The best free planning poker tools in 2026

We checked the free plan of every tool below on the vendor's own pricing or product page on 28 October 2026. The short version:

• Best for teams in Slack and Jira: Troopr. Async or live planning poker in Slack, up to 30 Jira issues a session, and the estimate you confirm written back to each issue, free for 10 seats.
• Best for a one-off session with no sign-up: Scrum Poker Online or TeamRetro's free room. Open a room, share the link, vote.
• Best browser tool with Jira on the free plan: Parabol Sprint Poker, for up to two teams and 10 meetings a month.
• Best for a small team that estimates now and then: Kollabe (four free poker meetings a month for up to 10 people) or Planning Poker Online (unlimited players, five voted issues per game).
• Best for five people or fewer: PlanningPoker.com's free plan, with ads.

What we compared: how many people can vote for free and what the free plan caps, whether the agreed estimate reaches Jira without copy and paste, whether people need an account, where the team votes, and what the first paid plan costs.

Free planning poker plans compared

Every free plan caps something different: players, rounds, meetings a month or the Jira sync. Here is what each one allows today.

Seven free planning poker tools, one by one

1. Troopr: planning poker in Slack, with the estimate written to Jira

Troopr runs planning poker as a check-in inside Slack (Troopr also runs in Microsoft Teams). You pick up to 30 Jira issues by key, summary or JQL, choose the deck and the people who vote, and run it now or on a schedule every sprint. Each person votes from Slack on their own time, the cards stay hidden until the round closes, and Troopr posts every vote and comment to the channel and, once you confirm the number, writes it to the issue. For a single ticket, the /t poker command starts an instant round from any channel.

Free plan: 10 seats, unlimited teams and check-ins, every feature, no credit card. Jira: Cloud, Server and Data Center. Best for: engineering teams that live in Slack and Jira, especially across time zones. Creditas, for one, runs its async daily scrum and planning poker with Troopr. See how planning poker works in Troopr.

2. Planning Poker Online

A browser game from We Agile You built around live sessions: create a game, share the URL and vote, with an async voting mode for teams that can't meet. Free plan: unlimited players and unlimited games for 6 weeks, but 9 voting rounds and 5 voted issues per game. Jira: through its separate Jira app on the Atlassian Marketplace, free on Jira Cloud sites with up to 10 users; the web version imports issues from CSV and connects to Linear. Paid: $30 per facilitator a month, or $300 a year. Best for: live sessions on a short list of items. (Planning Poker Online pricing)

3. Scrum Poker Online

The quickest start: open a room, share the room ID and vote. There's no sign-up, no email and no participant limit, and the interface comes in six languages. A free account adds custom card values and host controls. Jira: none, by design; teams keep it open next to Jira. Paid: Premium is $40 a year and removes the ads for everyone in your room. Best for: one-off sessions where nobody needs the estimate written anywhere. (Scrum Poker Online)

4. TeamRetro's free planning poker

A free room with no account and no limits on estimating together, six ready decks (Scrum, Fibonacci, sequential, half card, powers of two and T-shirt sizes) and a tally with the team average on every reveal. Jira: not in the free room; TeamRetro's paid estimation imports Jira issues and syncs the agreed points back. Paid: from $250 a year for one team of up to 25. Best for: teams that already run their retrospectives in TeamRetro. (TeamRetro free planning poker)

5. Kollabe

Planning poker, retros and standups in the browser, with no sign-up required to start. Free plan: up to 4 planning poker meetings a month, up to 10 participants, 7 days of history and unlimited voting rounds. Jira: not on the free plan; the Planning Poker Only plan adds Jira, GitHub, Azure DevOps and Linear. Paid: $12 per space a month for planning poker only, $29 for Premium. Best for: a team of 10 or fewer that estimates about once a week. (Kollabe pricing)

6. Parabol Sprint Poker

Parabol is an open source meeting tool for retros, standups and estimation. Sprint Poker pulls issues from Jira, GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps and syncs the estimates back, and it ships Fibonacci, five fingers and T-shirt scales plus your own. Free plan: up to 2 teams and 10 meetings a month, unlimited users, 30 days of meeting history. Paid: $8 per active user a month. Best for: teams that want Jira write-back in a browser tool and stay within two teams; everyone needs a Parabol account. (Parabol pricing)

7. PlanningPoker.com

A dedicated planning poker site where only the organizer needs an account; players join for free. Free plan: up to 5 players a game, with ads, 4 pointing scales, a game timer and a printable results page. Jira: from the Standard plan. Paid: Standard is $14.95 a month per organizer ($12.50 billed yearly) for up to 10 players; Pro is $49.95 for up to 50. Best for: occasional sessions with five people or fewer. (PlanningPoker.com plans)

Standuply, which earlier versions of this post compared, includes planning poker only on its paid Business plan, so it isn't on this list.

