Spreo vs Lucidspark: Which Is Better for Agile Teams?
Lucidspark is Lucid Software’s online whiteboard for brainstorming and collaborative ideation, part of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite alongside Lucidchart. Spreo is a collaborative whiteboard built specifically for agile ceremonies: retrospectives, sprint planning, estimation, and team health checks.
If your team already uses Lucidchart and wants a brainstorming canvas that feeds into diagrams, Lucidspark makes sense. If your team needs a tool built for running agile meetings, with templates, facilitation, action tracking, and proper two-way Jira integration, that’s Spreo.
What is Spreo?
Spreo is an online whiteboard for agile teams — a visual canvas purpose-built for retrospectives, sprint planning, backlog estimation, team health checks, and workshops.
It’s been used by over 125,000 agile teams since 2019. The people who adopt it are typically Scrum Masters, Engineering Managers, and Agile Coaches who run these meetings every sprint and want a tool that makes facilitation easier.
What is Lucidspark?
Lucidspark is Lucid Software’s collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming and ideation — the freeform canvas component of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite, designed to work alongside Lucidchart’s structured diagramming.
It’s designed for cross-functional teams generating and organising ideas before turning them into diagrams, architecture docs, and workflows. The core value proposition is the Lucid ecosystem: ideas from Lucidspark can flow directly into Lucidchart without switching tools. Agile meetings are one use case in Lucidspark’s platform.
Spreo vs Lucidspark: See the Difference
| Spreo | Lucidspark | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Freeform whiteboard canvas | Freeform whiteboard canvas |
| Built for | Agile team ceremonies | Brainstorming, ideation, workshops |
| Key use case | Run every agile meeting in one tool | Generate and organise ideas |
| Team type | Scrum Masters, Engineering Managers, and teams who run collaborative meetings | Cross-functional teams brainstorming, often alongside Lucidchart |
| Starting price | Free Lite board. Team plan from $13/month for one Editor, with visitors free | $10/user/month (Team, billed annually) |
| Free trial | Yes 15 days, no card | Yes 7 days |
| Free plan | Yes Lite: one board for you and two others | Yes |
| Agile templates | Yes | Yes |
| Private writing | Yes Included in Team | Partial Enterprise only |
| Topic grouping | Yes | Yes |
| Team voting | Yes Included in Team | Partial Team plan and above |
| Timer | Yes Included in Team | Partial Team plan and above |
| Meeting facilitation | Yes | Yes |
| Readiness checks | Yes | No |
| Action creation | Yes | No |
| Action reminders | Yes | No |
| Planning poker | Yes | No |
| Send actions to Jira | Yes | Partial Enterprise only |
| Full two-way Jira integration | Yes Included in Team | Partial Enterprise only |
| Sprint planning | Yes | No |
| AI features | Yes | Yes |
| Works with AI assistants (MCP) | Yes | Yes |
| Engagement features | Yes | No |
| Lucidchart integration | No | Yes |
| SSO | Yes | Yes |
| Guest participants | Yes | Yes |
The Short Version
Lucidspark is a brainstorming tool. It says so itself: “where ideas take shape.” It’s designed to complement Lucidchart’s structured diagramming, giving teams a freeform canvas where they can generate and organise ideas before turning them into proper diagrams, architecture docs, or workflows. For teams already in the Lucid ecosystem, the integration between Lucidspark and Lucidchart is useful.
But brainstorming and agile ceremonies are different jobs.
When a Scrum Master opens Lucidspark to run a retro, they get a general-purpose whiteboard. Sticky notes are free. Voting sessions and the timer require the Team plan ($10/user/month, billed annually). Private writing, the feature that lets people add sticky notes without seeing each other’s first, requires the Enterprise plan (custom pricing). What they don’t get on any plan is host controls, readiness checks, or action tracking. They’re building the facilitation themselves: deciding when to reveal, how to vote, how to track outcomes. The canvas is designed for generating ideas, not running structured meetings.
Spreo was built to solve that specific problem. Lucidspark is a decent whiteboard for brainstorming. Spreo is a meeting tool for agile teams. Different jobs.
In-Depth Feature Comparison
Meeting Facilitation
Both tools take facilitation seriously, but they approach it differently.
