Miro
7.1Innovation Workspace where retros happen on the same canvas as discovery and planning
Miro is the dominant online whiteboard, now sold as an AI Innovation Workspace. It pairs an infinite canvas with a 7,000+ template library (300+ retro formats among them), AI clustering by sentiment/keyword/author, Engage live polls and word clouds (included with Business since June 2026), Blueprints for reusable multi-board workflows, real-time and async collaboration, and a 250+ app marketplace with first-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp. An official MCP server runs on every plan under per-tier daily call quotas.
Full review →
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
Miro scores 7.1 overall and is best for large product, design and engineering orgs that already run discovery, planning and retros on one canvas and want AI clustering plus deep Jira/Azure DevOps/Asana sync. It offers a free tier.
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.
Miro leads on fun factor, open platform and enterprise-grade. Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit and AI & insights.
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 | Miro | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | All-in-One Agile |
| Team size | Enterprise | Any |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | 3 editable boards, limited AI credits, 100 MCP calls/day, full 7,000+ template library, 250+ app marketplace; no private boards, SSO, guests, Blueprints or two-way integrations | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month |
| Starting price | $8/user/mo | $8/active user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo billed annually (Starter, 24 seats) | $192/mo |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2011 | 2015 |
| HQ | Amsterdam, NL | Remote (San Diego, CA) |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Australia · JP | United States · European Union · Self-hosted |
| Languages | 8 (English, Spanish, German, …) | English only |
| Export formats | Image · PDF · CSV | CSV · Email |
| Features | 40 | 48 |
| Integrations | 12 | 8 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Miro | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓ | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓note | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | ✓ |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓ | ✓note |
| AI action items | ✓note | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | ✓note |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| In-meeting AI assistant | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | ✓note | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓note | ✓ |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | ✓note | — |
| Confluence | ✓ | ✓note |
| GitHub | ✓note | ✓ |
| GitLab | — | ✓ |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓ |
| Linear | ✓note | ✓ |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | ✓ |
| Monday.com | ✓note | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓ |
| Trello | ✓note | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | ✓ |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | ✓note |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Webhooks | — | ✓note |
| MCP server | ✓note | — |
Miro — pros
- + Enormous template library (7,000+ board templates, 300+ retro formats) plus the Miroverse community gallery
- + AI clustering groups sticky notes by colour, tag, author, keyword and sentiment — real time saved on a 60-sticky board
- + First-party two-way card sync to Jira, Azure DevOps, Asana, Linear and ClickUp, so a sticky becomes tracked work in one click
- + <strong>Engage</strong> activities — live polls, word clouds, scales, ranking — are included with Business; participants join by QR code with no Miro account
- + Enterprise-grade SSO, SCIM, audit logs, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 42001 and US/EU/AU/Japan data residency; official MCP server on every plan
Miro — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: 24 people cost $192/mo on Starter (annual). The tier that actually matters for retros — Business, with two-way Jira sync, SSO, guests and Engage — is $480/mo
- − Recent G2 reviewers' loudest complaint is billing, not the canvas: guests converted to paid licences and prorated mid-cycle seat charges
- − No health checks, mood tracking or longitudinal team pulse; Engage Scales reads the room once, it doesn't draw a trend line
- − No recurring retros, scheduling, action carryover, cross-team rollup or action dashboard — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint, and actions only persist as Jira/Azure DevOps/Linear cards
- − SCIM, audit logs, domain control and data residency are Enterprise-only, and Enterprise starts at 30 seats
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.