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Make every sprint better than the last

RetroCanvas is a collaborative sprint retrospective tool for agile teams — real-time boards, voting, and affinity grouping, with retros that schedule themselves and action items that carry to the next session instead of evaporating when the call ends.

Built-in retro formats
19
Recurring cadences
5
To get started
$0
Sprint 24 Retro — an illustrative RetroCanvas boardVoting
Start

Pairing on anything that touches billing

5 votes

Writing the migration plan before the migration

2 votes
Stop

Merging on Friday afternoon

7 votes

Three separate standups for one team

3 votes
Continue

The new on-call handover doc

4 votes

Demoing to support before release

1 votes

Sample data. Real boards update live for everyone in the session.

Everything a retrospective needs, and the parts that come after it

Most retro tools stop when the meeting does. RetroCanvas is built around the week between one session and the next.

Real-time collaborative boards

Columns, cards, comments, and emoji reactions sync live over WebSocket subscriptions, with participant presence so you can see who is actually on the board.

Recurring retros that schedule themselves

Set a retro up once as a Stack and it creates the next session automatically — weekly, biweekly, four-weekly, monthly, or a custom cadence — with the same template, the same permanent share link, and the same members.

Voting and affinity grouping

Give each participant a fixed number of votes to surface what matters, and cluster related cards into groups during discussion to find the theme underneath them.

Action items that survive the meeting

Capture actions with an owner and a status on the board itself. On a paid plan, anything still open is carried onto the next session of the same recurring retro, so it gets asked about instead of forgotten.

Team health checks

Run a pulse survey alongside the retro, with results withheld until enough people have answered, and track the same questions across sessions to see the direction of travel.

Anonymous participation

Anyone with the link can join and contribute without an account, and claim their cards later by signing up. Boards can also be set to anonymous mode so no card carries an author at all.

Access control that fits a real org

Three board visibilities — open link, invite-only, and admin-only confidential — across three roles: Admin, Facilitator, Participant. Organizations add their own Owner, Admin, and Member hierarchy on top.

Export and integrations

Export a board to PDF, Markdown, or CSV, push individual cards to Jira as issues, and post a finished session summary into Slack. Organizations can share one Jira connection instead of every member pasting a token.

Cross-retro analytics

Trends across sessions rather than one board in isolation: participation, card and vote volume, recurring themes, and health-check movement over time.

How it works

Four steps the first time. After that the cadence runs itself.

  1. Pick a format

    Start from one of 19 built-in retrospective templates — Start Stop Continue, Sailboat, 4 Ls, Mad Sad Glad, and more — or save your own column layout as a reusable template.

  2. Share the link

    Send the board link. People can join and write cards without an account, so nobody spends the first five minutes of the retro signing up.

  3. Collect, group, vote, decide

    Write silently, cluster the duplicates, vote on what matters, and record the decisions as action items with owners while everyone is still in the room.

  4. Let it recur

    Turn the board into a Stack and the next session schedules itself on your cadence, carrying the template, the members, the share link, and any unfinished action items with it.

19 retrospective templates, with a guide for each one

Every built-in format ships with what it is for, when to use it, and what belongs in each column — so picking one is a decision, not a guess.

Browse all 19 retrospective templates →

Stop rebuilding the same board every sprint

Set a retro up once as a recurring Stack and it schedules the next session automatically — same template, same link, same team, on whatever cadence fits your sprint. Unfinished action items come with it, so the first question of the next retro is the one you meant to ask.

What you get for free

The free plan is a real plan, not a trial. There is no board cap, no participant cap, and no credit card at signup.

