Mural
6.6Visual collaboration whiteboard with a mature facilitation toolkit and AI-assisted sessions
Mural is a long-established visual collaboration platform — an infinite canvas with sticky notes, anonymous voting, timers, Private Mode, hundreds of workshop templates (eight of them retro-specific), AI clustering, summary and emotional-tone classification, and a Facilitation Superpowers toolkit (Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode) refined for over a decade. Best-in-class enterprise posture: SSO, SCIM, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and NA/EU/APAC data residency.
Full review →
QRetro
5.8Manage team health, not sticky notes
QRetro is a completely free retrospective tool with no seat or team caps, built by solo developer Roman Ermilov and shipping continuously since January 2023. It runs a fixed seven-stage session — optional health check, optional icebreaker game, cards, grouping, voting, discussion, results — and closes with an auto-generated summary, ROTI score and action items. An official MCP server exposes 29 read/write tools so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can query boards, health trends and actions directly.
Full review →Summary
Mural scores 6.6 overall and is best for workshop-heavy teams (design, product, agile coaching) that want a polished facilitation canvas with strong retro templates and enterprise-grade controls. It offers a free tier.
QRetro scores 5.8 overall and is best for small agile teams and independent squads that want a genuinely well-equipped retro — 52 templates, health checks, ROTI, timer, icebreaker games and MCP access — at zero cost, and can accept a solo-maintainer vendor with no SSO, no export files and no certifications. It offers a free tier.
Mural leads on integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. QRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, value and fun factor.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Mural edges ahead with an overall score of 6.6. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | Mural | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Whiteboard | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Mid-market | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Unlimited murals but only the 3 most recently created stay editable (older go view-only); unlimited members and visitors; no Mural AI | Everything is free with no seat or team caps — 52 templates, unlimited public and team boards, planning poker, team games, health checks, ROTI, summaries and MCP access |
| Starting price | $9.99/user/mo | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $240/mo billed annually | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2011 | 2023 |
| HQ | San Francisco, US | — |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Asia-Pacific | — |
| Languages | 9 (English, Spanish, German, …) | English only |
| Export formats | Image · PDF · PowerPoint · HTML · CSV | — |
| Features | 39 | 32 |
| Integrations | 8 | 3 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Mural | QRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓ | — |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓note | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓ | — |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓note |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | — | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | ✓ | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | ✓note | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓note | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | ✓ | — |
| GitHub | ✓note | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | — | ✓note |
| Microsoft Teams | ✓ | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | ✓note | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓ | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | ✓ | — |
| GDPR | ✓ | ✓note |
| SSO / SAML | ✓note | — |
| SCIM provisioning | ✓note | — |
| ISO 27001 | ✓ | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | ✓note | ✓ |
Mural — pros
- + Mature facilitation toolkit — Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode — refined over 10+ years
- + Anonymous where it counts: votes hide who voted, and Private Mode can keep sticky authors hidden even after reveal
- + Best-in-class enterprise posture: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, SSO/SAML, SCIM, NA/EU/APAC residency
- + Two-way Jira and Azure DevOps sync via interactive work-item cards turns sticky notes into tracked issues
- + Polished UX, especially for facilitators running synchronous workshops
Mural — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: a 24-person org pays ~$240/mo on the Team+ tier (annual), well above retro-native tools at that headcount
- − No native health checks, mood tracking or longitudinal team-pulse
- − No recurring retros, action carryover or cross-team rollup — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint
- − AI (clustering, summary, tone Classify) helps inside a session but doesn't track trends across retros
- − SSO/SAML needs the $17.99/user/mo Business tier; SCIM, audit logs and data residency are Enterprise-only
QRetro — pros
- + Genuinely free with no seat caps, team caps or paywalled features — a 24-person org across three teams pays nothing, and there is no paid tier to be upsold to
- + Retro toolkit is deep for a free product: 52 templates, private-mode submission, timer, drag-and-drop grouping with auto-named groups, action items, team agreements, ROTI and a radar-charted health check stage
- + Unusually strong engagement layer for a product that charges nothing — four built-in games (Draw & Guess, Sprint in one GIF, Hangman, Decoded) usable as a switchable icebreaker stage, plus GIF cards, emoji reactions and live cursors. TeleRetro and the whiteboard tools still go further, mainly on music and ambient audio
- + Official MCP server at a single address (mcp.qretro.com) with 29 read, write and delete tools and OAuth sign-in, so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can pull board summaries, health trends and action items with nothing to paste
- + Guest access with no account or password, and guest contributions now persist permanently rather than expiring after a day
- + Visibly active despite being a solo project — 15+ dated changelog entries across 2026, including the v4 relaunch, MCP OAuth, poker over MCP and two new games in July–August 2026
QRetro — cons
- − Built and maintained by a single developer (Roman Ermilov) with no support team, SLA or published company entity — the enterprise-grade cap for founder-only vendors applies regardless of how good the product is
- − No enterprise controls at all: no SSO or SAML, no SCIM, no audit logs, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001; a DPA and sub-processor list are published but there is no explicit GDPR compliance claim
- − No file export — results share to Slack or Telegram as a recap message, but there is no documented PDF, CSV, Excel, Markdown or email export, so the retro record cannot be filed anywhere outside those two channels
- − Integration set is narrow: Jira, Linear, Slack and Telegram only — nothing for Teams, Confluence, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps or any other tracker
- − No async or distributed-team support — the seven-stage flow assumes a live session, and there are no recurring or scheduled retros
- − Vote allowance is computed automatically (cards + 3, capped at 10) rather than set by the facilitator, and the stage order itself cannot be customised
- − AI is deliberately limited — summaries, recommended next steps and health trends, but no clustering, sentiment analysis or coaching; the vendor pitches this as avoiding 'intrusive chatbots'
- − No cross-team or org-level reporting, so health and action data stays inside a single team's boards
Keep comparing
Other Mural comparisons
Other QRetro comparisons
See alternatives
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.