Clear Retro vs RetroTool

Clear Retro is a free web tool for live Agile retrospectives, designed by developers for developers and remote engineering teams. WebSocket synchronization updates teammates’ boards without refreshes, while guest access lets participants join without logging in. Focus Mode blurs cards during writing to reduce groupthink and social bias. Teams can prioritize issues with numerical votes from 0 to 5, then use Gemini AI to categorize and semantically group cards. Templates include Start, Stop, Continue; Mad, Sad, Glad; 4Ls; Lean Coffee; and Sailboat. The tool supports action tracking and exports PDF and Excel reports with AI-generated summaries and sentiment analysis. Its Community Edition costs nothing and includes unlimited boards, members, and history, plus all current features. Clear Retro identifies Gemini AI and Google Cloud Platform (Firebase) for storage, says data is encrypted in transit and at rest, and says retrospective data is not used to train Google’s public AI models.

RetroTool is a web tool for running retrospectives with remote or hybrid teams. Teams can start with Mad | Sad | Glad, Liked | Learned | Lacked, or Start | Stop | Continue templates. Participants can draft cards in private sections and move them into a public section. Voting includes dot and secret voting, with controls for the number of votes allowed per participant, column, and card. Teams can turn discussion into action points, assign a responsible teammate, and set a due date. A timer is among the facilitation tools. Paid plans add facilitator-only moderation, readiness checks, read-only locking, and private, invite-only retrospectives; the Company plan adds zero-knowledge encryption with custom passwords. The Anonymous plan costs nothing and keeps data for up to 12 months. Individual costs $10 a month per team, and Company costs $20 a month per team. RetroTool offers a 90-day trial. The maker says u2i first created the tool for its own remote retrospectives before offering it to others.