Free

  • Unlimited boards and unlimited participants
  • Real-time collaboration, comments, reactions, and presence
  • Voting, affinity grouping, and the shared countdown timer
  • All 19 built-in retrospective templates, plus your own personal templates
  • Recurring retro schedules ("Stacks")
  • Anonymous participation and anonymous boards
  • Board visibility levels and roles
  • Action items within a session
  • PDF, Markdown, and CSV export
  • Jira issue export with your own Jira account
  • Upcoming-session reminder emails

Pro adds

  • Cross-retro analytics and trends
  • Open action items carried across sessions of a recurring retro
  • Team health checks and their cross-session trend
  • Post-session summary emails
  • Slack delivery of finished session summaries
  • A shared organization template library
  • A shared organization Jira connection

Common questions

What is RetroCanvas?
RetroCanvas is a collaborative sprint retrospective tool for agile teams. Teams create a board with columns, write sticky-note cards, comment and react on them, group related cards, and vote to decide what to discuss — all updating live for everyone on the board. It also schedules recurring retrospectives automatically, so a standing sprint retro only has to be set up once.
Is RetroCanvas free?
Yes. The free plan has no board limit, no participant limit, and needs no credit card to sign up. It includes real-time boards, voting, affinity grouping, anonymous participation, all 19 built-in templates, recurring retro schedules, and PDF, Markdown, CSV, and Jira export. A paid Pro plan adds cross-retro analytics, team health checks, action items carried between sessions, post-session summary emails, Slack delivery, and shared organization template and Jira connections.
Do participants need an account to join a retrospective?
No. Anyone with the board link can join and add cards without signing up, and can claim those cards later if they do create an account. Only the people who create boards, manage organizations, or read cross-retro analytics need to sign in.
Can RetroCanvas run recurring retrospectives automatically?
Yes — this is what RetroCanvas calls a Stack. Choose a cadence (weekly, biweekly, four-weekly, monthly, or a custom interval in days, weeks, or months), a day, and a time in your team's own timezone, and each session is created for you ahead of time. The share link stays the same across every session, membership carries over, and open action items from the last session are surfaced on the new board.
Which retrospective templates does RetroCanvas include?
Nineteen built-in formats ship with the product: Standard (Went Well / To Improve / Action Items), Standard with Shoutouts, Start Stop Continue, Start Stop Continue More Less, 4 Ls, Sailboat, Mad Sad Glad, Rose Bud Thorn, Starfish, KALM, DAKI, Plus Delta, Three Little Pigs, Lean Coffee, Hopes and Fears, Highlights and Lowlights, Wishing Well, Four Ws, and Energy Check. Teams can also save any column layout as a reusable custom template.
Can retrospectives be anonymous?
Yes, in two different senses. A board can be set to anonymous mode, in which cards carry no author at all. Separately, anyone can participate without an account, in which case their cards are attributed to a temporary anonymous identity rather than a named person.
How do I export a retrospective board?
Any board exports to PDF, Markdown, or CSV, including votes, comments, and reactions, and you can choose which columns to include. Individual cards can also be pushed to Jira as issues — either through your own Jira account, or through a shared connection an organization configures once for everyone on a paid plan.
Who can see a retrospective board?
That depends on its visibility. A link board can be opened by anyone holding the link; a private board is invite-only; a confidential board is readable only by its admins. Three roles — Admin, Facilitator, and Participant — control what a member can do once they are in, and every check is enforced by the server rather than hidden in the interface.
Does RetroCanvas integrate with Jira and Slack?
Yes. Cards export to Jira as issues, and an organization on a paid plan can configure one shared Jira connection instead of asking every member for their own API token. Slack delivery posts a finished session's summary — counts, top-voted cards, and a link back to the board — into a channel of your choice.
How long should a sprint retrospective take?
For a team of about six people, plan on forty-five minutes to an hour for a standard format. Shorter formats such as Plus Delta work in fifteen minutes, and longer, story-shaped ones such as Highlights and Lowlights or the 4 Ls are better suited to an hour or more at the end of a quarter or a project. Every template guide on this site lists a typical duration.

Ready to run a better retro?

Create a board, share the link, and start collecting cards in about a minute.