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, team check-ins and recurring team health checks, with deep backlog sync to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps and Linear, recurring meeting series, Zoom and Google Meet transcript capture, a scoped GraphQL API, and a built-in knowledge base (Pages) that auto-publishes every meeting summary and runs AI queries across past retros.
Full review →
RetroFlow
3.3Your team's favourite way to retro
RetroFlow is a free, no-signup retrospective board built by solo developer Prashant Meena, with colourful boards, real-time collaboration, 11 ready-made templates plus a custom board builder, anonymous feedback, unrestricted upvoting, drag-to-move between columns, action items and PDF/Excel export. Participants join a shared link in one click with no account; the whole product is free with no paid tiers or locked features. The board is desktop-only — any viewport under 768px is blocked outright.
Full review →Summary
Parabol scores 7.4 overall and is best for distributed agile teams that want one open-source tool for retros, poker and team health checks. It offers a free tier.
RetroFlow scores 3.3 overall and is best for small or ad-hoc teams on laptops who want a genuinely free, zero-friction retro board they can share with one link — no signup, no payment and no setup, accepting that there is no timer, no phone support, no integrations, no AI and no enterprise controls. It offers a free tier.
Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. RetroFlow 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 | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Category | All-in-One Agile | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Any | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries per team | Everything is free — all 11 templates, custom boards, saved layouts, real-time collaboration, anonymous feedback, unlimited upvoting, action items and PDF/Excel export, with no account required to join a board and no paid tier to upgrade to |
| Starting price | $8/active user/mo | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2015 | — |
| HQ | Remote (San Diego, CA) | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Self-hosted | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | CSV · Email | PDF · Excel |
| Features | 54 | 8 |
| Integrations | 8 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Parabol | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | ✓note | — |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Polling | — | — |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓ | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓note | — |
| Team Insights | ✓note | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | ✓ | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓ | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓note | — |
| GitHub | ✓ | — |
| GitLab | ✓ | — |
| Jira | ✓ | — |
| Linear | ✓ | — |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | — |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓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, plus a DoD Iron Bank hardened container (IL4 via Platform One, IL5 via Arcus)
- + 40+ meeting templates plus poker, 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 threads, and a public GraphQL API with scoped personal access tokens, both on <em>every</em> plan
- + Recurring retro series with a real recurrence rule and Google Calendar sync, plus an opt-in facilitator rotation queue
Parabol — cons
- − Free Starter capped at 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history and 3 AI summaries per team; AI grouping and Team Health need the paid Team tier
- − No native whiteboard, presentation mode or screen-share mode
- − Team Health, as of Oct 2026: 5 Likert questions per check across 5 fixed categories, trend limited to the last five checks in one series (no standalone history view), org-wide reporting still "coming soon", no export of health scores
- − Webhooks stop at Mattermost/MS Teams notification URLs — no general event subscriptions and no MCP server
- − English-only UI; no Trello, Asana, ClickUp or Notion integration
RetroFlow — pros
- + Genuinely free with no paid tiers, no paywalled features and no account required to join a board
- + Per-board choice of <strong>Anonymous Mode</strong> (no attribution on any card) or Open Mode (names on cards), and nobody needs a signup or email to contribute
- + Eleven ready-made formats plus a Custom Board builder (2-6 columns, 7 palettes, 48 emoji) with reusable saved layouts
- + <strong>Unrestricted voting</strong> — no vote budget, no phase gate, and you can upvote your own cards; cards also drag between columns
- + PDF and Excel export of the finished board — the only route to getting your data out, and it works
RetroFlow — cons
- − No timer or phase controls — <em>still</em> nothing in the shipped app, and two timer requests raised in July 2026 sit unshipped as <em>Planned</em> on the vendor's own public roadmap
- − <strong>Desktop-only</strong> — every board route hard-blocks viewports under 768px with a 'Whoa, tiny screen detected' overlay, even though the marketing FAQ promises a fully responsive phone experience
- − No grouping of similar cards, no in-column reordering and no carry-over of previous action items; the 'Present' button is still badged SOON
- − No integrations, public API, webhooks or AI (nothing pushes to Jira, Linear, Slack or Teams), and no health checks, recurring retros, mood tracking or cross-team reporting
- − Solo-developer project with no support team, SLA, SOC 2, SSO or GDPR statement. Support routes to the founder's WhatsApp and LinkedIn DMs, and board creation still ships a 'Waking up server' screen for the free-tier backend's cold start
Keep comparing
Other Parabol comparisons
Other RetroFlow comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.