IdeaBoardz
2.9Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick 1-10 sections, name them yourself, 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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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
IdeaBoardz scores 2.9 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. 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.
QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, QRetro edges ahead with an overall score of 5.8. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | 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 | Free | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | No | No |
| Founded | 2010 | 2023 |
| HQ | Pune, India | — |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | — |
| Features | 9 | 32 |
| Integrations | 0 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | — | ✓ |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | — |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| Polling | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓note | — |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | — | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | — | — |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | — | ✓ |
IdeaBoardz — pros
- + Genuinely free — no paywall, no paid tier, no trial clock
- + No signup required to participate — just share the URL
- + 1-10 free-text sections build Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls or Six Thinking Hats by hand
- + 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
- − No templates at all — the only format choice is how many sections you want
- − No timer, no phases, no action items, no grouping beyond merging two stickies into one
- − 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
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 IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other QRetro comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.