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 →
SprintRetro
5.0Free sprint retros, embedded in Jira
SprintRetro is a free Atlassian Forge app from Agile Pulse that runs sprint retrospectives directly inside Jira Cloud. It pulls live sprint metrics (velocity, scope change, carryover, cycle time, committed vs delivered) into a collaborative retro board, and the free listing also carries an infinite whiteboard, anonymous team-health pulse checks, timers, and an AI facilitator, alongside templates, anonymous voting, cross-sprint action tracking that can create Jira issues, GIFs, kudos, polls, and icebreakers. Both Marketplace listings are Cloud Fortified. A separate paid Pro app sits alongside the free one.
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.
SprintRetro scores 5.0 overall and is best for scrum teams already living in Jira Cloud who want a no-cost, no-friction sprint retro tool with sprint metrics baked in. It offers a free tier.
Parabol leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade. SprintRetro 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 | SprintRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | All-in-One Agile | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Any | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Unlimited users, 2 teams, 10 meetings/month, 30-day history, 2 custom templates, 3 AI retro summaries/month | Free for unlimited users on a Jira instance (free app listing) |
| Starting price | $8/active user/mo | $8.40/user/yr (Pro app; free on Jira sites of 10 or fewer users) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | $192/mo | Free (within free tier) |
| Enterprise | Yes | No |
| Founded | 2015 | — |
| HQ | Remote (San Diego, CA) | Waterlooville, United Kingdom |
| Data residency | United States · European Union · Self-hosted | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | CSV · Email | Jira |
| Features | 46 | 27 |
| Integrations | 7 | 1 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | Parabol | SprintRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | ✓note | ✓ |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | ✓ |
| AI action items | — | ✓ |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team Insights | ✓note | ✓note |
| Polling | ✓note | ✓ |
| Action dashboard | ✓ | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Agile Estimations | ✓ | — |
| Health Checks | ✓note | ✓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 | — | ✓note |
| 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
SprintRetro — pros
- + Genuinely free for unlimited users on your Jira instance — the paid Pro app is optional, not the entry point
- + Pulls <strong>real sprint metrics</strong> (velocity, scope change, carryover, cycle time, committed vs delivered) into the retro itself
- + Strong action loop: unfinished actions carry into the next retro, get quality-scored, and can be pushed into Jira as issues
- + <strong>Cloud Fortified</strong> on the Atlassian Marketplace — bug bounty, reliability SLOs, and a one-business-day response commitment on critical tickets
- + Built on Forge: no separate login, and the vendor states no third-party API calls or external data sharing
SprintRetro — cons
- − Jira Cloud only — every participant needs a Jira licence, and there's no Slack, Teams, Confluence, GitHub, or standalone web app
- − <em>No board export at all</em> — no PDF, CSV, or image download; the only data that leaves is a Jira issue
- − No async mode, presentation mode, drag-and-drop grouping, or scheduled/recurring retros
- − No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 of its own — the trust centre shows framework logos with no status label and no attestation report behind them; no SCIM, audit logs, or cross-team reporting either
- − Free-versus-Pro split is undocumented: both Marketplace listings advertise the same feature set, and Pro is never mentioned on sprintretro.co
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.