Parabol
7.4Open-source agile meetings for retros, poker, standups and check-ins
Parabol is an open-source agile meeting platform spanning retrospectives, sprint poker, async standups, team check-ins and lightweight team health, with deep backlog sync to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps and Linear, recurring meeting series, and a built-in knowledge base (Pages) that auto-publishes every meeting summary and runs AI queries across past retros.
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Retrium
4.7Guided retrospectives and Team Radars for scrum and agile teams
Retrium is a long-running, retrospectives-only tool that emphasises guided five-phase facilitation, anonymous brainstorming, voting, a persistent action plan, and Team Radar health checks for distributed teams.
Full review →Summary
Parabol scores 7.4 overall and is best for distributed agile teams that want one open-source tool for retros, poker, standups and lightweight team health. It offers a free tier.
Retrium scores 4.7 overall and is best for scrum masters and agile coaches who want a focused, retro-only tool with strong facilitation guardrails and a built-in Team Radar. It offers paid plans from $39/mo.
Parabol leads on retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. Retrium leads on value.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Parabol edges ahead with an overall score of 7.4. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | Parabol | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Category | All-in-One Agile | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Any | Mid-market |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month | No free plan — 30-day trial of column-based techniques and Team Radar |
| Starting price | $8/active user/mo | $39/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo | $117/mo |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2015 | 2014 |
| HQ | Remote (San Diego, CA) | Washington, D.C., USA |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Self-hosted | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | CSV · Email | CSV · Jira |
| Features | 46 | 26 |
| Integrations | 7 | 2 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Parabol | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | ✓note | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Insights | ✓note | — |
| Polling | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | ✓ | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Agile Estimations | ✓ | — |
| Health Checks | ✓note | ✓ |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓ | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | ✓ | — |
| GitLab | ✓ | — |
| Jira | ✓ | ✓note |
| Linear | ✓ | — |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | ✓note | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | ✓note | — |
| MCP server | — | — |
Parabol — pros
- + Open source (AGPL-3.0) with Docker/Kubernetes self-host, on-prem and air-gapped deployment
- + 40+ retro templates plus poker, standups, check-ins and team health in one tool
- + Strong backlog write-back to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps and Linear
- + CSV export of reflections, groups, votes and discussion threads on <em>every</em> tier
- + Recurring retro series with a real recurrence rule and Google Calendar sync
- + DoD Iron Bank hardened container, cleared to IL4 via Platform One
Parabol — cons
- − Free tier capped at 10 meetings/month, 30-day history and 3 AI summaries
- − No native whiteboard, presentation mode or screen-share mode
- − Health-check is a single emoji poll — no custom radars or trend dashboards
- − AI grouping and team health checks need the paid Team tier; Pages Insights needs org-level enablement
- − Webhooks stop at Mattermost/MS Teams notification URLs — no general event subscriptions and no MCP server
- − No Confluence, Trello or multi-language support
Retrium — pros
- + Battle-tested five-phase guided facilitation flow
- + Anonymous brainstorming and grouping by design
- + Persistent team-room action plan that carries forward between retros
- + Team Radar health check — up to seven customisable spokes, anonymous 1–5 scoring
- + Per-team-room pricing with unlimited users on every plan
Retrium — cons
- − No free plan — 30-day trial only, and the Fishbone technique stays paid-only during it
- − Integrations stop at Jira Cloud and a <em>still-beta</em> Slack app — no Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Linear or Confluence
- − <strong>No AI features at all</strong> — no summary, clustering, action-item extraction or sentiment
- − The only API is an Enterprise-gated SCIM 2.0 user-provisioning endpoint; no webhooks, and export stops at CSV and TXT
- − No published product updates since <strong>August 2024</strong> — the help centre's yearly updates series ends at 2024
Keep comparing
Other Parabol comparisons
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.