QRetro
6.3Manage 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 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 OpenAI-generated summary, a ROTI score, suggested next steps and an analysis layer that clusters the cards by topic, sentiment and urgency. An official, open-source MCP server exposes 29 read/write tools so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can query boards, health trends and actions directly.
Full review →
TeleRetro
5.8Agile retros you'll love
TeleRetro is a remote-first retrospective tool built around team engagement — animated GIF reactions, emoji reactions on notes, icebreaker games, background music and a clean facilitation flow. Participants join by link with no account. It pairs retros with a Pulse Survey module for tracking team health between sessions, and prices per team rather than per user, aimed at small to mid-size agile teams who want retros that feel lively rather than mechanical.
Full review →Summary
QRetro scores 6.3 overall and is best for small agile teams and independent squads that want a genuinely well-equipped retro — 52 templates, health checks, ROTI, timer, in-board surveys, icebreaker games and MCP access — at zero cost, and can accept a solo-maintainer vendor with no SSO, no PDF or spreadsheet export and no certifications. It offers a free tier.
TeleRetro scores 5.8 overall and is best for remote and hybrid agile teams who prioritise engagement and fun alongside a solid retrospective facilitation workflow. It offers a free tier.
QRetro leads on value, AI & insights and open platform. TeleRetro leads on ease of use, fun factor and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, QRetro edges ahead with an overall score of 6.3. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | QRetro | TeleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | 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 | 1 team, 3 retros total (deleted retros still count), 14-day retro access, 1 pulse survey, limited AI Retro Bot access |
| Starting price | Free | £26/mo (Team plan, 1 team, unlimited members; £21/mo billed annually) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | £72/mo (~$97/mo) on the Business plan — 3 teams, unlimited members; £58/mo billed annually |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2023 | 2020 |
| HQ | — | UK |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | 14 (English, German, Spanish, …) |
| Export formats | Markdown · Email · JSON | Email · Image · JSON |
| Features | 38 | 36 |
| Integrations | 3 | 10 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | QRetro | TeleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓note | ✓ |
| Health Checks | ✓note | ✓note |
| Action tracking | ✓ | ✓note |
| Async mode | — | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | ✓note | — |
| Icebreaker games | ✓note | ✓ |
| Agile Estimations | ✓note | — |
| Team Kudos | ✓note | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | ✓note | — |
| AI action items | ✓note | — |
| AI Summaries | ✓ | — |
| Team Insights | ✓note | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | ✓note | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | ✓note |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓note |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | ✓note |
| GitHub | — | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | ✓note | ✓note |
| Linear | ✓note | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓note |
| Monday.com | — | ✓note |
| Notion | — | ✓note |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | ✓note | ✓ |
| Trello | — | ✓note |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | ✓note | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | — | ✓note |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | ✓ | — |
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, editable columns, private-mode submission, a timer, drag-and-drop grouping with auto-named groups, presentation mode, up to five in-board surveys, action items with owners and due dates, ROTI and a radar-charted health check stage
- + The analysis layer is the surprise — every card gets a system-assigned sentiment, category and urgency score, and the <strong>Perception Mirror</strong> compares the system's own topic clusters against the groups the team made and names the ones that quietly hold three different problems
- + 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, two analysis prompts and OAuth sign-in — verified live at v1.3.0, and the server source is public on GitHub
- + Guest access with no account or password, and guest contributions persist permanently rather than expiring after a day
- + Visibly active for a solo project: 14 dated changelog entries in 2026 (MCP, OAuth, poker over MCP, two new games), legal pages rewritten in late July 2026 and a site rebuild on 15 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: no SSO or SAML, no SCIM, no audit logs, no SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and no published hosting location or data-residency option
- − Export is thin — a Markdown copy of the summary, an email to the team, a Slack or Telegram recap, and a JSON dump of your own account data. There is no PDF, CSV or Excel, so there is nothing to hand a stakeholder and nothing to drop into a spreadsheet
- − 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, the timer maxes out at 30 minutes, and the stage order itself cannot be customised
- − No working-agreements artifact that survives between retros — what the vendor calls an 'agreement' is an action item on a board
- − No cross-team or org-level reporting: the Analytics section of the dashboard is still labelled <em>Coming soon</em>, so health and action data stays inside a single team's boards
TeleRetro — pros
- + The deepest <strong>retro-native engagement set</strong> of any tool here — GIF and emoji reactions on notes, background music during brainstorming, an AI icebreaker bot, and 50+ themed formats with their own backgrounds
- + Participants join by link with <em>no account required</em> — the fastest path from invite to first note
- + Clean facilitation flow: brainstorming mode, drag-and-drop grouping, Spotlight to focus the room on one note, facilitator-gated voting with a configurable vote count, and mood polls at both ends of the session
- + Pulse Surveys track team health between retros — 16 fully anonymous templates, custom models, and a cross-team dashboard on the Business plan
- + Flat per-team pricing with <em>no per-user charge</em> — £72/mo covers 3 teams, unlimited members and unlimited retros
TeleRetro — cons
- − Slack is the only native integration; the in-app integrations panel offers Slack and Zapier and nothing else, despite Jira appearing on the vendor's comparison pages
- − No way to schedule a future retro or set one to recur, and actions carry owners but <em>no due dates</em> — nothing links an action back to the idea that prompted it either
- − AI never touches the board — Retro Bot generates formats and icebreakers, but there is no clustering, summary, sentiment or action extraction
- − Export is thin: an emailed summary, a PNG of the summary screen, and an org-metrics JSON dump. No CSV, PDF or Excel
- − No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 of its own (the certs cited are AWS's), no SCIM, no audit logs, and SSO is Enterprise-plan only
Keep comparing
Other QRetro comparisons
Other TeleRetro comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.