IdeaBoardz
3.1Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick one of five presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos) or name your own 1-10 sections, share the URL, add ideas anonymously, upvote, and export to PDF or Excel. The app still works and is still in daily use, but development stopped years ago — the public source repository's last feature commits date to April 2020 and the Terms have not been revised since.
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Spreo
5.9Playful collaborative whiteboard for agile teams
Spreo (formerly Metro Retro, then Ludi — renamed Spreo on 1 July 2026 after a US trademark cease-and-desist) is a visual agile collaboration whiteboard with 100+ templates spanning retros, planning poker, icebreakers and futurespectives. Its illustrated canvas and board gadgets — a shared Jukebox music player, timers, spinners, buzzers, confetti, throwable hats — make ceremonies feel engaging. An official MCP server (beta) and a signed-in HTTP API landed during 2026, but Jira, SSO and PDF export all require the $6/user Business plan, and in-product AI stops at beta sticky-note clustering.
Full review →Summary
IdeaBoardz scores 3.1 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. It offers a free tier.
Spreo scores 5.9 overall and is best for agile teams who want retros, planning and workshops to feel visual and fun on a Jira backlog, and who would get real value from driving boards with an AI assistant over MCP — budget for the Business plan, which is where Jira, SSO and PDF export actually live. It offers paid plans from $4/user/mo billed annually ($5 monthly).
IdeaBoardz leads on value. Spreo leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Spreo edges ahead with an overall score of 5.9. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Spreo |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | 30-day free trial; boards become read-only when the trial expires |
| Starting price | Free | $4/user/mo billed annually ($5 monthly) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $144/mo billed annually (Business — 24 x $6; Starter's $96/mo covers only one shared team space) |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2019 |
| HQ | Pune, India | UK |
| Data residency | — | European Union |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | PDF · CSV · HTML · Markdown · JSON · Jira |
| Features | 10 | 44 |
| Integrations | 0 | 1 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Spreo |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | — | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | ✓ |
| Team Kudos | — | ✓note |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | ✓note |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓note |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | ✓note |
| Public API | ✓note | ✓note |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | — | ✓note |
IdeaBoardz — pros
- + Genuinely free — no paywall, no paid tier, no trial clock
- + No signup required to participate — just share the URL
- + Five one-click presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos), or type your own 1-10 section titles
- + Drag one sticky onto another to merge them; the votes are added together
- + PDF and Excel export on every board, plus a working phone view
IdeaBoardz — cons
- − The presets only pre-fill column titles — there is no timer, no phases and no facilitator flow behind them
- − No action-item tracking, no owners, no due dates, no carry-over between boards
- − Unlimited anonymous upvotes with no per-person vote budget
- − Zero integrations, no SSO, no SOC 2 and no published privacy policy — the URL is the only access control
- − No product work since April 2020; support is a Gmail address and a Twitter handle
Spreo — pros
- + Genuinely delightful, illustrated UI that energises in-person and remote retros
- + Broad template library (100+) covering retros, icebreakers, planning poker, futurespectives, planning and estimation
- + Deep gadget shelf that actually serves the session: shared Jukebox music player, timers, spinners, buzzers, confetti, throwable hats
- + Official MCP server (beta) lets Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot read, build and edit boards under your own permissions, with an account-level kill switch and a connected-members list for admins
- + Fully configurable voting rounds — votes per person, duplicate votes, and voting on topics as well as individual stickies
- + Solid two-way Jira integration: backlog refinement, story points and issue creation in-board
- + Hide Identities host control makes writing <em>and</em> voting permanently anonymous, toggleable per activity
- + EU-hosted (Amsterdam) and GDPR-aligned (SOC 2 / ISO 27001 sit at the Digital Ocean infrastructure layer, not Spreo)
Spreo — cons
- − No async retro mode, no recurring or scheduled retros
- − No team health check or longitudinal pulse product; mood/radar work via whiteboard templates only
- − Integrations limited to Jira — no Slack, Teams, Confluence, GitHub, Linear or Azure DevOps
- − <strong>Jira, SSO and PDF export all start at the $6/user Business plan</strong>, so the $4 Starter headline is misleading past a single team space
- − In-product AI limited to beta sticky-note clustering — no summaries, action-item extraction, sentiment or coaching; MCP moves the AI into your own assistant rather than the board
- − The HTTP API has no public reference — you need a Spreo login to see what it does, which makes it hard to evaluate before buying
- − No ongoing free plan; expired trials pause to read-only
- − Desktop and laptop only — the vendor states Spreo runs on <em>"all desktop and laptop devices"</em>, with no mobile or tablet support
- − Two renames in under a year leave the review trail split across three names — G2 files it under <em>Ludi</em>, Capterra and Product Hunt under <em>Metro Retro</em>
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other Spreo comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.