Both Kollabe and EasyRetro have free plans. Both run sprint retrospectives. That's roughly where the similarities end.
I've been facilitating retros for six years across different team sizes and industries. These two tools have opposite philosophies about what a retro tool should be, and the choice between them says a lot about what your team actually needs.
I maintain detailed reviews of both tools (and about a dozen others) at RetroTools.io.
The pitch
EasyRetro has been around since 2015. Originally called FunRetro, it does one thing: retro boards. No planning poker. No standups. No health checks. Just boards with sticky notes, voting, and action items. It's been quietly doing this while other tools rebrand every year and bolt on features nobody asked for.
Kollabe launched in 2022 and went the opposite direction. Retros, planning poker, and async standups in one platform. AI grouping, AI summaries, inline polls, a drawing tool. It's trying to be the single tool your team opens for every ceremony.
Two different bets. EasyRetro bets you want one thing done well. Kollabe bets you're tired of paying for three separate tools.
Free plan: the part that actually matters
If you're reading a comparison post, there's a decent chance you're evaluating free tiers. So let's start there.
| Kollabe Free | EasyRetro Free | |
|---|---|---|
| Boards/meetings | Limited per month | 1 board on dashboard at a time |
| Participants | Up to 10 per room | Unlimited per board |
| History | 7 days | None (must delete to create new) |
| Templates | All 1,000+ | All 200+ |
| AI grouping | Yes | No |
| AI summaries | Yes | No |
| Anonymous mode | Yes | Yes |
| Voting | Yes | Yes |
| Planning poker | Yes (10 issues/session) | No |
| Standups | Yes | No |
| Exports | No | No |
| Integrations | No | No |
| Surveys | No | 1 per month |
Neither free plan is generous. They're not supposed to be. But the constraints are different in ways that matter.
EasyRetro lets unlimited people join a board. That's great for large workshops or cross-team retros. But you get one board. One. And archived boards count against that limit — you have to delete your previous retro before creating a new one. For a team running biweekly sprints, that means your retro data disappears every two weeks. There's no history to look back on.
Kollabe caps you at 10 participants but gives you AI grouping and summaries on the free plan. That's unusual. Most tools gate AI behind their mid-tier paid plan. The 7-day history window is tight, but at least you have some window to reference past discussions. And you get planning poker and standups included, which is three tools for the price of zero.
Short version: EasyRetro's free plan is better for occasional, large-group retros. Kollabe's free plan is better for small teams running recurring ceremonies.
Retro board experience
This is where you'll spend 90% of your time, so it matters more than any feature table.
EasyRetro
EasyRetro's board is clean. Deliberately simple. You create columns, people add cards, you vote, you discuss. The presentation mode (revealing columns one at a time) is genuinely useful for controlling the flow of a retro without a formal guided workflow. Password-protected boards mean you can share a link without worrying about random people wandering in.
The anonymity model is worth calling out. Participants don't need accounts. They don't even need to sign up. Only the board creator needs an EasyRetro account. For ad-hoc retros or workshops where you're bringing in people from outside your org, this removes a real friction point that most tools ignore.
Card merging works well. Drag one card onto another, they combine. You can unmerge later if you grouped wrong. But this is manual. With 15 cards, fine. With 50 cards from a team of 12, you're spending ten minutes dragging and dropping before the actual discussion starts.
Kollabe
Kollabe's AI grouping is the headline feature and it earns it. It uses semantic similarity, not keyword matching. "Our deployments are slow" and "CI/CD pipeline needs attention" end up in the same group without you touching anything. After running retros with both tools back to back, the time saved on grouping alone is 5-10 minutes per session. Over a year of biweekly sprints, that's roughly three hours of meeting time you get back. Not transformative, but not nothing.
The guided facilitation flow walks your team through phases: brainstorm, group, vote, discuss, action items. Good for newer facilitators or teams that tend to go off the rails. EasyRetro doesn't have this. Presentation mode gives you some control, but it's not the same as a structured workflow.
Kollabe also has a drawing tool, inline polls on retro items, and GIF support. Whether those matter depends on your team's culture. Some teams communicate better with sketches. Most don't need them.
Templates
EasyRetro has 200+ templates across multiple languages with an AI template generator. Kollabe claims 1,000+ with its own AI generator. Both numbers are high enough that the count doesn't really matter. What matters is whether the templates are good.
Both cover the basics: Start/Stop/Continue, Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls, Sailboat, Starfish. EasyRetro's templates are straightforward. Pick one, it creates the columns. Kollabe's templates include themed backgrounds (30+ options), which is a nice touch if your team responds to visual variety. After a year of the same white board, even a small visual change can reset the "retro fatigue" clock.
Neither tool's template library is a differentiator. Pick either one and you'll find what you need in under a minute.
Beyond retros
This is where the comparison gets lopsided.
