Mural
6.6Visual collaboration whiteboard with a mature facilitation toolkit and AI-assisted sessions
Mural is a long-established visual collaboration platform — an infinite canvas with sticky notes, anonymous voting, timers, Private Mode, 250+ workshop templates (eight of them retro-specific), Mural AI (cluster, summarise, mind-map, Classify by emotional tone), and a Facilitation Superpowers toolkit (Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode, Summon, Celebrate) refined for over a decade. Best-in-class enterprise posture: SSO/SAML with multi-IdP support, SCIM, BYOK, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001, GDPR and US/EU/Australia data residency.
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NimbleRetro
3.8Time-boxed retros with 5-Why root cause analysis
NimbleRetro is the retrospective module inside NimbleWork's broader Nimble agile platform. It runs a time-boxed retro through Icebreaker, Ideate, Group, Vote, Discuss and Feedback stages, ending in a 5-Why root cause drill-down on whatever the team voted up. Action items created in the Discuss stage convert directly into Nimble work items (user stories, cards) in the project the retro was created from. There is no separate purchase — Retrospectives ship to every Public SaaS Nimble account by default.
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Mural scores 6.6 overall and is best for workshop-heavy teams (design, product, agile coaching) that want a polished facilitation canvas with strong retro templates and enterprise-grade controls. It offers a free tier.
NimbleRetro scores 3.8 overall and is best for small agile teams already inside the Nimble suite that want a structured, time-boxed retro ending in a real root cause analysis, with the follow-up landing in the same backlog they already work from. It offers paid plans from $15/mo (up to 20 users).
Mural leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Mural edges ahead with an overall score of 6.6. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | Mural | NimbleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Mid-market | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Unlimited murals but only the 3 most recently created stay editable (older go view-only); unlimited members and view-only visitors; no Mural AI or MCP | Free trial only; no permanent free tier published for the retro module. The suite pricing page's only $0 plan (10 users / 10 projects) sits in a tier table hidden on every device, and Retrospectives appear in neither the live tier table nor the suite's full feature-comparison table |
| Starting price | $9.99/user/mo billed annually ($12/user/mo billed monthly) | $15/mo (up to 20 users) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $240/mo billed annually ($288/mo billed monthly) | $240/mo (24 users x $10/user/mo Nimble Team tier); NimbleRetro's own $15/mo plan caps at 20 users and no larger standalone tier is published |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2011 | 2002 |
| HQ | San Francisco, US | Cupertino, CA, United States |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Australia | United States |
| Languages | 9 (English, Spanish, German, …) | English only |
| Export formats | Image · PDF · PowerPoint · HTML · CSV | — |
| Features | 43 | 21 |
| Integrations | 10 | 4 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Mural | NimbleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓ | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | ✓note | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓ | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | — |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | ✓note | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓note | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓ | — |
| GitHub | ✓note | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | ✓note |
| Jira | ✓note | — |
| Linear | ✓note | — |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | ✓note |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓note |
| Trello | ✓note | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓note |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | ✓note |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | ✓note |
| Webhooks | — | ✓note |
| MCP server | ✓note | ✓note |
Mural — pros
- + Mature facilitation toolkit — Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode, Summon, Celebrate — refined over 10+ years
- + Anonymous where it counts: votes hide who voted, and Private Mode can keep sticky authors hidden even after reveal
- + Best-in-class enterprise posture: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and 42001, GDPR, SSO/SAML (multi-IdP), SCIM, BYOK, US/EU/Australia residency
- + Two-way work-item cards for Jira and Azure DevOps and, since September 2026, Linear issues and GitHub pull requests, all editable inside the mural
- + Five export formats (PDF, PNG, PPT, HTML bundle, CSV of stickies) — unusually broad for a canvas tool
Mural — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: a 24-person org pays ~$240/mo on the Team+ tier (annual), well above retro-native tools at that headcount
- − No health checks, mood tracking, recurring retros, action carryover or cross-team rollup — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint
- − AI (clustering, summary, sentiment Classify) helps inside a session but doesn't track trends across retros
- − SSO/SAML needs the $17.99/user/mo Business tier; SCIM, audit logs and data residency are Enterprise-only
- − The public API is still labelled beta and has no webhooks, and the MCP server is a public preview that needs the mural open in a browser tab
NimbleRetro — pros
- + 5-Why root cause analysis is a <em>built-in retro stage</em>, not an afterthought — almost no other retro tool ships one
- + Anonymous voting plus a facilitator-set timer on every stage keeps a 60-minute retro on the rails
- + Action items convert directly into Nimble work items, so follow-up lands in the same backlog the team already works from
- + Included by default in every Public SaaS Nimble account — no separate purchase, no tier upgrade, available to all user roles
- + NimbleWork, Inc. holds its own SOC 2 Type II, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 attestations, with reports on request through its trust center, and supports SAMLv2/ADFSv3 SSO
NimbleRetro — cons
- − The dedicated NimbleRetro iOS and Android apps have been delisted from both the App Store and Google Play, while the product pages still advertise them
- − No health checks, no recurring retros, no async mode, and no documented export of a retro board in any format
- − The platform surface — REST API, outgoing webhooks and the new Nimble MCP server — reaches Nimble cards only; none of it touches a retro, and no AI runs on retro data despite the Retrium comparison page ticking <em>Generative AI</em>
- − Participants are limited to members of the Nimble project the retro was created from, and the module is unavailable outside Public SaaS
- − No rate card: the only NimbleRetro-specific price NimbleWork publishes ($15/mo for up to 20 users) sits on a blog post, and the retro 'pricing' page is a product page with a demo form
Keep comparing
Other Mural comparisons
Other NimbleRetro comparisons
See alternatives
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.