QRetro vs Parabol

The short version

Parabol is an open-source meeting platform that covers retrospectives, standups, check-ins and sprint poker. Its free Starter plan is generous on people and strict on usage: unlimited users, but up to 2 teams, up to 10 meetings per month and 30 days of meeting history. Beyond that the Team plan costs $8 per active user per month, where an active user is anyone who logged in during the last 30 days.

QRetro is free to use, with no meeting quota, no history window and no per-seat fee. Participants join a board from a link without an account.

The choice usually comes down to two questions: how many meetings a month your teams run, and whether you want the source code.

Side by side

Where Parabol is the better choice

It is open source. The code is public and Enterprise customers can host it themselves, optionally as a single-tenant instance in a region of their choosing. If your security review ends with "where does the data live and can we run it ourselves", Parabol has an answer and QRetro does not.

More than retrospectives. Standups, team check-ins and sprint poker are first-class meeting types with their own facilitation flow. A team that wants one tool for every recurring ceremony gets more from Parabol.

Wider integration list. GitHub, Azure DevOps, Microsoft Teams and Mattermost alongside Jira and Slack.

Enterprise controls. SAML SSO and SCIM user provisioning, an org admin role, an uptime SLA and a dedicated account manager. QRetro has none of these.

Where QRetro is the better choice

No meeting quota. Ten meetings a month sounds like plenty until you count: two teams running fortnightly retrospectives, a couple of incident reviews and a quarterly session will reach it. QRetro does not count meetings.

History is not a paid feature. Parabol's free plan keeps 30 days. Retrospectives are worth most when you can look back a year and see which problems keep returning — that is exactly what the free window cuts off, and what the QRetro data set is built around.

No per-seat maths. Parabol's active-user model is fairer than most, but it still means every person who logs in is a line on the invoice, and inviting a stakeholder into one session has a price. QRetro has no seats: share the link and anyone can join from the browser.

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 — including asking which themes repeat across a year of sessions. See the MCP integration guide.

Choosing between them

Take Parabol if you need self-hosting or open source, if standups and check-ins should live in the same tool, or if SAML SSO and SCIM are on your requirements list.

Take QRetro if the meeting cap or the 30-day history window is what pushes you to a paid plan, if you would rather not track who counts as an active user, or if you want retrospective data available to the assistant you already work in.

Getting started

Open a board from a format your team knows — Mad Sad Glad, Starfish, Sailboat, 4Ls or any of the 52 templates — and share the link.

Frequently asked questions

Is Parabol free? There is a free Starter plan: unlimited users, but up to 2 teams, up to 10 meetings per month and 30 days of meeting history. The Team plan is $8 per active user per month.

What counts as an active user in Parabol? Anyone who logged in during the last 30 days. Users who have not logged in for 30 days are marked inactive and do not count toward the bill.

Is Parabol open source? Yes, the repository is public, and Enterprise customers can run it on-premises or as a single-tenant instance.

Does QRetro limit meetings or history? No. There is no meeting quota, no history window and no per-seat fee.