When teams juggle story estimates across chat threads, spreadsheets, and video calls, things get messy fast. Miscommunications creep in, forecasts go off-track, and sprints drag, sometimes 30% slower than planned. If your team’s tired of the chaos and wants to focus on shipping great code, this list is for you. Below are nine top planning poker tools, from free options to enterprise-ready platforms, to help you confidently estimate and plan.

This guide covers the best tools available today, from standalone free planning poker tools for small teams to sophisticated enterprise planning poker solutions with advanced security and AI. We’ll analyze the top planning poker software to find the fit for your workflow.

Quick Comparison Table

Scan this at-a-glance grid to shortlist based on price, integrations, and hosting security.

Pricing and Participant Limits

Notable Integrations (GitHub, Jira, Slack, Teams)

Data Privacy and Hosting Options

Full Reviews: Top Planning Poker Tools

Dive deeper into each platform's features, pros, and ideal use cases.

Zenhub (GitHub-native, AI insights, SOC 2)

Zenhub is the only project management and planning poker tool directly inside GitHub, supercharged with AI insights and enterprise-grade security.

• Standout Features: Zenhub’s planning poker is asynchronous, allowing distributed teams to vote on their own time. Once all votes are in, it automatically calculates the final estimate and syncs it to the GitHub Issue. Zenhub Pulse, its GPT-powered feature, generates sprint summaries and analyzes historical data to flag estimation inconsistencies, helping teams refine their accuracy over time.
• Best-Fit Teams: Engineering teams that live in GitHub and want to eliminate context switching. Zenhub is ideal for organizations that need robust reporting, multi-repository boards, and advanced security features without forcing developers to adopt a separate, clunky tool. Teams at companies like Red Hat and Dapper Labs rely on Zenhub.
• Integrations: As a GitHub-native tool, its integration is unparalleled. It also connects with Slack and Microsoft Teams for notifications and provides a two-way sync with Jira for teams in transition.
• Pricing Notes: A generous free tier is available. The Growth plan ($8.33/user/mo) unlocks unlimited private repositories and advanced reports. The Enterprise plan offers on-premise hosting, dedicated support, and advanced security features like SOC2 Type II compliance (an independent audit standard proving a vendor’s operational security controls).
• Security/Compliance: Zenhub is SOC2 Type II compliant and offers an EU-only data residency option. The Enterprise plan allows on-premise or private cloud deployment, giving organizations complete data control. According to Zenhub, teams complete 40% more epics after switching.

Verdict: Zenhub’s integrated planning poker eliminates estimation meetings for many teams, saving an average of 8 hours per team weekly.

Parabol Sprint Poker (open source, free tier)

Parabol is an open-source agile meeting tool with a well-designed Sprint Poker feature, perfect for teams that value transparency and flexibility.

• Standout Features: Parabol’s MIT-licensed codebase can be self-hosted for ultimate control. The cloud version offers unlimited free boards and users, making it one of the most generous free planning poker tools. It features clever voting mechanics to prevent anchoring bias, asynchronous support, and automatic meeting summaries.
• Best-Fit Teams: These are teams that use a variety of repositories (GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps) and want a single tool for retrospectives, stand-ups, and estimation. It's also a top choice for organizations that prioritize open-source software.
• Integrations: Parabol boasts deep, two-way integrations with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps. It also connects to Slack and Microsoft Teams for seamless notifications.
• Pricing Notes: The free tier is incredibly powerful. The paid Team tier ($8/user/mo) adds advanced reporting, priority support, and enhanced security features.
• Security/Compliance: Parabol is SOC2 Type II compliant and GDPR-ready. The ability to self-host the open-source version provides a secure option for highly regulated industries.

Verdict: Parabol streamlines all agile ceremonies into one platform, reducing tool sprawl and improving meeting consistency across the organization.

Planning Poker by Mountain Goat Software (original method, paid)

This tool, created by Mike Cohn, a key contributor to the Scrum methodology, offers a purist, no-frills planning poker experience.

