A free alternative to Metro Retro

Metro Retro is now Spreo

If you are looking for Metro Retro, the product was renamed to Spreo. metroretro.io returns a permanent redirect to spreo.io, and the product itself continues under the new name — a free-form collaborative canvas with stickies, shapes, connectors and facilitation tools, aimed at workshops as much as at retrospectives.

The comparison below is against Spreo as it stands today.

The short version

Spreo is priced per user: $4 per user per month on Starter billed annually ($5 monthly), and $6 per user per month on Business billed annually ($8 monthly). There is a free trial, but no free tier — for a team of eight, Starter works out at roughly $32 a month.

QRetro is free to use, with no per-seat fee and no board quota. Participants join a board from a link without creating an account, so occasional attendees never appear on a bill.

Side by side

Where Spreo is the better choice

It is a canvas, not a board. Shapes, connectors, free drawing and gadgets make it a genuine workshop tool. If your sessions involve diagramming, story mapping or anything that does not fit into columns, QRetro's structured board will feel restrictive and Spreo will not.

Single sign-on and permissions. Advanced privacy, user roles and SAML on the Business plan. QRetro has none of that.

Board history. The time machine on Business lets you step back through a board's history. QRetro has no equivalent.

Where QRetro is the better choice

No per-seat cost. This is the main difference. On a per-user plan, every person who joins a retrospective is a line on the invoice, and inviting a stakeholder or someone from another team means either paying for them or using the external-collaborator allowance — two per board on Business. QRetro has no seats at all: share the link and anyone can join from the browser.

A free tier that is actually free. Spreo offers a trial. QRetro is free to run retrospectives on, indefinitely.

Retrospective-specific features. Team health tracking, ROTI, action items carried between sessions and planning poker are part of the product rather than something you assemble on a blank canvas.

Access from your assistant. QRetro exposes retrospectives over the Model Context Protocol, so Claude, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code can query boards, health trends and open action items directly. See the MCP integration guide.

Choosing between them

Take Spreo if your sessions are workshops that need a free-form canvas, or if you need SSO and role-based permissions and are happy to pay per user.

Take QRetro if what you actually run is retrospectives, if the per-seat model makes it awkward to invite the people who should be in the room, or if you want the same tool to handle estimation.

Getting started

Open a board from a format your team knows — Sailboat, Mad Sad Glad, Starfish, Lean Coffee or any of the 52 templates — and share the link. No accounts, no seats, no quota.

Frequently asked questions

Is Metro Retro still available? Yes, under the name Spreo. metroretro.io redirects to spreo.io.

Does Spreo have a free plan? No. It offers a free trial, then charges per user from $4 per month billed annually.

Is QRetro really free? Yes. Retrospectives and planning poker are free to use, with no board quota and no per-seat fee.