What a team of eight pays once it outgrows a free plan

Free plans cap different things, so the cheapest tool depends on how your team estimates. Here is the first paid step for one team of eight that estimates every sprint and wants the estimate in Jira, at the prices published on 28 October 2026:

• Troopr: $0. Eight people fit inside the free plan's 10 seats, Jira write-back included. Past 10, it's $6 per seat a month billed yearly, or $8 monthly, and people who only read the report are free.
• Parabol: $0 while you stay within 2 teams and 10 meetings a month; on the Team plan, eight active users at $8 is $64 a month.
• Kollabe: $12 a month for Planning Poker Only, its first plan with Jira.
• PlanningPoker.com: $14.95 a month for Standard with one organizer and up to 10 players, its first plan with Jira.
• TeamRetro: $250 a year for one team of up to 25, about $20.83 a month.
• Planning Poker Online: $30 a month per facilitator to lift the web version's five-issue cap. Its separate Jira app is free only while your whole Jira Cloud site has 10 users or fewer, and priced by site size after that.
• Scrum Poker Online: $0, or $40 a year without ads, and no Jira sync at any price.

For a team that already works in Slack and wants the estimate in Jira, Troopr's free plan covers it without a meeting or another app to learn.

Where planning poker comes from, and why it works

James Grenning defined and named the method in 2002, and Mike Cohn popularized it in his book Agile Estimating and Planning, according to Wikipedia's article on the technique. It is a variation of the Wideband Delphi method. Teams use it most often with story points, but it works just as well with ideal days or T-shirt sizes.

Why it works. The first number said out loud becomes an anchor, and estimates drift toward it, a point Mountain Goat Software's guide makes too. Voting in private and revealing together takes the anchor away, and it takes seniority out of the number: the newest engineer's 13 lands with the same weight as the tech lead's 3. The card values matter less than the gap between them, because the gap is where the hidden work, the risk or the shortcut comes out.

Who plays. Everyone who will build or test the item votes. The Product Owner explains it and answers questions without voting, and the Scrum Master runs the session. Play it in backlog refinement, a sprint or two ahead, rather than in sprint planning itself: the Product Owner needs the sizes earlier, to decide what goes first.

How to play planning poker, step by step

1. Read the item. The Product Owner, or whoever wrote the story, gives a short overview of one backlog item.
2. Ask questions. The team pins down scope, assumptions and the acceptance criteria. Nobody says a number yet.
3. Vote in private. Each estimator picks one card and keeps it face down, or hidden in the tool.
4. Reveal together. Every card turns over at the same moment.
5. Hear the high and the low. If the numbers differ, the person with the highest card and the person with the lowest explain why. These are usually the most useful minutes of the session.
6. Vote again, or record it. Repeat until the team can stand behind one number, write it on the item and move on.

Three habits keep the game honest. Don't average. If one card says 3 and another says 13, writing down 8 hides the one thing you just learned: two people expect different work. Timebox each item. One to three rounds is usually enough, according to Mountain Goat Software. If the cards still split after that, send the item back to refinement: split it, or run a spike to answer the unknown. Only the people doing the work vote. Whoever runs the session and won't touch the item keeps their cards down.

Say a team reveals 2, 3, 3 and 8 for "add CSV export to the billing report". The 8 remembers that the report still runs on the old reporting service and its row limit; the 2s assumed the new one. That is the fact the team needed, and the next round settles on 5.

Planning poker cards: which deck to use

Many decks, physical and online, use a modified Fibonacci sequence: 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40 and 100, plus a few special cards. The gaps grow with the numbers on purpose. The bigger an item, the less precisely anyone can size it, so the deck doesn't let you pretend a 21 is different from a 20. An item that feels a bit less than twice a 5 is an 8, and a bit more is a 13; the team has to say which.

• ? says "I can't size this yet." The item needs more refinement, not a number.
• ∞, or the 100 card, means "too big to estimate as written." Split the item or run a spike first.
• The coffee cup asks for a break, which a long session needs more than another round.

Other decks work as long as the whole team uses the same one: T-shirt sizes (XS to XL) for early, rough sizing, powers of two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16), or your own values. Most of the tools below let you switch decks per session, and Troopr lets you define your own.

How to run planning poker online, live or async

Remote planning poker keeps the rules of the room: votes stay private until one reveal, and the highest and lowest cards explain first. What changes is the conversation about the gap, because nobody can turn to the person who played the 13 and ask why. So make every vote carry a one-line reason, discuss only the items where the numbers split, and re-run just those items.