EasyRetro is retros. That's it. If you need planning poker, you're opening a second tool. Standups? Third tool. Health checks? Find a template or use a spreadsheet.
Kollabe covers three ceremonies:
- Planning poker with Fibonacci, T-shirt, and custom decks. Import tickets from Jira (JQL), GitHub, Azure DevOps, or Linear. Estimates sync back automatically.
- Async standups with persistent daily rooms, customizable questions, and AI-generated daily/weekly summaries.
- Retros with everything discussed above.
If your team runs all three, that's one login instead of three. One subscription. One place where data lives. If your team only runs retros, Kollabe's extra features are irrelevant and EasyRetro's simplicity is an advantage.
Integrations
| Integration | Kollabe | EasyRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Jira | Import + Export | Export only |
| GitHub | Import + Export | No |
| Azure DevOps | Import + Export | No |
| Linear | Import + Export | No |
| Confluence | Export | Export |
| Trello | No | Export |
| Slack | No | Notifications only |
| MS Teams | No | Board embedding |
EasyRetro's Jira integration is mature. Bulk export to Jira landed in September 2024, and the action item export has been solid since 2022. If your workflow is "run retro, push action items to Jira, track them there," EasyRetro handles that well.
Kollabe goes deeper on the import side. Pull tickets from Jira via JQL, import GitHub issues, bring in Azure DevOps work items with WIQL queries. Estimates sync back to your project management tool automatically. But no Slack integration on any plan. That's a real gap.
EasyRetro has basic Slack notifications and Teams embedding. Nothing deep, you won't be creating cards from Slack, but it exists. Neither tool has Zapier or webhook support, though Kollabe launched a public API in February 2026 that might partially fill that gap.
Pricing (when you outgrow free)
This is where your finance team gets involved.
| Kollabe Premium | EasyRetro Team | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29/month flat | $38/month flat |
| What you get | All ceremonies, unlimited participants, unlimited history, all AI features, all integrations, exports, analytics | 5 boards/month, 1 team, unlimited participants, integrations, exports, analytics |
Both use flat pricing, not per user. But the value at each tier is different.
Kollabe's $29/month gets you everything. Retros, poker, standups, unlimited participants, unlimited history, the works. One price, one team.
EasyRetro's $38/month gets you retro boards. Five per month. Just retros. If you need more boards, the Business tier is $60/month for 15 boards, or $90/month for 30.
There's a catch on Kollabe's side though. Each "Space" is one team. If you have three teams, that's $87/month. EasyRetro's Business plan at $60/month gives you 3 teams with 15 boards. For multi-team organizations, run the math on your specific structure before deciding.
For a single team, Kollabe is cheaper and gives you more. For three or more teams, it depends on how many boards you create per month.
The stuff nobody mentions
A few things that don't show up in feature comparison tables but affect your daily experience.
Kollabe participants don't need accounts. Send a link, they're in. EasyRetro requires participants to create a free account. For your regular team, that's a one-time friction. For workshops or cross-org retros with external stakeholders, Kollabe wins on access speed.
Both are web-only with no native apps. EasyRetro added mobile card dragging in April 2024. Both work on mobile browsers but are clearly built for desktop. Don't expect anyone to run a retro from their phone.
EasyRetro stores data in US Central (Firebase/GCP). Kollabe stores data in Australia (DigitalOcean). Neither offers data residency options. If you have data sovereignty requirements, this might matter.
Neither has SOC 2 certification. EasyRetro relies on GCP's certifications. Kollabe runs monthly penetration testing through Intruder. Both encrypt data in transit and at rest. Neither has audit logs. If your procurement team needs SOC 2 paperwork, look at TeamRetro instead.
Who should pick what
Pick EasyRetro if:
- Your team only needs ultra simple retro boards, nothing else
- You run large retros or workshops with external participants who shouldn't need to create accounts
- You're a Jira shop and the action item export matters
- You prefer simplicity over features (fewer buttons, fewer decisions)
Pick Kollabe if:
- Your team runs retros and planning poker (or standups, or both)
- You have 10 or fewer people and want the most capable free plan
- AI grouping would actually save you time (it does if your retros regularly produce 30+ cards)
- You want flat pricing that doesn't scale with headcount
Pick neither if:
- You need SOC 2 compliance (TeamRetro)
- You want open source and self-hosting (Parabol)
- You're already paying for Miro and want to consolidate (Miro)
Both tools have real gaps. EasyRetro hasn't shipped AI grouping after two years of competitors having it. Kollabe still doesn't have Slack integration, which is table stakes for most teams. Pick the gaps you can live with.
Head-to-head comparisons for these and twelve other retro tools are at RetroTools.io. No affiliate links, no paid placements.
What's your team using for retros right now? Curious whether anyone's running Kollabe and EasyRetro side by side for different ceremonies.
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