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 →
Retrium
5.0Guided retrospectives and Team Radars for scrum and agile teams
Retrium is a long-running, retrospectives-only tool built around a guided five-phase facilitation flow, anonymous brainstorming, dot voting, a persistent action plan, and Team Radar health checks. Since August 2026 the vendor has also run Retrium Next, a separate free open beta that rebuilds the retro around an AI co-facilitator.
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.
Retrium scores 5.0 overall and is best for scrum masters and agile coaches who want a focused, retro-only tool with strong facilitation guardrails and a built-in Team Radar. It offers paid plans from $39/mo.
IdeaBoardz leads on value and open platform. Retrium leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Retrium edges ahead with an overall score of 5.0. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Mid-market |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | No free plan — 30-day trial of column-based techniques and Team Radar |
| Starting price | Free | $39/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $117/mo |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2014 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Washington, D.C., USA |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | CSV · Jira |
| Features | 10 | 30 |
| Integrations | 0 | 2 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓ |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | — |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| 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 | — | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| 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
- + 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
Retrium — pros
- + Battle-tested five-phase guided facilitation flow — think, group, vote, discuss, wrap-up
- + Anonymous brainstorming and grouping by design, with a documented Fishbone root-cause format
- + Persistent team-room action plan that carries forward between retros
- + Team Radar health check — ten prebuilt radars plus a custom-spoke template, anonymous 1–5 scoring
- + Per-team-room pricing at <strong>$39/mo</strong> with unlimited users on every plan
Retrium — cons
- − No free plan — 30-day trial only, and the Fishbone technique and SSO are excluded from it
- − Integrations stop at Jira Cloud and a <em>still-beta</em> Slack app — no Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Linear or Confluence
- − AI exists only in <strong>Retrium Next</strong>, a separate free open beta with no data migration, no uptime commitment and no pricing yet — the product you actually pay for has none
- − The only API is an Enterprise-gated SCIM 2.0 user-provisioning endpoint; no webhooks, and export stops at CSV, TXT and send-to-Jira
- − The shipping product has published no release notes since <strong>August 2024</strong>, and the Continuous Improvement Journey beta closed in December 2023
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.