Parabol

Overview

Parabol is one of the few fully open-source meeting platforms in the agile space. The team behind it is distributed and clearly uses their own product, which shows in the design. It supports retrospectives, sprint poker, standups, check-ins, and team health checks. The codebase lives on GitHub, so engineering teams get the transparency and self-hosting option that proprietary tools can't offer.

Netflix, GitHub, and Buffer all use it. That should tell you something about the tool's ability to hold up under real engineering team demands. On the AI side, Parabol's meeting summaries and suggested action items have gotten noticeably better over the past year, putting it on par with closed-source competitors like Kollabe and TeamRetro.

Key Features

Open Source and Self-Hosting

Parabol's full codebase is on GitHub under the AGPL license. For organizations with data sovereignty requirements or security policies that block third-party SaaS, self-hosting is a real option. You will need Docker, a PostgreSQL database, Redis, and a reverse proxy. This is not a one-click setup. You need a DevOps engineer who knows container orchestration to get it running properly.

But if you need it, you need it. No other major retro tool offers this.

Five Meeting Types

Most retro tools give you retros plus maybe poker. Parabol goes further with five distinct meeting formats: retrospectives, sprint poker, standups, check-ins, and team health checks. Each has its own workflow, templates, and facilitation tools.

The check-in format works particularly well for remote teams. It gives you a structured way to start meetings with personal and professional updates before getting into the actual agenda. Team health checks run as anonymous emoji polls at the start of a retro, giving the facilitator a quick read on the room's energy and morale before diving in.

AI Summaries and Suggestions

After each meeting, Parabol generates a structured summary with discussion points, decisions, and action items. If you have Slack connected, summaries get posted automatically to your channel, which keeps stakeholders in the loop without dragging them into every meeting.

The summary quality has improved a lot in the past year. They actually capture nuance now, rather than just pulling out keywords.

Integrations

Parabol connects to Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, and Mattermost. The Jira and GitHub integrations are the deepest. You can pull issues directly into sprint poker via JQL or GitHub search syntax and push estimates back automatically. Linear and Azure DevOps cover task tracking on both sides too. Slack, Teams, and Mattermost handle notifications and meeting summary delivery, though none offer two-way sync.

The main gaps are Trello (not supported) and Confluence (export only). If your workflow depends on either, that matters.

Pricing

Parabol charges per user, but with a twist: you only pay for users who actually participate in meetings during a billing cycle.

Free (Starter) supports up to 2 teams with 10 meetings per month. All meeting types and integrations are included. Fine for evaluating the tool, but the 10-meeting cap means most active teams will blow past it in their first sprint.

Team ($8/user/month) removes the meeting cap, supports unlimited teams, and adds priority support. Inactive users don't get billed.

Enterprise (custom pricing) adds SAML SSO, an Org Admin role, a dedicated account manager, optional on-prem or single-tenant hosting, uptime SLA, and access to Jira Data Center and self-managed GitLab integrations.

The active-user billing is fair in principle, but the math still matters. A 20-person team where 15 are active each month costs $120/month. Kollabe covers that same team for $29/month flat. For smaller teams of 5-8 active users, the gap shrinks and Parabol's per-user cost is reasonable. The real question is how fast your team is growing and whether per-user pricing will hurt later.

Ease of Use

The interface is clean and organized, though having five meeting types means more menus and options than a focused retro tool like EasyRetro. Creating a meeting is simple: pick the type, choose a template, invite people, go. Real-time collaboration feels smooth. Facilitation controls give the organizer clear authority over the meeting flow.

Onboarding includes guided tooltips and a sample meeting walkthrough. New users can figure out the workflow without reading docs. Where things get a bit much is the settings area. Five meeting types, multiple integrations, team management, admin features. An experienced scrum master will be fine. A team lead running their first retro will probably need 20-30 minutes to get oriented.

Who Is It Best For?

If your organization has policies requiring source code transparency or on-premise data storage, Parabol is basically the only serious option. Netflix and GitHub using it at scale confirms it can handle enterprise workloads.

It also works well for teams that want multiple meeting types without leaving the open-source ecosystem. Five meeting formats covers more ground than most competitors.

But if cost efficiency at scale is your main concern, do the math. A team of 25 active users on Parabol runs $200/month. Kollabe covers the same team for $29/month. GoRetro comes in at $29-49/month depending on the plan. If open source isn't a hard requirement for your team, that price difference is hard to ignore.

The Verdict

Parabol is a genuinely impressive platform. It brings open-source principles to a space full of proprietary SaaS tools, and it does so without sacrificing quality. The range of meeting types, the AI features, and the self-hosting capability make it a strong pick for engineering organizations.

The trade-off is economic. Per-user pricing means your bill grows with your team, while flat-rate competitors avoid that entirely. For a team of 5-10, the difference is manageable. For 30+, it gets significant. If open source and self-hosting are non-negotiable, Parabol wins. If they're nice-to-haves, compare the total cost against Kollabe before signing up. For a side-by-side breakdown, see our Kollabe vs Parabol comparison.