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 →
ScatterSpoke
5.6AI copilot for team feedback
ScatterSpoke was rebuilt from scratch as v3 in August 2026: guided retro boards, static surveys and AI-run interview surveys, and Ask, which answers questions across closed retros and surveys with cited evidence. An official OAuth MCP server is included on every tier, including Free.
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.
ScatterSpoke scores 5.6 overall and is best for engineering orgs that want AI to synthesise feedback across many teams and surveys — and agent builders who need a survey backend over MCP. It offers a free tier.
QRetro leads on ease of use, value, fun factor and integrations. ScatterSpoke leads on AI & insights, 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 | ScatterSpoke |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Mid-market |
| 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 | 1 seat and 1 team; unlimited static surveys and responses; retro boards with manual grouping and voting but no AI; 10 Agent Surveys and 50 Ask queries one-time; MCP connection but no reading results over it |
| Starting price | Free | $29/user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $149/mo on Business (monthly list price) — 3 teams exceed Pro's 2-team cap; the 5 included seats cover the facilitators, since participants and guests never take a seat |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2023 | 2019 |
| HQ | — | USA |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | Markdown · Email · JSON | CSV |
| Features | 39 | 40 |
| Integrations | 3 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | QRetro | ScatterSpoke |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓ |
| Health Checks | ✓note | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓ | — |
| Async mode | — | ✓ |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | ✓note | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | — |
| Team Kudos | ✓note | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | ✓note |
| AI action items | ✓note | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | ✓note |
| 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 | — | ✓note |
| GDPR | ✓note | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | — | ✓note |
| 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
ScatterSpoke — pros
- + Official MCP server on every tier including Free — OAuth sign-in, 33 tools spanning surveys and retro boards; reading results is where the paid line sits
- + Only facilitators need seats — team members and email-verified guests join boards free, so 3 teams of 8 fit Business's $149/mo base
- + Private-until-reveal writing and blind voting are on by default, and Group with AI leaves hand-made groups alone
- + Ask cites the retro or survey behind its answers, and closed-retro summaries track which themes repeat across runs (paid plans)
- + AI-run interview surveys follow up on each answer — a real option for async health checks between retros
ScatterSpoke — cons
- − <strong>No action items</strong> — the v3 board has no action object, so decisions go into card comments
- − No integrations in v3: nothing pushes to Jira, GitHub or Azure DevOps or posts to Slack or Teams, whatever the homepage badges say
- − One CSV export from a closed retro; audit logs are Enterprise-only
- − Retro AI is paid and Ask is metered — a shared monthly pool of 250 queries on Pro, 2,000 on Business
- − The docs describe Signals and Automations pages that the shipped web app doesn't include as of October 2026
Keep comparing
Other QRetro comparisons
Other ScatterSpoke comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.