note |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | — | ✓note |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓ | ✓note |
| AI action items | ✓note | ✓note |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| In-meeting AI assistant | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | ✓note | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓note | — |
| GitHub | ✓note | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | ✓note | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓note | — |
| Monday.com | ✓note | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓note | ✓note |
| Trello | ✓note | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | ✓ | — |
| MCP server | ✓ | ✓ |
FigJam — pros
- + Cheap $3/user/mo Collab seat (billed annually; $5 monthly) unlocks unlimited boards and full FigJam editing without a Full Figma seat
- + Free Starter tier includes real AI credits (150/day, 500/month), 300+ templates, the timer, music and AI Sort/Summarize
- + Playful, engaging UX — stamps, emotes, high-fives, music, cursor chat — lifts retro fun factor
- + Best open platform of any whiteboard here: REST API on every plan, webhooks on paid, and an <strong>official MCP server that reads FigJam boards</strong> on every plan
- + Strong enterprise posture inherited from Figma: SAML, SCIM, activity logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and Enterprise data residency in the EU, Australia, India, Brazil and Japan
FigJam — cons
- − No native action-item tracking, recurring retros or health checks
- − Anonymity is weak — votes reveal who voted once the session ends, and live cursors show who is writing even when a sticky's name tag is switched off
- − Action items leave the board only by hand: the Jira, GitHub and Asana widgets turn selected stickies into tickets, but Confluence, Linear and Notion are embeds only and there is no Azure DevOps
- − Free Starter caps a team at 3 FigJam files and excludes voting, audio chat, no-account guest links and webhooks; publishing custom templates needs Organization
- − Built primarily for designers — the canvas paradigm is fiddly for structured retros, and large boards get sluggish
QRetro — pros
- + Genuinely free with no seat caps, team caps or paywalled features — a 24-person org across three teams pays nothing, and there is no paid tier to be upsold to
- + Retro toolkit is deep for a free product: 52 templates, editable columns, cards hidden from everyone else until grouping, a timer, drag-and-drop grouping, presentation mode, up to five in-board surveys, action items with owners and priorities, ROTI and a radar-charted health check that trends across retros
- + The analysis layer is the surprise — every card gets a system-assigned sentiment, category and urgency score, and the <strong>Perception Mirror</strong> compares the system's own topic clusters against the groups the team made and names the ones that quietly hold three different problems
- + Unusually strong engagement layer for a product that charges nothing — four built-in games (Draw & Guess, Sprint in one GIF, Hangman, Decoded) usable as a switchable icebreaker stage, plus GIF cards, emoji reactions and live cursors. TeleRetro and the whiteboard tools still go further, mainly on music and ambient audio
- + Official hosted MCP server with 29 read, write and delete tools, two analysis prompts and OAuth sign-in, listed in the official MCP Registry as com.qretro/retro, though as of October 2026 its documented address (mcp.qretro.com) returns an error
QRetro — cons
- − Built and maintained by a single developer (Roman Ermilov) with no support team, SLA or published company entity — the enterprise-grade cap for founder-only vendors applies regardless of how good the product is
- − No enterprise controls: no SSO or SAML, no SCIM, no audit logs, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and no published hosting location or data-residency option
- − The data stays inside the product: export is a Markdown copy of the summary, an email, a Slack or Telegram recap and a JSON dump of your own account, with no PDF, CSV or Excel. There is no cross-team reporting either; the dashboard's Analytics section is still labelled <em>Coming soon</em>
- − Integration set is narrow: Jira, Linear, Slack and Telegram only — nothing for Teams, Confluence, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps or any other tracker
- − Built for a live session: no async mode, no recurring or scheduled retros, a fixed stage order, a 30-minute timer cap and an automatic vote allowance (cards + 3, capped at 10). Once cards are grouped, only the group can be voted on
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.