Lucidspark
6.5Lucid Software's whiteboard with the Lucid AI assistant and tight Lucidchart integration — voting, timers and facilitator tools start at the Team tier
Lucidspark is the whiteboard product from Lucid Software (makers of Lucidchart) — an infinite canvas with sticky notes, private-mode brainstorming, anonymous voting sessions, timers, the Lucid AI assistant (prompt-to-board, magic sort, board summaries) and bidirectional sync with Lucidchart for diagrams. Free and Individual get static dot voting only; the timer, private voting and facilitator tools start at the Team tier, and starting a private-mode session, Breakout Boards and the Lucid Cards sync to Jira/Azure DevOps/monday.com are Enterprise-only. Strong enterprise posture inherited from Lucid: SSO/SAML, SCIM, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27701/42001, FedRAMP Moderate, IRAP PROTECTED, GDPR, and US/EU/AU data residency.
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
Lucidspark scores 6.5 overall and is best for engineering and PM teams already on Lucidchart who want sticky-note retros and brainstorming on the same platform — and whose security review favours a SOC 2 / ISO 27001 vendor. 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.
Lucidspark leads on integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, value and AI & insights.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Lucidspark edges ahead with an overall score of 6.5. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | Lucidspark | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Mid-market | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | 3 editable boards, unlimited shapes per board, basic Visual Activities, emoji reactions, presentation mode, Lucid AI and static dot voting — no timer, voting sessions or facilitator tools, and private mode is join-only | 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 | $9/user/mo (Individual, billed annually; $15 billed monthly) | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $240/mo (Team plan, 24 users at $10/user billed annually; $360/mo billed monthly) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2010 | 2023 |
| HQ | South Jordan, US | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Australia | — |
| Languages | 12 (English, German, Spanish, …) | English only |
| Export formats | Image · PDF · CSV · JSON | Markdown · Email · JSON |
| Features | 45 | 39 |
| Integrations | 8 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Lucidspark | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓note | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Independent voting | ✓note | ✓ |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | ✓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 | ✓note | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓note | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | — | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | — |
| Monday.com | ✓note | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | ✓note | ✓ |
Lucidspark — pros
- + Tight integration with Lucidchart — switch between diagram and whiteboard on the same canvas
- + Engagement basics on every plan, free included — emoji reactions on notes, Giphy search and a free icebreaker template library; from Team the timer can play music for the whole board
- + Strong enterprise posture: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27701/42001, FedRAMP Moderate, IRAP PROTECTED, PCI DSS, GDPR, SSO/SAML, SCIM, US/EU/AU data residency
- + Official Lucid MCP server is GA on every plan and shipping monthly — search boards, summarise them, generate synced Jira cards from Claude or ChatGPT
- + Lucid AI (AI sort, summaries, prompt-to-board and a chat assistant) is unmetered on every tier today, free plan included
Lucidspark — cons
- − Timer, private voting and facilitator tools start at the $10/user Team tier — Free and Individual get static dot voting and nothing else facilitator-shaped
- − Starting a private-mode (blind brainstorm) session, Breakout Boards and the Lucid Cards sync to Jira, Azure DevOps and monday.com are Enterprise-only; audit logs need the paid Enterprise Shield add-on on top
- − No health checks, recurring retros, action carryover or cross-team rollup
- − AI is general brainstorming/summarising, not retro-aware — no sentiment, action-item extraction or trend insight across retros
- − Retro template depth trails Miro and Mural; the REST API needs a Team or Enterprise account and there are no outbound webhooks
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.