Retrospective Tools

FigJam vs Simyl Flow

A side-by-side look at scores, pricing, features and integrations to help you pick the right retrospective tool.

FigJam logo

FigJam

7.3

Figma's whiteboard with AI sticky clustering, an official MCP server that reaches FigJam boards, 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 sorts 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 Enterprise data residency in the EU, Australia, India and Brazil. Figma's official MCP server reads and writes FigJam boards on every plan, including free. Voting sessions, open guest sessions, audio chat and webhooks all require a paid team; publishing custom templates requires Organization.

Full review →
Simyl Flow logo

Simyl Flow

5.5

Measure what ships and sticks

Simyl Flow is an outcomes measurement platform for engineering teams in which the retrospective is one of five linked ceremonies (planning poker, standups, demo prep, retros, coaching). Retro boards are pre-populated with six sprint metrics pulled from Jira, Linear, GitHub and CI, AI generates candidate cards from the data, and unfinished action items carry forward — all feeding a six-dimension team health score tracked sprint over sprint.

Full review →

Summary

FigJam scores 7.3 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, AI sticky clustering and an agent-accessible canvas. It offers a free tier.

Simyl Flow scores 5.5 overall and is best for engineering orgs that already run retros and want them wired into delivery data — teams asking whether last sprint's improvement actually moved cycle time, review latency or change-failure rate, rather than teams shopping for a better sticky-note board. It offers a free tier.

FigJam leads on fun factor, open platform and enterprise-grade. Simyl Flow leads on retro toolkit, AI & insights and integrations.

Across our eight scoring dimensions, FigJam edges ahead with an overall score of 7.3. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.

Scores compared

FigJam
Ease of Use7.0
Retro Toolkit4.5
Value8.0
Fun Factor9.0
AI & Insights5.0
Integrations6.0
Open Platform9.5
Enterprise-grade9.5
Simyl Flow
Ease of Use7.0
Retro Toolkit5.0
Value8.0
Fun Factor2.0
AI & Insights7.0
Integrations7.0
Open Platform4.0
Enterprise-grade4.0
DetailFigJamSimyl Flow
CategoryWhiteboardAll-in-One Agile
Team sizeMid-marketMid-market
Free tierYesYes
Free limitStarter: 3 FigJam files per team (unlimited personal drafts), 150 AI credits/day up to 500/month, 300+ templates, timer, music, AI Sort/Summarize/Generate, REST API and 20 MCP tool calls/month, 30-day version history — no voting sessions, audio chat, open (no-account) sessions or webhooks1 team, 10 stakeholders, 2 retros + 2 poker sessions/month, 1 integration, 90-day retention, CSV export
Starting price$3/user/mo$29/team/mo
Est. 3 teams × 8 people$72/mo (24 Collab seats × $3, billed annually; $120/mo billed monthly at $5) — more if facilitators need $16 Full seats$87/mo (Pro — flat $29 per team × 3 teams; $72/mo billed annually)
EnterpriseYesYes
Founded20122024
HQSan Francisco, USToronto, Canada
Data residencyUnited States · European Union · Australia · IN · BRUnited States
Languages7 (English, Japanese, Korean, …)English only
Export formatsPDF · Image · CSVCSV · PDF
Features4028
Integrations109

Feature & integration comparison

Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.

CapabilityFigJamSimyl Flow
Features
Custom templatesnote
Anonymous input
Health Checksnote
Action tracking
Async modenote
Whiteboard
Independent votingnote
Polling
Icebreaker games
Agile Estimationsnotenote
Team Kudosnotenote
AI grouping/clustering
AI action itemsnote
AI Summaries
Team Insightsnote
In-meeting AI assistant
Action dashboard
Integrations
Asananote
Azure DevOps
Basecamp
ClickUpnote
Confluencenote
GitHubnotenote
GitLabnote
Jiranotenote
Linearnotenote
Microsoft Teamsnotenote
Monday.comnote
Notionnotenote
Shortcutnote
Slacknotenote
Trellonote
Security & Privacy
SOC 2note
GDPR
SSO / SAMLnotenote
SCIM provisioningnote
ISO 27001note
On-premisesnote
Public API
Webhooks
MCP server

