# Parabol review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Retrospectives, standups and sprint poker for agile teams Checked Nov 13, 2026 ยท graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Parabol is a meeting tool for agile teams that runs retrospectives, standups, check-ins and sprint poker, either live or asynchronously. It ships with more than 90 meeting templates, adds AI discussion prompts and summaries, and has a Team Health check built in. The vendor lists its code as open source. - **Category:** Whiteboards & Mind Maps - **Made by:** Parabol - **Website:** https://www.parabol.co - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Tight if you stay free: 2 teams, 10 meetings a month and 30 days of history. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Parabol has a free plan, and paid plans start at $8 per active user / month. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** Starter: up to 2 teams, 10 meetings per month, unlimited users and 30 days of meeting history. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Starter | $0 | Up to 2 teams, 10 meetings per month, 30 days of history, 2 custom templates and 3 AI retrospective summaries. | | Team | $8 per active user / month, billed monthly | Unlimited teams, meetings, history and custom templates, private teams, Team Health, AI summaries and icebreakers. | | Enterprise | Custom | Annual contract with user tiers, SAML SSO, SCIM, org admin role, uptime SLA and optional on-prem or single-tenant hosting. | Read from https://www.parabol.co/pricing/ on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Parabol before buying. ## Key features - **Retrospectives:** Teams add anonymous suggestions, group them, vote and create tasks as they go, with discussion threads that document the conversation. - **Other meeting formats:** Standups, team check-ins and sprint poker run in the same app, and more than 90 meeting templates are included. - **Team Health checks:** Recurring, research-backed health checks with anonymous answers and trends. The vendor lists it on the Team and Enterprise plans. - **AI assistance:** AI discussion prompts and related discussions are on every plan; meeting summaries, group suggestions and icebreakers are on the paid plans. - **Backlog and chat integrations:** Tasks can be sent to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear or Azure DevOps, and meeting reminders and summaries can go to Slack, Microsoft Teams or Mattermost. ## Good for - Agile teams that want one app for retros, standups and sprint poker - Small organizations: the free plan allows unlimited users - Regulated organizations that want SSO, SCIM or private hosting ## Worth knowing - The free Starter plan is limited to 2 teams and 10 meetings per month, with 30 days of history. - The Team plan is priced per active user per month, so the bill moves with how many people take part. - SAML SSO, SCIM and the Jira Data Center and self-managed GitLab integrations are Enterprise only. - Parabol runs in a browser; the pages read list no desktop or mobile apps. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.6 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Parabol runs retrospectives, standups, check-ins and sprint poker, live or asynchronously, with 90-plus templates and AI summaries. The free Starter plan covers 2 teams and 10 meetings a month, and Team costs $8 per active user, with SSO and SCIM held for Enterprise. - **Value for money: C.** $8 per active user a month, which is the category's middle, and it rises with how many people take part. - **Free plan and trial: B.** Starter is free for up to 2 teams, 10 meetings a month and unlimited users, with 30 days of history. One team could live on it. - **Features: B.** Retros, standups, sprint poker, Team Health checks and AI prompts, plus links to the backlog tools. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the meeting job. - **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record. You choose templates and set up teams before the first meeting. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web only, but it connects to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Azure DevOps, Slack, Teams and Mattermost. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Parabol's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among whiteboard and mind map tools - Parabol's GPA of 2.6 is higher than 58 of the 98 other whiteboard and mind map tools we grade, and level with 16. - It stands best on features (B, above 77 of 98) and worst on ease of use (C, above 1). - Its paid plans start at $8 a month for each person, against a middle price of $8 for the category: 34 of the 69 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.7 out of 4. 6 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/whiteboards ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** The plain part of Parabol you could make: templates and tasks. What surrounds it you could not. The 4 things listed below take a company, not a weekend. It costs $96 a year. Parabol is open source, so there is a third way: take its code and run it yourself. - You could make: Templates and tasks: an app builder makes these well. - You could not: Several people working in it at the same moment. - You could not: It plugs into other products, Jira, GitHub and GitLab among them. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Azure DevOps, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Mattermost **Tags:** Real-time collaboration, Templates, Open source, AI features, Tasks ## Alternatives - [Retrium](https://toolgpa.com/tools/retrium): Facilitated sprint retrospectives for agile teams. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/parabol-vs-retrium) - [EasyRetro](https://toolgpa.com/tools/easyretro): Online boards for sprint retrospectives. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/easyretro-vs-parabol) - [Miro](https://toolgpa.com/tools/miro): Online whiteboard for team brainstorming, diagrams and planning. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/miro-vs-parabol) - [Mural](https://toolgpa.com/tools/mural): Online whiteboard with built-in facilitation tools for workshops. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/mural-vs-parabol) - [Stormboard](https://toolgpa.com/tools/stormboard): Sticky-note digital whiteboard with built-in reports. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/parabol-vs-stormboard) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://www.parabol.co/pricing/ - https://www.parabol.co - https://www.parabol.co/integrations Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/parabol Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).