• Standout Features: This tool focuses on doing one thing exceptionally well. It provides a simple, structured interface with standard, Fibonacci, and T-shirt size decks. A standout feature is its "classroom mode" analytics, which show voting distributions and discussion timers, making it great for training and coaching agile principles.
• Best-Fit Teams: Agile purists, Scrum Masters, and coaches who want a tool that strictly adheres to the original planning poker methodology. It’s ideal for co-located or remote teams that conduct live, synchronous estimation sessions.
• Integrations: It is a standalone tool that does not offer direct integrations with platforms like Jira or GitHub. Stories must be manually entered or copied and pasted.
• Pricing Notes: There is no free plan. Pricing is team-based, starting at $25/month for a single team, which can be cost-effective for larger groups compared to per-user models.
• Security/Compliance: The platform is GDPR-compliant and focuses on providing a simple, secure web experience for its specific purpose.

Verdict: By focusing exclusively on the core estimation ceremony, this tool helps teams conduct highly focused and efficient live planning poker sessions.

Miro estimation app (whiteboard plus voting)

Miro is a versatile digital whiteboard that offers a planning poker app. It transforms estimation into a highly visual and collaborative activity.

• Standout Features: The Estimation app lets teams directly import issues as cards from Jira or Asana onto a Miro board. Team members can then vote on these cards in a dedicated panel. This visual context is powerful, as teams can cluster stories, draw connections, and add notes right next to the items they are estimating.
• Best-Fit Teams: Design-led engineering teams, product teams, and any group using Miro for brainstorming, roadmapping, or user story mapping. It excels at bringing cross-functional teams together in a shared visual space.
• Integrations: Miro's strength lies in its vast integration ecosystem, including Jira, Asana, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. This makes it a central hub for collaborative work.
• Pricing Notes: The estimation app is free to use within Miro, but a paid Miro plan (starting at $10/user/mo) is needed to unlock unlimited boards and advanced features like private board sharing and Jira two-way sync.
• Security/Compliance: Miro is SOC2 Type II and ISO27001 certified, and GDPR-compliant. Enterprise plans offer data residency options and advanced security controls.

Verdict: Miro turns estimation from a purely numerical exercise into a dynamic visual workshop, improving shared understanding and team alignment by over 50% for visual thinkers.

Planning Poker Hero (GDPR-compliant, unlimited free)

Planning Poker Hero is a straightforward, privacy-focused tool that promises to be "always free" for unlimited users and sessions.

• Standout Features: This tool's main differentiator is its commitment to privacy and simplicity. It offers unlimited free usage without ads. It supports custom decks, a built-in timer, and CSV import/export for easy integration with any backlog tool. It also supports Single Sign-On (SSO) for enhanced security, a rare feature in free tools.
• Best-Fit Teams: EU-based companies or any team with strict GDPR requirements. It’s also perfect for teams on a budget who need a simple, reliable tool without the complexity of a complete project management suite.
• Integrations: While it doesn't offer direct API integrations, its CSV import/export functionality makes it compatible with Jira, Trello, and other tools.
• Pricing Notes: The tool is entirely free and supported by donations.
• Security/Compliance: It is fully GDPR-compliant with data hosted exclusively in Germany. This EU-only hosting is a significant draw for European businesses.

Verdict: Planning Poker Hero provides a zero-cost, GDPR-compliant solution that lets teams estimate securely without feature limitations or user caps.

DevPoker for Microsoft Teams (enterprise chat integration)

DevPoker is an app built to live entirely inside Microsoft Teams, leveraging its chat interface and enterprise security for seamless estimation.

• Standout Features: Installation is a one-click process from the Teams app store. Estimation sessions are initiated directly within a Teams channel. It uses real-time emoji voting for a fun, engaging experience. All data is secured by Azure Active Directory, inheriting the organization's security policies.
• Best-Fit Teams: Enterprise organizations that have standardized on Microsoft Teams for all internal communication. It's perfect for development teams who want to run quick estimation polls without leaving their primary chat client.
• Integrations: Its primary integration is its native existence within Microsoft Teams. It can also link to Jira or Azure DevOps issues, but the experience concerns the chat workflow.
• Pricing Notes: A free tier is available for small teams. Enterprise plans are custom-quoted and come with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and priority support.
• Security/Compliance: Leverages the robust security and compliance of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, including SOC2 and ISO27001 certifications inherited from Azure.

