Parabol alternatives: per-team retro tools and what Parabol really costs

Parabol is an open-source agile meeting tool. It runs retrospectives, Sprint Poker, standups and check-ins, and its free Starter plan covers up to 2 teams with unlimited users.

People look for Parabol alternatives when they grow. Starter stops at 2 teams, 10 meetings a month and 30 days of meeting history. After that, Team costs $8 per active user per month, so the bill rises with every person rather than every team.

Retro Rabbit is our product, and it's first on this list because it changes that unit: one price per team, $30 or $40 a month, with unlimited users. It's also built around a single loop, from notes written during the sprint to action items that come back until they're done. Four more tools follow with their verified prices and main features. We checked every price and feature on each vendor's own site on October 23, 2026.

Quick comparison

1. Retro Rabbit

Retro Rabbit runs async and live sprint retrospectives built around one loop: the team writes notes as the sprint happens, CarrotIQ turns them into groups, summaries and suggested action items, and those action items follow the team into the next retro.

Notes during the sprint. Each team's board stays open all sprint. When something goes well or badly, anyone drops a note in from the dashboard's Quick Notes, or from Slack with /retro if the team uses Slack. By retro day, the board holds the whole sprint, not just what people remember in the meeting.

CarrotIQ, the AI. On Pro AI, and during the trial, CarrotIQ:

• groups related notes automatically and names each group in a few words
• writes a short summary of each column plus an overall summary of the sprint
• suggests action items with "CarrotIQ Suggest", weighting the notes by votes and skipping actions you've already created

Action items that come back. Every board has three action-item tabs: Current Retro, Previous Retro and Old/Unresolved. Each item has an owner, and anything still open shows up again at the next retro until someone marks it complete. In Slack workspaces, you can also send the owner a reminder.

A live board when you meet. See who's connected, drag notes into groups, run a timer from 30 seconds to an hour, and vote with one vote per note or dot voting with a limit per person. Anyone can post notes without their name shown, using a per-person setting.

Formats and exports. Five formats are built in: What went well, Start, Stop, Continue, Sailboat, Mad/Sad/Glad and 4Ls, and each team can rename its columns. Each retro's notes export to CSV or XLSX, and the board exports to PDF.

Pricing. Starter is $30 per team per month; Pro AI is $40 and adds CarrotIQ. Every plan includes unlimited users and unlimited retros, so a team of 8 costs $30 or $40 a month, where Parabol Team would charge 8 × $8 = $64 for eight active users. The 14-day trial includes CarrotIQ and needs no credit card.

2. TeamRetro

TeamRetro, made by GroupMap Technology in Australia, covers retrospectives, health checks, estimation and standups, all unlimited on every plan and priced by number of teams.

Pricing: Single Team is $25 a month billed monthly or $250 a year, for up to 25 members. Small Organization is $60 a month or $600 a year for 3 teams with unlimited members, plus $20 a month for each extra team.

Notable features: the trAI assistant is in beta on all plans.

Drawbacks: Single Team stops at 25 members, and guests from outside the team need the Enterprise plan.

3. Reetro

Reetro, built in Copenhagen, is a retro board with health checks, polls and surveys.

Pricing: the free plan covers 3 teams of up to 9 members (a tenth person joins read-only), 10 active boards and one health check a month, with no AI and no card. Pro is $10 per team per month or $100 per team per year, for up to 60 members. Pro Unlimited is listed at $49 a month, described as organisation-wide in the FAQ but "per team" on the pricing card.

Notable features: anonymous retrospectives and AI features come with Pro.

Drawbacks: AI and anonymous retrospectives are Pro features, and Pro gets only "limited AI features".

4. GoRetro

GoRetro, made by Acumen, pairs a retro board with Jira-connected sprint tools: sprint monitoring, planning poker and a capacity calculator.

Pricing: Premium is $29 per team per month billed annually ($348 a year) or $35 monthly. Sprint Pro, which adds planning poker and the capacity calculator, is $49 billed annually ($588 a year) or $59 monthly. Members per team are unlimited.

Notable features: AI-generated "Joker" cards draw on sprint monitoring data.

Drawbacks: planning poker and the capacity calculator need Sprint Pro, the higher per-team price.

5. Spreo (formerly Metro Retro)

Spreo is an online whiteboard for agile teams, used for sprint planning, refinement and retros. It was Metro Retro until 2025, then Ludi, and became Spreo in July 2026.

Pricing: per user by role. Editors, who create boards and run sessions, are $13 per user per month billed yearly or $16 monthly. Collaborators, who sign in to team boards, are $3 or $4. Visitors join open boards free, without an account.

Notable features: private writing, voting, timers and action tracking.

Drawbacks: like Parabol, it charges per person, so every Editor and signed-in Collaborator adds to the bill.

Parabol pricing vs Retro Rabbit

Once you're past Parabol's free plan, the unit matters most. Parabol Team charges for every active user; Retro Rabbit charges per team. Monthly list prices:

Assumptions: USD list prices on October 23, 2026, before tax; everyone logs in at least once every 30 days, since Parabol doesn't bill inactive users; Parabol publishes no annual price for Team.

Over a year, eight teams of nine come to $6,912 on Parabol Team, against $2,880 on Retro Rabbit Starter or $3,840 on Pro AI. Retro Rabbit Starter costs less than Parabol Team for any team of four or more active people, and Pro AI for any team of six or more. Check Parabol's pricing page for current figures, and ours on the Retro Rabbit pricing page.

Why Retro Rabbit is our pick for teams leaving Parabol

• Per team, not per person. Adding a new hire, a designer or a stakeholder to a team doesn't change the bill.
• No meeting count to watch. Every Retro Rabbit plan includes unlimited retros.
• The retro starts before the meeting. Notes written during the sprint mean the discussion is about what actually happened.
• AI that goes all the way to action items. CarrotIQ groups and summarises the notes, then suggests action items weighted by the team's votes.
• Follow-through on every board. The Previous Retro and Old/Unresolved tabs put last sprint's promises in front of the team before it makes new ones.
• Slack if you want it. Everything works in the web app; Slack adds /retro notes and note reminders for teams that live there.

Moving from Parabol to Retro Rabbit

1. Export what you want to keep. Parabol's CSV export, on all plans, covers comments, reflections and tasks. Billing Leaders can also export the user list as CSV, which makes re-inviting people easy.
2. Do it soon if you're on Starter. The free plan keeps 30 days of meeting history.
3. Time the cancellation. Parabol Team is billed monthly, so switch at the end of a billing month.
4. Create one Team Room per Parabol team. Invite people by email or share a join link. Each Team Room is billed as one team, whatever its size.
5. Bring over only what's still open. Keep the CSV as your archive, and re-create unfinished tasks as action items, each with an owner, in your first retro. From then on they appear in the Previous Retro and Old/Unresolved tabs.
6. Start the trial on day one of a sprint. Fourteen days covers one sprint of notes and its retro. Ask everyone to add a note whenever something goes well or badly.

The bottom line

If Parabol's per-person bill is why you're looking, Retro Rabbit charges per team with unlimited users, and it's built so the team's notes and action items carry from one sprint to the next. See Retro Rabbit vs Parabol for a side-by-side view, then try it with one team for one sprint. See plans and start a 14-day trial, no credit card needed.