Overview

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.

Best for: Distributed agile teams that want one open-source tool for retros, poker and team health checks.

How Parabol describes itself

Parabol pitches itself as the open-source agile meeting platform: retros, sprint poker, standups and check-ins, AGPL-3.0 on GitHub and free for up to two teams, with an on-prem option for shops that can't send retro data to a vendor cloud.

"Team health checks that lead somewhere."

Since late September 2026 the site banner and pricing page lead with Team Health, sold as "in the plan — not a second subscription". Pages, the wiki that auto-publishes every meeting summary, is still the knowledge pitch, and a developer page sells the GraphQL API as a way to "let your AI agents do the busy-work". A public-sector track sells a hardened Iron Bank container up to IL5. The voice stays engineer-flavoured.

Our take

Parabol is still the most complete open-source retro stack you can buy, and it ships weekly. The big news is Team Health, generally available since 22 Sep 2026 (v14.0.0) and included in the Team plan. It runs as its own recurring check or as a phase inside a retro, with 10 question packs plus custom questions, all mapped onto 5 fixed categories. Each check asks five Likert questions, then shows category scores, the change since last time and a five-check trend. There is no export of health scores, and org-wide reporting is still "coming soon".

The retro itself is strong: teammates' cards stay hidden until grouping, an opt-in rotation queue picks the next facilitator, and Zoom or Google Meet transcripts land on the meeting summary after the call. The GraphQL API is public on every plan.

Gaps: no whiteboard or presentation mode, no MCP server, and "webhooks" are Mattermost/Teams notification URLs. On free Starter, AI summaries stop after a team's third retro. Best fit: distributed teams living in Jira or Azure DevOps, and regulated orgs that need on-prem.

Features

Retrospectives

TemplatesCustom templates· 2 on free tier; unlimited on Team+Anonymous inputPrivate brainstorm (hide until reveal)· Built into the Reflect phase: teammates' cards show only as blank placeholders with a count until the Group phase reveals themRecurring retrosPrivate/public retros· Private teams on Team+Schedule future retros· Recurring meeting series (RFC-2445 rule) with Google Calendar event sync

Health checks

Health checks· Standalone recurring Team Health check (or retro phase) on Team+, GA 22 Sep 2026: 5 Likert questions per check across 5 fixed categories, category scores, change since last check, five-check trend line, score spread and names hidden below 4 respondentsCustom health-check models· 10 built-in question packs (Aristotle, Edmondson, Lencioni, Hackman, Gallup Q12, Spotify, Atlassian, Project Oxygen, SCARF) plus custom questions — every question is mapped to one of 5 fixed categoriesMood / sentiment check· Team Health scores 1–5 Likert, as a standalone check or a phase inside a retroPsychological safety· Edmondson psychological-safety question pack, and Psychological Safety is one of the 5 fixed Team Health categories

Facilitation

Meeting timerAction itemsLink actions to ideasAgenda planner@mentionsComments on cards· Threaded comments and replies, optionally anonymous, on each reflection group in the Discuss phase; not on individual reflections while writingDrag-and-drop groupingCarry over open actionsAsync modeFacilitator rotation· Opt-in team queue that auto-assigns the next facilitator when a retro, poker or check-in is started; scheduled series occurrences keep the series facilitatorMeeting transcripts· Zoom and Google Meet transcripts imported onto the meeting's summary page after the call

Voting

Independent dot votingCustom vote countVote on ideas inside groups

Engagement

Mobile friendlyIcebreakersCheck-in / check-outGIFs· GIF search (Klipy) in the rich-text image pickerEmoji reactionsMusic· Facilitator-controlled background tracks, synced to all participantsPlanning poker

AI

AI grouping / clustering· AI Suggest Groups on Team+AI summary· 3 per team on the free Starter plan (not monthly); unlimited on Team+AI sentiment / heatmaps· Sentiment & theme detection via prompt-driven Pages InsightsAI retro / health-check insights· Pages Insights block — prompt-driven analysis over up to 500 past meetingsAI discussion promptsMetered AI (credits / quota)· Starter: AI stops after a team's 3rd qualifying retro; Pages Insights and AI Inspiration Items capped at 600k tokens per user per rolling 30 days on every plan

Reporting

Cross-team reporting· Pages Insights queries span multiple teamsAction tracker dashboardAction kanban boardExport formats· CSV, Email

Enterprise

SSO / SAML· SAML on Enterprise; Google/Microsoft sign-in on all tiersSCIM provisioning· Enterprise tier onlySOC 2 Type 2GDPR compliantAudit logs· Server-side operation logging on self-hosted/on-prem builds; no SaaS admin UIFacilitator-only roleMeeting history· 30 days free; unlimited on Team+Self / on-prem hosting· AGPL-3.0; Docker/Kubernetes self-host, on-prem and air-gapped on EnterpriseEmail domain restrictions· Enterprise tier onlyUptime SLA / dedicated support· 99.9% uptime SLA and priority support on Team+; dedicated account manager on EnterpriseMulti-year contracts· Enterprise tier onlyPublic APIWebhooks· Outbound notification URLs for Mattermost and MS Teams only — no general event subscriptionsData residency· United States, European Union, Self-hosted (EU or single-tenant region-of-choice on Enterprise; self-host/on-prem via open source)

Parabol

Overview

How Parabol describes itself

Our take

Score breakdown

Pros

Cons