Metro Retro
3.0Rebranded twice — Metro Retro became Ludi, now Spreo; the playful retro whiteboard lives on
Metro Retro was a fun, freeform online whiteboard built for sprint retrospectives, known for its playful templates, timer and engagement features. The product has since been renamed twice by its maker, Deqo Software Limited: to Ludi on 4 August 2025, then to Spreo on 1 July 2026 after a trademark cease-and-desist. The metroretro.io domain now 301-redirects straight to spreo.io. If you are searching for Metro Retro, the product you want is Spreo; the original Metro Retro brand and domain are no longer maintained.
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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, 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
Metro Retro scores 3.0 overall and is best for searchers who remember Metro Retro and need to know where it went — the product now ships as <strong>Spreo</strong>. Go there, or to a dedicated retro platform, instead. It offers custom pricing.
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.
Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, value, 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 | Metro Retro | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | All-in-One Agile |
| Team size | Small | Any |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Free limit | 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 | N/A — brand retired; see the Spreo listing | $192/mo |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | — | 2015 |
| HQ | United Kingdom | Remote (San Diego, CA) |
| Data residency | — | United States · European Union · Self-hosted |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · CSV · HTML · Markdown · JSON · Jira | CSV · Email |
| Features | 7 | 48 |
| Integrations | 0 | 8 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Metro Retro | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | — | ✓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 | — | ✓ |
| Webhooks | — | ✓note |
| MCP server | — | — |
Metro Retro — pros
- + The product you remember still exists — it now ships as Spreo (Metro Retro → Ludi, 4 Aug 2025 → Spreo, 1 Jul 2026)
- + The vendor says accounts, boards, data and workflows carried through both renames, and old links redirect
- + Carried its playful templates, session timer and icebreakers into the rebrand
- + Freeform whiteboard canvas that's friendly for engagement-first retros
Metro Retro — cons
- − The Metro Retro brand and metroretro.io domain are retired — the domain 301-redirects straight to spreo.io
- − Two name changes in under a year (Metro Retro → Ludi → Spreo) leave stranded searchers chasing a moving target; bookmarks, runbooks and SSO configs all need updating
- − No standalone free tier under the new brand — a 30-day trial, then paid
- − Neither old domain is a clean redirect everywhere: metroretro.io/pricing and ludi.co/pricing both return HTTP 200 with a stale Spreo <em>Non-prod environment</em> stub instead of forwarding (checked 1 Sep 2026)
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
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.