FigJam
7.2Figma's whiteboard with AI sticky clustering, voting sessions and a $3 Collab seat — free tier caps at 3 boards
FigJam is the whiteboard product inside Figma — sticky notes, timer, music, expressive cursor stamps, voting sessions, an AI co-pilot that clusters and summarises stickies, and 300+ ready-made templates including community retro boards. Design and product teams already living in Figma get retros without buying a second tool, backed by Figma's SAML/SCIM, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and EU data hosting on Organization and Enterprise plans. Voting sessions, audio chat and no-account guest links all require a paid team.
Full review →
QRetro
5.8Manage 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 continuously 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 auto-generated summary, ROTI score and action items. An official MCP server exposes 29 read/write tools so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can query boards, health trends and actions directly.
Full review →Summary
FigJam scores 7.2 overall and is best for design and product teams already on Figma who want retros on the same platform as their design files, with playful engagement and AI clustering. It offers a free tier.
QRetro scores 5.8 overall and is best for small agile teams and independent squads that want a genuinely well-equipped retro — 52 templates, health checks, ROTI, timer, icebreaker games and MCP access — at zero cost, and can accept a solo-maintainer vendor with no SSO, no export files and no certifications. It offers a free tier.
FigJam leads on fun factor, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, value and AI & insights.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, FigJam edges ahead with an overall score of 7.2. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | FigJam | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Mid-market | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Starter: 3 FigJam files per team (unlimited personal drafts), 150 AI credits/day (500/month), templates, timer and music, 30-day version history — no voting sessions, audio chat or open (no-account) sessions | 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 |
| Starting price | $3/user/mo | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | ~$72/mo (24 Collab seats × $3, annual) — more if hosts need Full seats | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2012 | 2023 |
| HQ | San Francisco, US | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Image · CSV | — |
| Features | 39 | 32 |
| Integrations | 10 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | FigJam | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓ | — |
| AI action items | ✓note | ✓note |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓ | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓ | — |
| Anonymous input | — | ✓note |
| Independent voting | ✓note | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | ✓note | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | ✓note | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓note | — |
| GitHub | ✓note | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | ✓note | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓note | — |
| Monday.com | ✓note | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓note | ✓note |
| Trello | ✓note | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | ✓ | — |
| MCP server | ✓note | ✓ |
FigJam — pros
- + Cheap $3/user/mo Collab seat unlocks unlimited boards without a full Figma editor seat
- + Free Starter tier includes real AI credits (150/day, 500/month), 300+ templates, the timer and music
- + Same login and platform as Figma — zero friction for design-led teams
- + Playful, engaging UX — stamps, emotes, high-fives, music, cursor chat — lifts retro fun factor
- + Strong enterprise posture inherited from Figma: SAML, SCIM, activity logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, EU data hosting on Enterprise
FigJam — cons
- − No native action-item tracking, recurring retros or health checks
- − Anonymity is weak — votes reveal who voted once the session ends, and stickies always carry a name
- − Official connectors embed Figma files in Jira/Confluence/Linear/Notion rather than pushing action items out; GitHub-issue creation is a community widget; no Azure DevOps
- − Free Starter caps a team at 3 FigJam files and excludes voting sessions, audio chat and no-account guest links
- − Built primarily for designers — the canvas paradigm is fiddly for structured retros, and large boards get sluggish
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, private-mode submission, timer, drag-and-drop grouping with auto-named groups, action items, team agreements, ROTI and a radar-charted health check stage
- + 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 MCP server at a single address (mcp.qretro.com) with 29 read, write and delete tools and OAuth sign-in, so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can pull board summaries, health trends and action items with nothing to paste
- + Guest access with no account or password, and guest contributions now persist permanently rather than expiring after a day
- + Visibly active despite being a solo project — 15+ dated changelog entries across 2026, including the v4 relaunch, MCP OAuth, poker over MCP and two new games in July–August 2026
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 at all: no SSO or SAML, no SCIM, no audit logs, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001; a DPA and sub-processor list are published but there is no explicit GDPR compliance claim
- − No file export — results share to Slack or Telegram as a recap message, but there is no documented PDF, CSV, Excel, Markdown or email export, so the retro record cannot be filed anywhere outside those two channels
- − Integration set is narrow: Jira, Linear, Slack and Telegram only — nothing for Teams, Confluence, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps or any other tracker
- − No async or distributed-team support — the seven-stage flow assumes a live session, and there are no recurring or scheduled retros
- − Vote allowance is computed automatically (cards + 3, capped at 10) rather than set by the facilitator, and the stage order itself cannot be customised
- − AI is deliberately limited — summaries, recommended next steps and health trends, but no clustering, sentiment analysis or coaching; the vendor pitches this as avoiding 'intrusive chatbots'
- − No cross-team or org-level reporting, so health and action data stays inside a single team's boards
Keep comparing
Other FigJam comparisons
Other QRetro comparisons
See alternatives
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.