Miro
7.2Innovation Workspace where retros happen on the same canvas as discovery and planning
Miro is the dominant online whiteboard, now sold as an AI Innovation Workspace. It pairs an infinite canvas with a 7,000+ template library (300+ retro formats among them), AI clustering by sentiment/keyword/author, Engage live polls and word clouds (included with Business since June 2026), Blueprints for reusable multi-board workflows, real-time and async collaboration, and a 250+ app marketplace with first-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp. An official MCP server runs on every plan under per-tier daily call quotas.
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
Miro scores 7.2 overall and is best for large product, design and engineering orgs that already run discovery, planning and retros on one canvas and want AI clustering plus deep Jira/Azure DevOps/Asana sync. 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.
Miro 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, Miro edges ahead with an overall score of 7.2. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | Miro | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Enterprise | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | 3 editable boards, full 7,000+ template library, 250+ app marketplace, 5 Talktracks, 100 MCP calls/day and a small AI allowance (10 credits/mo per the pricing page, 25 per the help centre); no timer, voting, private mode, private boards, guests, Blueprints, Jira Cards or high-res export | 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 | $8/user/mo billed annually ($10 billed monthly) | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo billed annually, $240/mo billed monthly (Starter, 24 seats) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2011 | 2023 |
| HQ | Amsterdam, NL | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Australia · JP | — |
| Languages | 8 (English, Spanish, German, …) | English only |
| Export formats | Image · PDF · CSV | Markdown · Email · JSON |
| Features | 47 | 39 |
| Integrations | 12 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Miro | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓ | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓note | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| 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 | ✓note | — |
| Confluence | ✓ | — |
| GitHub | ✓note | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | ✓note | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | — |
| Monday.com | ✓note | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓note |
| Trello | ✓note | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | ✓ | ✓ |
Miro — pros
- + Enormous template library (7,000+ board templates, 300+ retro formats) plus the Miroverse community gallery
- + AI clustering groups sticky notes by colour, tag, author, keyword and sentiment — real time saved on a 60-sticky board
- + First-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp, so a sticky becomes tracked work in one click
- + <strong>Engage</strong> activities — live polls, word clouds, scales, ranking — are included with Business; participants join by QR code with no Miro account
- + Enterprise-grade SSO, SCIM, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 42001 and US/EU/AU/Japan data residency; official MCP server on every plan
Miro — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: 24 people cost $192/mo on Starter billed annually ($240 monthly). Business — SSO, editing guests, Engage, Azure DevOps and Linear sync, full Sidekicks — is $480/mo annually ($600 monthly), and AI is credit-metered on every tier
- − Recent G2 reviewers' loudest complaint is billing, not the canvas: guests converted to paid licences and prorated mid-cycle seat charges
- − No health checks, mood tracking or longitudinal team pulse; Engage Scales reads the room once, it doesn't draw a trend line
- − No recurring retros, scheduling, action carryover, cross-team rollup or action dashboard — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint, and actions only persist as Jira/Azure DevOps/Linear cards
- − SCIM, audit logs, domain control and US/Australia/Japan data residency are Enterprise-only (EU hosting is the default on every plan), and Enterprise starts at 30 seats
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.