Distributed teams have a second decision: live or async. A live session on a video call suits a team in one or two time zones and a short list of items. An async session suits everyone else. The items open for voting with a deadline, each person votes when they reach a stopping point, the votes stay hidden until the window closes, and the team only discusses the items where the numbers split. A meeting turns into a few minutes per person and a short thread on the items that need one.

In Troopr, people add a comment to their card, the cards stay hidden until the round closes, and the report shows every vote with its comment. You can re-run the round on the same issue as often as it takes before you confirm the number Troopr writes to Jira.

Two more things decide whether an estimate is still worth anything a week later. It has to land on the Jira issue, not in a chat thread or a spreadsheet nobody opens again. And if the team already runs its standups and retros in Slack, running estimation there too saves everyone from learning one more app for one ceremony a sprint.

Why run planning poker in Slack

Estimation is the scrum ceremony most likely to live in a separate app, and the one most likely to lose its result: the number gets agreed in a browser tab, then somebody has to type it into Jira. Running it in Slack with Troopr closes both gaps.

• Vote on your own time. Schedule a session every sprint. People vote in Slack before the window closes, at their own local time, and Troopr reminds anyone who hasn't voted.
• No anchoring. Cards stay hidden until the round closes, voting can be anonymous, and people can add a comment to their card, so the reasoning behind an outlier is in the report.
• The estimate lands on the issue. Troopr shows the votes and the aggregate, you confirm the number, and it's written to the story points or estimate field in Jira, along with any other field you want to change. Jira Cloud, Server and Data Center all work.
• Re-run until it's agreed. Run the round again as often as it takes, and keep every session on record in web reports you can search and export to PDF.
• One app for every ceremony. Planning poker is one of five check-in types in Troopr, next to the automated standup, task check-in, retrospective and team mood, and the same Troopr writes each person's standup from their own Jira, GitHub and Slack activity.

For one ticket that needs a number now, instant planning poker starts a round on a single issue from the command line.

How to set up planning poker in Slack with Troopr

Connect Jira to Troopr first, then:

1. Create the check-in. In Troopr's App Home in Slack, choose New team Check-in, then Planning Poker. Name the session, pick the people who estimate, and set a schedule or leave it manual.
2. Pick the issues. Search Jira by issue key or summary, or select the issues with a JQL query, up to 30 per session.
3. Choose the deck. Fibonacci, modified Fibonacci, T-shirt sizes, or your own values.
4. Set the reporting. Send the report after a wait time or once everyone has answered, to the channels or people you choose.

To start a session right away, type /t checkin in any channel, open My Check-ins and choose Run Now. Each participant gets a private message with an Answer button and votes on every issue. The report lands where you sent it, with an edit form that writes the estimate to Jira without leaving Slack. The full walkthrough is in the planning poker guide in Troopr's docs.

Troopr is free for 10 seats, with every feature included. Start for Free

Planning poker FAQ

What is the planning poker technique?

A consensus-based estimation technique for agile teams. Each estimator picks a card in private, all the cards are revealed at once, the highest and lowest voters explain their reasoning, and the team votes again until it can support one estimate. Hiding the votes until the reveal stops the first number said out loud from anchoring everyone else.

How do you play planning poker?

Read one backlog item, answer the team's questions, have everyone choose a card privately, reveal the cards together, let the high and low voters explain, then vote again or record the estimate. One to three rounds per item is normal; more usually means the item needs refining or splitting.

What is planning poker in Scrum?

In Scrum, planning poker is a way for the Developers to size product backlog items, usually in story points, during backlog refinement or sprint planning. The Product Owner explains each item and answers questions without voting, and the Scrum Master facilitates.

Is there a free app for planning poker?

Yes, several. Scrum Poker Online and TeamRetro's free room need no account at all; Kollabe, Planning Poker Online, Parabol and PlanningPoker.com have free plans with limits; and Troopr runs planning poker in Slack for free for up to 10 seats, with the estimate you confirm written back to Jira.

Why does planning poker use Fibonacci numbers?

Because uncertainty grows with size. The widening gaps (5, 8, 13, 20) stop a team from arguing over precision it doesn't have: an item a bit less than twice a 5 is an 8, and a bit more is a 13.

Is there a planning poker tool for Jira?

Yes, as apps. Atlassian's own guide to scrum poker points Jira teams to apps on the Atlassian Marketplace, such as Agile Poker for Jira, Planning Poker, Foxly and Scrumpy Poker. Troopr takes a different route: the team votes in Slack, and once you confirm the number, Troopr writes the agreed estimate to the Jira issue on Jira Cloud, Server or Data Center.

Can you play planning poker asynchronously?

Yes. Open the items for a set window, let each person vote when they're free, keep the votes hidden until the window closes, and discuss only the items where the numbers split. Troopr runs planning poker this way in Slack, with reminders, and writes the estimate you confirm back to Jira.