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.
Full review →
Miro
7.1Innovation Workspace where retros happen on the same canvas as discovery and planning
Miro is the dominant online whiteboard, now sold as an AI Innovation Workspace. It pairs an infinite canvas with a 7,000+ template library (300+ retro formats among them), AI clustering by sentiment/keyword/author, Engage live polls and word clouds (included with Business since June 2026), Blueprints for reusable multi-board workflows, real-time and async collaboration, and a 250+ app marketplace with first-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp. An official MCP server runs on every plan under per-tier daily call quotas.
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.
Miro scores 7.1 overall and is best for large product, design and engineering orgs that already run discovery, planning and retros on one canvas and want AI clustering plus deep Jira/Azure DevOps/Asana sync. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on value. Miro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Miro edges ahead with an overall score of 7.1. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Miro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Whiteboard |
| Team size | Small | Enterprise |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | 3 editable boards, limited AI credits, 100 MCP calls/day, full 7,000+ template library, 250+ app marketplace; no private boards, SSO, guests, Blueprints or two-way integrations |
| Starting price | Free | $8/user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $192/mo billed annually (Starter, 24 seats) |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2011 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Amsterdam, NL |
| Data residency | — | United States · European Union · Australia · JP |
| Languages | English only | 8 (English, Spanish, German, …) |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | Image · PDF · CSV |
| Features | 10 | 40 |
| Integrations | 0 | 12 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Miro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whiteboard | — | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓ |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| AI Summaries | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | ✓note |
| Action dashboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | ✓note |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓note |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | ✓note |
| Confluence | — | ✓ |
| GitHub | — | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓ |
| Monday.com | — | ✓note |
| Notion | — | ✓note |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | ✓note |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | ✓ |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓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
Miro — pros
- + Enormous template library (7,000+ board templates, 300+ retro formats) plus the Miroverse community gallery
- + AI clustering groups sticky notes by colour, tag, author, keyword and sentiment — real time saved on a 60-sticky board
- + First-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp, so a sticky becomes tracked work in one click
- + <strong>Engage</strong> activities — live polls, word clouds, scales, ranking — are included with Business; participants join by QR code with no Miro account
- + Enterprise-grade SSO, SCIM, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 42001 and US/EU/AU/Japan data residency; official MCP server on every plan
Miro — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: 24 people cost $192/mo on Starter (annual). The tier that actually matters for retros — Business, with two-way Jira sync, SSO, guests and Engage — is $480/mo
- − Recent G2 reviewers' loudest complaint is billing, not the canvas: guests converted to paid licences and prorated mid-cycle seat charges
- − No health checks, mood tracking or longitudinal team pulse; Engage Scales reads the room once, it doesn't draw a trend line
- − No recurring retros, scheduling, action carryover, cross-team rollup or action dashboard — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint, and actions only persist as Jira/Azure DevOps/Linear cards
- − SCIM, audit logs, domain control and data residency are Enterprise-only, and Enterprise starts at 30 seats
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other Miro comparisons
See alternatives
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.