Kollabe

Overview

Kollabe has quietly built one of the most complete agile ceremony platforms available. Where most tools in the retro space stop at retro boards, Kollabe delivers planning poker, retrospectives, and standups in a single product. Over 274,000 registered users have signed up, which tells you teams are tired of paying for three separate SaaS tools when one could do the job.

The pricing model is what caught my attention first. Most competitors charge per user per month. Kollabe charges a flat team rate. A team of 5 pays the same as a team of 25 on the same plan. For growing orgs, this can save you real money compared to Parabol, where costs go up with every new hire. TeamRetro also uses team-based pricing, but their multi-team plans get expensive once you're managing more than a handful of squads.

Kollabe started with retrospectives and planning poker, then expanded into standups and icebreakers. The AI features, which generate summaries and auto-group related feedback cards, are actually useful. Having facilitated hundreds of retros myself, I can tell you the time saved on manual grouping alone makes Kollabe worth a serious look.

Key Features

AI-Powered Summaries and Grouping

Kollabe's AI analyzes feedback cards during a retrospective and groups related items together. This goes beyond simple keyword matching. The system understands semantic similarity, so "our deployments are too slow" and "CI/CD pipeline needs optimization" land in the same cluster. After the session, the AI produces a summary of themes, action items, and sentiment.

For facilitators running retros across multiple teams, this saves 15-20 minutes per session. That's time you'd otherwise spend dragging sticky notes around while everyone watches.

Planning Poker

The poker implementation supports Fibonacci, T-shirt sizing, and custom scales. Teams can estimate in real-time or asynchronously, which matters a lot for distributed teams across time zones. The reveal animation builds a bit of anticipation, and outlier detection flags when estimates are far apart so the team can talk it out before converging. You can pull stories directly from Jira or Linear into a session without copying them over manually.

Sprint Retrospectives

Over 1,000 templates including Start/Stop/Continue, Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls, Sailboat, and hundreds of themed/creative formats. There's also an AI template generator if you want something custom. Anonymous mode protects psychological safety. The timer keeps discussions from dragging, and action items push directly to Jira, GitHub Issues, or Linear.

One thing I appreciate: the facilitator controls panel. You can move through phases (writing, grouping, voting, discussion) with a click instead of awkwardly announcing "okay, time to vote now" over a video call.

Async and Live Standups

Standups are Kollabe's newest feature. Both sync and async formats are supported. Team members post their updates (yesterday, today, blockers) on their own schedule, and the tool compiles a digest.

This works well for distributed teams. But I'll be honest: it doesn't match dedicated standup tools yet. The essentials are there, but things like mood tracking or automated blocker escalation are missing. It covers 80% of what you need.

Icebreakers

Over 600 questions across 6 languages, with AI-powered selection based on team context and meeting type. You can also generate custom questions by entering a prompt. Questions range from 30-second quick responses to 5-minute deeper discussions. Small touch, but it shows the team behind Kollabe understands that ceremonies are about people, not just process.

Integrations

Kollabe connects to Jira, GitHub, Linear, Confluence, and Azure DevOps. No Slack or Microsoft Teams integration, which is a gap if your team relies on chat notifications. The Jira integration is deep: bidirectional syncing of action items, direct import of sprint backlogs into poker sessions via JQL, and auto-sync of estimates back to Jira.

The Linear integration launched in January 2026 and is worth calling out. Parabol also connects to Linear, but native support is still uncommon in the retro tool space. For teams that have moved away from Jira, having it matters. Azure DevOps support includes WIQL queries for importing work items.

Pricing

Kollabe uses flat team-based pricing. This is one of its biggest advantages.

Free Plan gives you access to retros, poker, and standups with up to 10 participants per room. Board history lasts 7 days, and you're capped at 10 voting issues in poker. No data export or permission management. Still usable for small teams evaluating the tool.

Planning Poker Only ($12/month) is a newer option for teams that only need estimation. Unlimited poker with all integrations, but no retros or standups. 7-day history.

Premium ($29/month) is the main plan. Unlimited everything: participants, history, boards. All AI tools (summaries, grouping, sentiment analysis, custom AI instructions). All integrations. Data export and analytics. Permission management. Flat fee for the whole team. Not per user.

Enterprise (custom pricing) adds SSO/SAML (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, OneLogin), custom contracts, volume discounts, dedicated support, SLA guarantees, and public API access.

Here is where the math gets interesting. Parabol charges $8/user/month. A 20-person team on Parabol costs $160/month. Kollabe's Premium covers that same team for $29/month. Even against GoRetro at $29/month for their base plan, Kollabe gives you more ceremony types at the same price.

Ease of Use

The interface is modern, fast, and clean. Creating a new session takes about 30 seconds: pick a ceremony type, choose a template, share the link. Participants don't need accounts, which cuts friction when stakeholders or contractors join. Real-time collaboration feels responsive even with 15-20 people on a board.

Where Kollabe really nails it is the facilitator experience. Phase controls are intuitive. Moving from writing to grouping to voting to discussion happens with one click. AI grouping triggers on demand and you can adjust the results by hand.

The learning curve is low enough that a first-time facilitator can run a productive retro without reading any docs. That said, if you mostly work from your phone, expect a slightly rougher ride. The platform was built desktop-first, and while it works on tablets and phones, the experience is better on a larger screen.

Who Is It Best For?

Kollabe makes the most sense for agile teams running multiple ceremonies who want to stop paying for separate tools. If your team currently juggles one tool for poker, another for retros, and a Slack bot for standups, Kollabe kills that fragmentation while probably saving you money. The flat pricing is especially attractive once you hit 10+ people, where per-user costs from Parabol start climbing fast and per-team costs from TeamRetro add up across multiple squads.

It also works well for teams that want AI assistance without gimmicks. The summaries and grouping save real time.

However, if you need SOC 2 compliance or detailed enterprise audit trails, take a look at TeamRetro alongside Kollabe, since TeamRetro holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification. And if your team only does retros and nothing else, a focused tool like EasyRetro with its 100+ templates might be simpler. But for the all-in-one use case, Kollabe is the one to beat.

The Verdict

Kollabe earns a top ranking because it solves a real problem: ceremony tool sprawl. Instead of three subscriptions and three different platforms, you get poker, retros, and standups in one place. The AI features add real value, and the flat pricing model doesn't punish you for growing your team.

It isn't perfect. The standup features are still maturing compared to the retro and poker experiences. Mobile users will find the interface usable but not optimized. Teams that only need retro boards might find a specialized tool like EasyRetro to be enough.

These are minor trade-offs for what Kollabe delivers. For teams shopping for their agile tooling stack, it belongs at the top of the list. If you want a direct comparison, check out our Kollabe vs EasyRetro and Kollabe vs Parabol guides.