Spreo
5.3Playful collaborative whiteboard for agile teams
Spreo (formerly Metro Retro, then Ludi — renamed Spreo on 1 July 2026 after a US trademark cease-and-desist) is a visual agile collaboration whiteboard with 100+ templates spanning retros, planning poker, icebreakers and futurespectives. Its illustrated canvas and board gadgets — a shared Jukebox music player, timers, spinners, buzzers, confetti, throwable hats — make ceremonies feel engaging. Both the Jira integration and SSO require the $6/user Business plan, and AI stops at beta sticky-note clustering.
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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, and a built-in knowledge base (Pages) that auto-publishes every meeting summary and runs AI queries across past retros.
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Spreo scores 5.3 overall and is best for agile teams who want retros, planning and workshops to feel visual and fun, with a solid Jira-backed delivery loop — budget for the Business plan, which is where Jira and SSO actually live. It offers paid plans from $4/user/mo billed annually ($5 monthly).
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.
Spreo leads on value and fun factor. Parabol leads on retro toolkit, 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 | Spreo | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | All-in-One Agile |
| Team size | Small | Any |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Free limit | 30-day free trial; boards become read-only when the trial expires | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month |
| Starting price | $4/user/mo billed annually ($5 monthly) | $8/active user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $144/mo billed annually (Business — 24 x $6; Starter's $96/mo covers only one shared team space) | $192/mo |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2020 | 2015 |
| HQ | UK | Remote (San Diego, CA) |
| Data residency | European Union | United States · European Union · Self-hosted |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · CSV · HTML · Markdown · JSON · Jira | CSV · Email |
| Features | 40 | 46 |
| Integrations | 1 | 7 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Spreo | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | — | ✓note |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | — |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓note |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓ |
| Custom templates | ✓ | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | — | ✓ |
| Agile Estimations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | ✓note | — |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓ |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | ✓ |
| GitLab | — | ✓ |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓ |
| Linear | — | ✓ |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓ |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓note | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | ✓note | ✓note |
| Public API | — | ✓ |
| Webhooks | — | ✓note |
| MCP server | — | — |
Spreo — pros
- + Genuinely delightful, illustrated UI that energises in-person and remote retros
- + Broad template library (100+) covering retros, icebreakers, planning poker, futurespectives, planning and estimation
- + Deep gadget shelf that actually serves the session: shared Jukebox music player, timers, spinners, buzzers, confetti, throwable hats
- + Fully configurable voting rounds — votes per person, duplicate votes, and voting on topics as well as individual stickies
- + Solid two-way Jira integration: backlog refinement, story points and issue creation in-board
- + @mentions and a notification centre across stickies, cards, text blocks and comments
- + EU-hosted (Amsterdam) and GDPR-aligned (SOC 2 / ISO 27001 sit at the Digital Ocean infrastructure layer, not Spreo)
Spreo — cons
- − No async retro mode, no recurring or scheduled retros
- − No team health check or longitudinal pulse product; mood/radar work via whiteboard templates only
- − Integrations limited to Jira — no Slack, Teams, Confluence, GitHub, Linear or Azure DevOps
- − <strong>Jira and SSO both start at the $6/user Business plan</strong>, so the $4 Starter headline is misleading past a single team space
- − AI limited to beta sticky-note clustering — no summaries, action-item extraction, sentiment or coaching
- − No ongoing free plan; expired trials pause to read-only
- − Desktop and laptop only — the vendor states Spreo runs on <em>"all desktop and laptop devices"</em>, with no mobile or tablet support
- − Two renames in under a year leave the review trail split across three names — G2 files it under <em>Ludi</em>, Capterra and Product Hunt under <em>Metro Retro</em>
Parabol — pros
- + Open source (AGPL-3.0) with Docker/Kubernetes self-host, on-prem and air-gapped deployment
- + 40+ retro 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
- + Recurring retro series with a real recurrence rule and Google Calendar sync
- + DoD Iron Bank hardened container, cleared to IL4 via Platform One
Parabol — cons
- − Free tier capped at 10 meetings/month, 30-day history and 3 AI summaries
- − No native whiteboard, presentation mode or screen-share mode
- − Health-check is a single emoji poll — no custom radars or trend dashboards
- − AI grouping and team health checks need the paid Team tier; Pages Insights needs org-level enablement
- − Webhooks stop at Mattermost/MS Teams notification URLs — no general event subscriptions and no MCP server
- − No Confluence, Trello or multi-language support
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.