Online retrospective tools, free or paid: the comparison
Retrium, Parabol, TeamRetro, Neatro, EasyRetro, Miro… Free plan, price, language and data hosting, checked on each vendor’s own site.
Blog5 min read
A retrospective can be held with an online whiteboard, a shared spreadsheet, or a tool built for it. All three work. What sets them apart is what the facilitator has to handle by hand: hiding cards while people write, keeping time, counting votes, showing everyone the same card, finding last time’s action items.
This comparison reviews the most used tools, with their prices and limits as their vendors display them. It is published by one of them: SquadRetro. So we did the only thing that makes the exercise honest: quote only what each vendor writes itself, and also say what we are missing.
What really matters in a retro tool
The number of templates is the most promoted argument, and the least decisive: a team uses three or four. What changes a session are the mechanisms described in the guide to running an agile retrospective:
- Hidden writing. Everyone writes without seeing other people’s cards, so nobody copies the first ones on the board.
- The vote. It chooses what gets discussed, and keeps the session from overrunning.
- A shared timer. The time for each step is visible on everyone’s screen.
- A facilitator who leads the steps. When they move to the next one, the whole team’s screens follow. On a whiteboard, everyone can be somewhere else.
- Action items that outlive the session. An owner, a due date, and a place to find them at the next retro. This is where most retros fail (why retro action items never get done).
Add two practical criteria, often discovered too late: the interface languages, for a team that doesn’t work only in English, and the country where the data is hosted, which your legal team will ask you about.
The comparison in one table
| Tool | Free plan | Entry price | Languages | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SquadRetro | Yes: 1 squad, 10 members, unlimited retros | €19 excl. VAT per squad per month | English, French | European Union (Ireland) |
| EasyRetro | Yes, limits not published | not stated | English, French | United States |
| Retrium | No (30-day trial) | $39 per team per month | English (French not stated) | not stated |
| Parabol | Yes: 2 teams, 10 meetings per month | $8 per active user per month | English (French not stated) | United States (EU as an Enterprise option) |
| TeamRetro | No (30-day trial) | $250 per year for one team | 29, including English and French | United States or EU, your choice |
| Neatro | Yes: 10 members, 30 days of history | $23.20 per team per month | French, English | Canada (Quebec) |
| Spreo (formerly Metro Retro) | Yes: 1 board, 3 people | $13 per editor per month, billed yearly | English (French not stated) | European Union (Netherlands) |
| GoRetro | Not published (30-day trial) | $29 per team per month, billed yearly | English (French not stated) | United States |
| Reetro | Yes: 3 teams, 9 members per team | $10 per team per month | English (French not stated) | not stated |
| Echometer | Yes, for one team | $5.50 per user per month, billed yearly | German, English | European Union (Germany) |
| Miro | Yes: 3 boards, no voting or timer | $8 per member per month, billed yearly | English, French and others | not stated |
Checked on October 20, 2026 on each vendor’s website (pricing, features and help pages). Prices excluding tax, for the first paid tier; “per year” when the vendor shows no monthly price. “Not stated” means we didn’t find it written on the vendor’s site, not that the feature is missing. Spotted a mistake? Write to us at contact@squadretro.app.
The tools, one by one
Tools dedicated to retrospectives
Retrium is one of the oldest. The facilitator moves the team from one phase to the next, writing is private, the timer is visible to all. No free plan, and a price per team room: it targets organizations equipping several teams.
Parabol is open source, with a free plan generous in users but limited to ten meetings a month and thirty days of history. Participants’ screens stay in sync with the facilitator’s, and cards are anonymous by default. It also covers daily stand-ups and estimation.
TeamRetro bets on breadth: more than 275 templates, team health checks, a dozen integrations (Jira, Azure DevOps, Linear, Slack…), an interface in 29 languages and a choice of hosting between the United States and Europe. No free plan.
Neatro, a Montreal-based vendor, has an interface and help in French, a free plan for up to ten members, and brings action items back at the start of each retro. Its data is hosted in Quebec.
EasyRetro (formerly FunRetro) is the simplest retro board to open: one link, and participants write without creating an account. Hideable cards, votes, timer, action items with an owner and due date. Its data is hosted in the United States.
GoRetro and Reetro sit in the same niche, at a tight price: GoRetro adds estimation and sprint tracking, Reetro a free plan for up to three teams. Echometer, a German vendor, starts from team psychology and hosts its data in Germany, but its tool only exists in German and English.
Whiteboards
Miro isn’t a retro tool, it is a whiteboard that offers retro templates. Its strength is its freedom: you can draw whatever you like. Its limit is the same: nothing in it leads the session. On the free plan, no voting, no timer, no private mode; and from one retro to the next, action items stay on the old board.
Spreo (formerly Metro Retro) is a whiteboard designed for agile teams: private writing, anonymity, votes, timer, and a button to bring everyone to the same spot. Action items carry over from one retro to the next, and data is hosted in the Netherlands.
The shared spreadsheet or document
Free and already open on every computer, it is often the starting point. But everything that makes a good session relies on discipline: everyone sees what the others write, votes are counted by hand, and action items end up at the bottom of a document nobody reopens.
And SquadRetro?
SquadRetro is a dedicated tool, in English and French, with its data hosted in Ireland. It follows a five-phase retro flow (brainstorm, grouping, vote, discussion, closing) that the facilitator moves along: the whole team’s screens follow at the same moment. During the brainstorm, everyone sees only their own cards. In discussion, the facilitator presents the cards one by one, in vote order. Every action item leaves with an owner and a due date, and all of the squad’s action items and decisions stay gathered on its page, session after session.
What it doesn’t have, to date: integrations with Jira or Slack, and hundreds of templates. It offers six, the ones described in six retrospective formats and when to pick each one, and a facilitator can build their squad’s own from the Pro plan up. The free plan covers a squad of ten people, with unlimited retros; details are on the pricing page.
How to choose
- A team that wants facilitator-led sessions: a dedicated tool where the facilitator moves the steps along, SquadRetro or Neatro.
- Many teams and an established Jira ecosystem: TeamRetro or Retrium, richer in integrations.
- A team that also wants its daily stand-ups and estimates in the same place: Parabol.
- Free-form workshops more than structured retros: a whiteboard, Miro or Spreo.
- A free tool, with no time limit: among dedicated tools, SquadRetro, Parabol, Neatro, Reetro, EasyRetro or Echometer. The limits of their free plans differ (members, teams, meetings per month, history); the “Free plan” column of the table compares them.
- Data that must stay in Europe: check this before anything else; the “Data” column of the table already rules out half the tools.
Whatever you choose, try it on a real retro, with the team: it is in a session that you see whether the tool carries the frame, or whether the facilitator carries it instead.