Verdict: DevPoker embeds the estimation process directly into chat, reducing friction and making it effortless for teams to conduct quick, real-time estimations within their existing communication flow.

PlanITpoker (browser-based, small-team free)

PlanITpoker is a long-standing, simple, and reliable browser-based tool that is excellent for small teams or those new to agile estimation.

• Standout Features: Participants do not need an account; they can join a session with a simple guest link. The interface is clean and intuitive, with drag-and-drop story management. It supports Fibonacci, T-shirt sizes, and custom card decks.
• Best-Fit Teams: Small teams, startups, or educational settings where simplicity and ease of access are paramount. It’s an excellent starting point for teams adopting planning poker for the first time.
• Integrations: The premium version offers a basic integration with Jira for importing stories.
• Pricing Notes: The free tier supports up to seven participants per room. The premium plan is affordable at $2.50/user/mo (or a flat $25/mo for 20 users), removes the participant cap, adds Jira integration, and saves game history. Payments are processed via PayPal.
• Security/Compliance: It’s a straightforward tool with basic security measures. It may not be suitable for enterprises with strict compliance requirements.

Verdict: PlanITpoker lowers the barrier to entry for agile estimation, allowing new teams to start their first planning poker session in under a minute.

Kollabe Scrum Poker (analytics, scaling tiers)

Kollabe is a modern planning poker tool with a strong emphasis on analytics and team performance metrics.

• Standout Features: Kollabe uses AI-style analytics to detect voting patterns, identify consistent outliers (e.g., a junior dev who always estimates high), and track estimation accuracy over time. It offers role-based permissions, CSV export, and multiple customizable decks.
• Best-Fit Teams: Data-driven teams and Scrum Masters who want to go beyond simple estimation and actively improve their forecasting. It's suited for organizations looking to scale their agile practices with data-backed insights.
• Integrations: Connects with Jira, GitHub, and Slack to pull in stories and send notifications.
• Pricing Notes: A free plan is available for up to 5 users. Paid tiers are designed to scale, starting at $4/user/mo and growing with the number of seats, making it predictable for growing companies.
• Security/Compliance: Kollabe is GDPR-compliant and uses industry-standard security practices to protect user data.

Verdict: By providing deep analytical insights into voting behavior, Kollabe helps teams refine their estimation process and improve sprint predictability by up to 25%.

Self-host Planning Poker (open-source option for total control)

For teams with maximum security needs or a desire for total customization, self-hosting an open-source planning poker application is the ultimate solution.

• Standout Features: This approach, typically using a Docker container of a project like scrum-poker, gives an organization complete control over data, features, and security. Teams can customize card decks, integrate with internal authentication systems like LDAP or SSO, and modify the codebase to fit unique workflows.
• Best-Fit Teams: Highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, or government. It’s also perfect for engineering teams with the technical resources and desire to maintain their infrastructure and build a bespoke tool.
• Integrations: Integrations are entirely up to the team to build. Many open-source projects include webhooks or APIs to connect with Jira, GitHub, and other systems.
• Pricing Notes: The software is free, but there are recurring infrastructure costs for hosting and maintenance (e.g., server costs on AWS, Azure, or a private data center).
• Security/Compliance: When self-hosted, the tool resides entirely within the organization's security perimeter, making it compliant with virtually any internal data policy.

Verdict: Self-hosting offers unparalleled security and customization, ensuring 100% data control for organizations where privacy is non-negotiable.

How to Choose the Right Planning Poker Software

Match tool capabilities to workflow, compliance, and budget to avoid costly re-migration. Choosing the right tool isn't just about features; it's about finding a platform that seamlessly extends your team's existing processes.

1. Align with Your Dev Workflow and Repositories

Your planning poker software should feel like a natural extension of your development environment, not another dashboard to manage. Confirm your team's primary code repository—GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps—and prioritize a tool with direct, two-way integration. This eliminates the tedious and error-prone task of manually syncing issues and estimates.

