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.
Full review →
Retro Rabbit
4.4Slack-first retrospectives with async note capture
Retro Rabbit is a Slack-native retrospective tool that lets teams capture notes throughout the sprint from Slack or the web app, then runs the retro on a synced board with drag-and-drop grouping, voting and assignable action items. The CarrotIQ AI layer is gated to the Pro AI plan. No public changelog and no visible feature change since April 2025 — ask for a roadmap before committing.
Full review →Summary
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.
Retro Rabbit scores 4.4 overall and is best for slack-centric agile teams that want to capture retro notes continuously through the sprint and run lightweight live or async retros without leaving chat. It offers paid plans from $30/team/mo.
Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. Retro Rabbit leads on value.
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 | Parabol | Retro Rabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Category | All-in-One Agile | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Any | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month | 14-day free trial, no credit card required |
| Starting price | $8/active user/mo | $30/team/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo | $90/mo |
| Enterprise | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2015 | — |
| HQ | Remote (San Diego, CA) | Boston, United States |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Self-hosted | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | CSV · Email | CSV · Excel · PDF |
| Features | 46 | 16 |
| Integrations | 7 | 1 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Parabol | Retro Rabbit |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | ✓note | ✓note |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Insights | ✓note | — |
| Polling | ✓note | — |
| Action dashboard | ✓ | — |
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Agile Estimations | ✓ | — |
| Health Checks | ✓note | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | ✓ | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | ✓ | — |
| GitLab | ✓ | — |
| Jira | ✓ | — |
| 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 | — |
| Public API | ✓ | — |
| Webhooks | ✓note | — |
| MCP server | — | — |
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
Retro Rabbit — pros
- + Genuine Slack-first workflow — notes get captured in Slack throughout the sprint, not just at retro time
- + Reduces recency bias by collecting feedback continuously instead of in a 5-minute silent write
- + Simple, opinionated UX with drag-and-drop grouping and dot voting
- + CarrotIQ covers grouping, action-item suggestions and retro summaries on the $40/team/mo Pro AI plan
- + Flat per-team pricing with unlimited users, and CSV/XLSX/PDF export on every tier including Starter
Retro Rabbit — cons
- − Slack is the only chat/issue-tracker integration — no Jira, Teams, Confluence, GitHub, Linear or Azure DevOps
- − No health checks, team radars or longitudinal trend reporting
- − No org-level dashboards, cross-team rollups or action kanban
- − No public API, webhooks or MCP server — data leaves only as a file export
- − Enterprise controls are thin: SSO is Enterprise-tier only, no SCIM, no audit logs, and the privacy policy carries no GDPR or CCPA commitments
Keep comparing
Other Parabol comparisons
Other Retro Rabbit comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.