IdeaBoardz
3.1Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick one of five presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos) or name your own 1-10 sections, share the URL, add ideas anonymously, upvote, and export to PDF or Excel. The app still works and is still in daily use, but development stopped years ago — the public source repository's last feature commits date to April 2020 and the Terms have not been revised since.
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LetRetro
5.9The retro tool that thinks with your team
LetRetro is a fast-shipping, AI-forward retrospective platform aimed at engineering teams rather than Scrum Masters. AI writes the board summary (key themes, action items by owner, a sentiment snapshot) and Pro trend analyses track blockers and burnout signals across retros; cards open as Jira, GitHub or GitLab issues; Voice Mode lets anyone speak a card straight into the right column; and an official MCP server lets Claude, Cursor and VS Code read and drive boards. Excalidraw-style Canvas boards sit alongside, all on flat pooled-seat pricing — $15/mo for up to 200 seats — rather than per user.
Full review →Summary
IdeaBoardz scores 3.1 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. It offers a free tier.
LetRetro scores 5.9 overall and is best for developer-leaning agile teams and startups that want AI-assisted retros wired into Jira, GitHub and GitLab, an official MCP server their AI clients can drive, and flat pricing that doesn't grow with headcount — and that don't need anonymous input, a shared timer, recurring retros or a procurement-grade security story. It offers a free tier.
LetRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, LetRetro edges ahead with an overall score of 5.9. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | LetRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | 3 boards, 1 team, 20 pooled seats, 1 canvas, 2 AI docs/mo, 5 exports/mo, 10 voice cards/mo; no integrations and no MCP requests; community support |
| Starting price | Free | $15/mo (Pro, flat) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $15/mo (Pro — flat plan covers unlimited teams within its 200 pooled-seat cap; 24 users fits) |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2025 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Bengaluru, India |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | CSV · PDF · Word · Notion · Jira |
| Features | 10 | 28 |
| Integrations | 0 | 5 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | LetRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | — |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | — | ✓note |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Polling | — | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| AI Summaries | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | ✓ |
| GitLab | — | ✓ |
| Jira | — | ✓ |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | ✓ |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | ✓note |
| Public API | ✓note | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | — | ✓note |
IdeaBoardz — pros
- + Genuinely free — no paywall, no paid tier, no trial clock
- + No signup required to participate — just share the URL
- + Five one-click presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos), or type your own 1-10 section titles
- + Drag one sticky onto another to merge them; the votes are added together
- + PDF and Excel export on every board, plus a working phone view
IdeaBoardz — cons
- − The presets only pre-fill column titles — there is no timer, no phases and no facilitator flow behind them
- − No action-item tracking, no owners, no due dates, no carry-over between boards
- − Unlimited anonymous upvotes with no per-person vote budget
- − Zero integrations, no SSO, no SOC 2 and no published privacy policy — the URL is the only access control
- − No product work since April 2020; support is a Gmail address and a Twitter handle
LetRetro — pros
- + Flat pricing — $15/mo Pro covers unlimited boards and teams within a 200 pooled-seat cap, so 24 users costs exactly what 4 do
- + AI is the product, not a bolt-on: board summaries with key themes, owner-sorted actions and a sentiment snapshot, 50 cross-retro trend analyses a month on Pro, and <strong>Voice Mode</strong> — hold Shift+Space, say a sentence, and it lands as a card in the right column
- + An <strong>official, MIT-licensed MCP server</strong> — one-command install, 17 tools, 11 clients, and its own component on the public status page — so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can read boards and file cards without a bespoke script
- + Dev-stack card linking is real and deep: Jira, GitHub and GitLab with inline issue editing, comments, MR/PR status, and one card linked across all three at once
- + Ships genuinely fast — AI summaries, MCP, GitLab, Canvas boards, 2FA, Voice Mode and CSV/Google Sheets board export all landed between June and September 2026, each documented in a changelog that matches the shipped product
LetRetro — cons
- − The integrations and comparison pages sell Linear, Asana, Confluence and Snowflake. The shipped app has setup pages for six connectors only — Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Notion and Google Docs. Verify anything you're depending on
- − Thin enterprise story: SAML is a line on the quote-only Enterprise tier, not something the shipped sign-in flow offers; no SCIM, no customer-facing audit log despite the homepage's <em>immutable audit trails</em> claim, and no LetRetro-held SOC 2 or ISO 27001
- − A bootstrapped team of four on the about page (the founder, one more engineer and two marketers) with negligible independent coverage and no support function behind an SLA. A durability risk for procurement whatever the shipping cadence
- − Retro basics the marketing promises aren't in the app: the templates and use-case pages advertise anonymous input, but every card shows its author and no setting hides it. There's also no card grouping, no shared countdown timer, no recurring retros, no async mode and no team agreements
- − No public REST API and no webhooks; the dashboard's API keys only authenticate the MCP server, which — like every integration — is Pro-only. Boards export to CSV (Google Sheets on Pro) and documents to PDF, Word, Google Docs or Notion; exports are capped at 5/mo on the free tier
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other LetRetro comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.