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 →
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
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.
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.
QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, QRetro edges ahead with an overall score of 6.3. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | QRetro | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | 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 | 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 | Free | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | No | No |
| Founded | 2023 | — |
| HQ | — | — |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | Markdown · Email · JSON | PDF · Excel |
| Features | 39 | 8 |
| Integrations | 3 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | QRetro | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓note |
| Health Checks | ✓note | — |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓note |
| Async mode | — | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓note | — |
| Icebreaker games | ✓note | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | — |
| Team Kudos | ✓note | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | — |
| AI action items | ✓note | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | — |
| Team Insights | ✓note | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | ✓note | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | — |
| Linear | ✓note | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓note | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | ✓note | — |
| SSO / SAML | — | — |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | — | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | ✓ | — |
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
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 QRetro comparisons
Other RetroFlow comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.