Also, consider the developer experience. Do your engineers prefer to estimate within their code editor or repository interface, or are they comfortable switching to a separate application? A tool like Zenhub, which operates natively inside the GitHub UI, offers a frictionless experience that minimizes context switching and keeps developers in their flow state.

2. Evaluate Security, Compliance, and Hosting Needs

For many organizations, security isn't just a feature; it's a prerequisite. List your mandatory compliance certifications, such as GDPR, SOC2, or ISO27001. Check if the vendor can support specific data residency requirements (e.g., hosting data exclusively in the EU).

For regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, or any organization with a strict data governance policy, deployment on-premise or Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is often non-negotiable. This gives you a hard security boundary and complete control over your data. An enterprise planning poker solution like Zenhub Enterprise or a self-hosted open-source option is the most viable for these scenarios.

3. Balance Cost Against Scaling Roadmap

While a free planning poker tool is tempting, evaluate its long-term viability. Calculate the total cost of ownership by multiplying the per-user price by your projected headcount over the next 12–24 months. Be wary of hidden costs, such as extra fees for SSO integration, advanced analytics modules, or premium support, which can significantly inflate the final price.

An innovative approach is to start with a tool that offers a robust free tier and can scale with your team. Platforms like Parabol or Zenhub allow you to begin for free and seamlessly upgrade to paid tiers that unlock more advanced features as your team grows and your process matures. This strategy prevents you from being locked into a tool you'll outgrow in six months.

Pro Tips for Accurate, Inclusive Estimation

Boost engagement and prediction accuracy with these proven tactics.

Combine Synchronous and Asynchronous Voting

Not all stories are created equal. Schedule a live, synchronous estimation session for high-risk, complex, or ambiguous user stories to foster rich discussion and clarify assumptions. For the rest of the backlog, enable asynchronous voting. This is especially effective for globally distributed teams, as it allows members in different time zones to contribute without attending inconveniently timed meetings. Research shows that offering an asynchronous option can increase participation in estimation activities by up to 25%.

Use AI Insights to Spot Over- or Under-Estimation Trends

Modern estimation tools can do more than just collect votes. Leverage platforms with built-in analytics, like Zenhub Pulse or Kollabe, to surface historical trends. These tools can use AI to identify patterns, such as a team consistently underestimating integration tasks or a specific developer who tends to be overly optimistic. Act on these data-driven alerts to have coaching conversations and recalibrate your story point baselines for more predictable sprints.

Close the Loop with Sprint Retro Data

Estimation is a predictive exercise, and learning from the past is the only way to improve. During your sprint retrospectives, make it a standard practice to compare the planned effort (story points) with the actual effort or outcome. Did that "3-point" story take the entire sprint? Was a task estimated as an "8" completed in a single day? Feed these learnings directly back into your estimation process. This feedback loop helps the team refine its shared understanding of what a story point represents, leading to more accurate forecasts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which planning poker tool integrates natively with GitHub?

Zenhub provides the only fully GitHub-native planning poker experience, letting teams estimate issues, create sprints, and view reports without leaving the repository interface. This deep integration minimizes context switching and ensures all project data is synced in real-time.

Do any platforms offer AI-powered estimation analytics?

Yes, several platforms are incorporating AI to improve estimation accuracy. Zenhub’s GPT-based Pulse reports analyze historical data to flag inconsistencies and generate sprint summaries, while Kollabe’s voting analytics surface individual and team estimation patterns to help refine future estimates.

How many participants can join a session before performance drops?

Most modern cloud-based planning poker tools, like Zenhub and Parabol, can smoothly handle 50–100 active participants in a single session. For self-hosted solutions, performance depends heavily on the underlying server infrastructure; significant server tuning may be required for sessions with over 30 active participants.

What are my options for on-premise or private-cloud hosting?

Several excellent options exist for teams needing full data control. Zenhub Enterprise, Self-host Planning Poker (using a Docker image), and the open-source edition of Parabol all support on-premise or Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) deployments.

Are there GDPR-compliant tools for EU-based teams?

Absolutely. Planning Poker Hero is explicitly built for GDPR compliance with EU-only hosting. Zenhub also offers a dedicated EU data residency option for its cloud plans, ensuring all customer data is processed and stored exclusively within the European Union to meet GDPR requirements.

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