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 →
RetroFlow
3.4Your team's favourite way to retro
RetroFlow is a free, no-signup retrospective board built by solo developer Prashant Meena, with colourful boards, real-time collaboration, 11 ready-made templates plus a custom board builder, anonymous feedback, unrestricted upvoting, drag-to-move between columns, action items and PDF/Excel export. Participants join a shared link in one click with no account; the whole product is free with no paid tiers or locked features. The board is desktop-only — any viewport under 768px is blocked outright.
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.
RetroFlow scores 3.4 overall and is best for small or ad-hoc teams on laptops who want a genuinely free, zero-friction retro board they can share with one link — no signup, no payment and no setup, accepting that there is no timer, no phone support, no integrations, no AI and no enterprise controls. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on open platform. RetroFlow leads on ease of use, retro toolkit and fun factor.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, RetroFlow edges ahead with an overall score of 3.4. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Everything is free — all 11 templates, custom boards, saved layouts, real-time collaboration, anonymous feedback, unlimited upvoting, action items and PDF/Excel export, with no account required to join a board and no paid tier to upgrade to |
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | No | No |
| Founded | 2010 | — |
| HQ | Pune, India | — |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | PDF · Excel |
| Features | 10 | 8 |
| Integrations | 0 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Polling | — | — |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | — |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | — |
| 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
- + 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
RetroFlow — pros
- + Genuinely free with no paid tiers, no paywalled features and no account required to join a board
- + Anonymous feedback — participants contribute with no signup, email or PII collected
- + Three-step setup — pick a template, share the link, run the retro; participants join in one click and notes sync live
- + Eleven ready-made formats plus a Custom Board builder (2-6 columns, 7 palettes, 48 emoji) with reusable saved layouts
- + <strong>Unrestricted voting</strong> — no vote budget, no phase gate, and you can upvote your own cards; cards also drag between columns
- + PDF and Excel export of the finished board — the only route to getting your data out, and it works
RetroFlow — cons
- − No timer or phase controls — <em>still</em> nothing in the shipped app, and two timer requests raised in July 2026 sit unshipped as <em>Planned</em> on the vendor's own public roadmap
- − <strong>Desktop-only</strong> — every board route hard-blocks viewports under 768px with a 'Whoa, tiny screen detected' overlay, even though the marketing FAQ promises a fully responsive phone experience
- − No grouping of similar cards, no in-column reordering and no carry-over of previous action items; the 'Present' button is still badged SOON
- − No integrations at all — nothing pushes to Jira, Linear, Slack or Teams, and there is no public API, webhooks or AI
- − No health checks, recurring retros, mood tracking or cross-team reporting
- − Solo-developer project with no support team, SLA, SOC 2, SSO or GDPR statement — support routes to a personal WhatsApp number and LinkedIn DMs, and the free-tier backend still shows a ~10s cold start plus a first-load error
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other RetroFlow comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.