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, music and AI Sort/Summarize
  • + Playful, engaging UX — stamps, emotes, high-fives, music, cursor chat — lifts retro fun factor
  • + Best open platform of any whiteboard here: REST API on every plan, webhooks on paid, and an <strong>official MCP server that reads and writes FigJam boards</strong> on all plans
  • + Strong enterprise posture inherited from Figma: SAML, SCIM, activity logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and Enterprise data residency in the EU, Australia, India and Brazil

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, audio chat, no-account guest links and webhooks; publishing custom templates needs Organization
  • Built primarily for designers — the canvas paradigm is fiddly for structured retros, and large boards get sluggish

Simyl Flow — pros

  • + Retro boards arrive pre-populated with six sprint metrics (velocity, cycle time, PRs merged, commits, bug rate, unplanned work) pulled from the tools the team already uses, and unfinished actions carry forward with completion-rate tracking — the discussion starts from evidence, and the six-dimension health score answers whether last sprint's change actually landed
  • + Unusually broad delivery-data integration set for a tool that runs retros: Jira, Linear, Shortcut, ClickUp, Notion, GitHub/GitLab Issues, plus GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket repos and their CI pipelines for DORA metrics
  • + Official remote MCP server, generally available and not tier-gated — <em>verified live</em>, with OAuth 2.1 discovery, dynamic client registration and nine read-only scopes (retros, standups, metrics, actions, poker, effectiveness, coaching), so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Windsurf can query sprint data directly
  • + Flat per-team pricing ($29–49/team/mo) rather than per-seat, so a 24-person org on three teams pays $87/mo regardless of headcount inside each team
  • + Deliberate privacy architecture — scores are team-level not individual, coaching notes are visible only to the developer and their manager, source code is never stored, and AI runs on Amazon Bedrock with no data retention
  • + Standups are the most complete module: async auto-generation, a facilitated live mode with per-person timers and presenter rotation, built-in video with smart auto-mute (1,500 min/mo on Growth), six blocker categories and AI blocker-pattern analysis

Simyl Flow — cons

  • <strong>Access is gated behind a waitlist.</strong> The header CTA across every page is now 'Join Waitlist', and the waitlist page itself redirects to sign-in — while the pricing page still sells three plans and a 30-day trial
  • Retro toolkit is thin on facilitator staples: no anonymous submission, no drag-and-drop grouping, no presentation mode, no recurring or scheduled retros, no retro-board timer, and only 5 built-in templates against 50+ at retro-native tools — and almost no engagement layer (no icebreakers, GIFs, reactions, music or kudos wall), which makes it a poor fit for teams whose retro problem is participation rather than measurement
  • The health score is computed from delivery signals, not from the team — the vendor is explicit that there are <em>"no surveys, just outcomes"</em>, so there is no survey-based health check, no sentiment analysis and no ROTI; the only mood signal is an emoji check in standups, not on the retro board
  • Enterprise claims are self-attested: 'SOC 2 aligned, not certified' and 'ISO 27001 aligned, not certified', inheriting AWS's certifications rather than holding its own; SSO/SAML sits behind a quote-only tier, there is no SCIM, and audit logs appear only as a sales-page offer rather than a plan feature
  • Export is CSV plus PDF reports, and the PDF report download is Growth-tier only; there is no public REST API and no webhooks, and the MCP server is read-only, so nothing can push data back in programmatically
  • Young vendor (Simyl AI, Inc., founded 2024, Toronto) that self-describes as 'a small team of engineers', with no named founders and still no third-party reviews, G2/Capterra listing or press coverage two years on — a real durability question for procurement
  • Free tier is genuinely small (1 team, 10 stakeholders, 2 retros/month, 1 integration, 90-day retention), and Azure DevOps is still 'coming soon' rather than shipped

Keep comparing

Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.