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 →
Parabol
7.4Open-source agile meetings for retros, poker, standups and check-ins
Parabol is an open-source agile meeting platform spanning retrospectives, sprint poker, async standups, team check-ins and lightweight team health, 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.
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.
Parabol scores 7.4 overall and is best for distributed agile teams that want one open-source tool for retros, poker, standups and lightweight team health. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on value. Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Parabol edges ahead with an overall score of 7.4. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | All-in-One Agile |
| Team size | Small | Any |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month |
| Starting price | Free | $8/active user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $192/mo |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2015 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Remote (San Diego, CA) |
| Data residency | — | United States · European Union · Self-hosted |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | CSV · Email |
| Features | 10 | 48 |
| Integrations | 0 | 8 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | ✓ |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | ✓note |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓ |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | ✓note |
| GitHub | — | ✓ |
| GitLab | — | ✓ |
| Jira | — | ✓ |
| Linear | — | ✓ |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓ |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | ✓note |
| Public API | ✓note | ✓ |
| Webhooks | — | ✓note |
| MCP server | — | — |
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
Parabol — pros
- + Open source (AGPL-3.0) with Docker/Kubernetes self-host, on-prem and air-gapped deployment
- + 40+ meeting templates plus poker, standups, check-ins and team health in one tool
- + Strong backlog write-back to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps and Linear
- + CSV export of reflections, groups, votes and discussion threads on <em>every</em> tier
- + Public GraphQL API with published schema, a GraphiQL explorer and scoped personal access tokens
- + Recurring retro series with a real recurrence rule, Google Calendar sync and automatic facilitator rotation
- + DoD Iron Bank hardened container — IL4 via Platform One, IL5 via Arcus
Parabol — cons
- − Free tier capped at 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history and 3 AI summaries
- − No native whiteboard, presentation mode or screen-share mode
- − Health checks are still an emoji poll for most accounts — editable question packs and the standalone Team Health meeting sit behind an org feature flag
- − AI grouping and team health need the paid Team tier; Pages Insights and Confluence export need org-level enablement
- − Webhooks stop at Mattermost/MS Teams notification URLs — no general event subscriptions and no MCP server
- − English-only UI; no Trello, Asana, ClickUp or Notion integration
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other Parabol comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.