Lucidspark gives you facilitation components. Frames mark sections of the board, Paths let the facilitator move collaborators through those Frames in a set sequence, Broadcast brings everyone to a specific area, Presentation Mode runs the board as slides, Breakout boards split larger groups into smaller ones, and private mode hides each person’s new sticky notes from other collaborators until the host turns it off. These are real tools, and a skilled facilitator can build a structured retro on top of them. The catch is which plan they’re on. Voting and the timer require Team. Private mode requires Enterprise.
Spreo gives you templates already laid out for agile meetings. Activity Frames work like Lucidspark’s Frames + Paths (board sections the host hides, reveals, and brings everyone to), and they come ready-made inside the templates. Pick a Mad/Sad/Glad and the layout is already there. Start a meeting and the toolbar switches to collaboration tools, with private writing on and voting a click away. Group stickies, capture actions and track them in Spreo. The facilitator runs the meeting; they just don’t have to build the board each time.
”Spreo has the best tools for the facilitator, it’s better than Miro, for instance. When you invite customers to your Spreo board, you don’t have to explain how to use Spreo, it is much simpler.”
— Aline Sillet, Agile Coach, XITASO
”Spreo takes the tool out of the equation and you can actually focus on having a retro. Previously I felt like half the time we were talking about the actual tool.”
— Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
The Differences That Remain
The differences that remain are real:
- Readiness checks in Spreo let the facilitator see who’s finished writing before moving on. Lucidspark doesn’t have an equivalent.
- Individual Reveal lets participants or the host reveal sticky notes one at a time, which is useful for focused discussions. Lucidspark’s private mode reveals everything at once when the host turns it off.
- Change Tools lets the host restrict the participant toolbar so contributors see only what they need for the current phase. Lucidspark doesn’t gate the toolbar by phase.
- Hide Identities is a permanent anonymity toggle, included in Spreo’s Team plan. Lucidspark’s “Keep authors hidden” sits inside private mode, which is Enterprise-only. Running an anonymous retro on Lucidspark means signing an Enterprise contract.
- Action tracking built in: any sticky becomes an assigned action with a due date and email reminders. Lucidspark doesn’t have native action tracking.
Bottom line: Lucidspark has the building blocks for a structured session and a facilitator who knows what they’re doing can run a good retro on it. Spreo has those blocks ready or quicker to set up, with readiness checks, individual reveal, toolbar control, and built-in action tracking on top.
Templates
Lucidspark has a library of templates including retro formats, brainstorming exercises, sprint planning, and story mapping. They’re functional whiteboard templates that set up the canvas layout.
Spreo has 150+ templates, all designed specifically for agile ceremonies. Every template is ready to use with Activity Frames, voting rounds, and facilitator controls built in. You open it and go — no configuration, no wondering which variant to pick.
The tradeoff is clear. Lucidspark templates set up a canvas for brainstorming. Spreo templates are built around the rhythm of an agile ceremony: write, reveal, group, vote, capture actions. If you want to open a template and run a retro without setup, Spreo’s are what that looks like.
”As with all busy teams, we don’t have a lot of spare time. I know that if I haven’t had time to prepare a retro, there will be a ready-made exercise in Spreo that I can use with the team.”
— Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
Action Tracking
Spreo has built-in action tracking. Any sticky note can become an action item with an assignee, due date, and automated email reminders. Actions can be pulled into the next meeting board, so the team reviews what they committed to last time before starting a new retro. There’s a dedicated dashboard for action management across boards.
Lucidspark doesn’t have native action tracking. You can write actions on sticky notes, but there’s no assignee, no due date, no reminder, and no carry-forward. Your retro outcomes stay on the board as text.
If your meetings regularly produce action items that nobody follows up on, this is the feature that changes that.
Jira Integration
Both tools have two-way Jira sync, on very different plans. Lucid Cards for Jira sync in real time, but Lucid’s Jira integration is on its Enterprise plan; Lucidspark Team gets a Jira Cloud embed. Spreo’s Jira integration supports two-way creation and real-time editing of Jira issues, and it’s included in the Team plan.
The basic functionality overlaps. The difference is that in Spreo, estimation and planning happen in the same session as the discussion, and you don’t need an enterprise contract to do it.
AI
Lucidspark has more AI features than Spreo. Their “Collaborative AI” includes idea generation from prompts, expanding on existing sticky notes, sorting ideas into themed groups, summarising content with next steps, and AI-powered mind maps. It’s available on all plans, including free.
Spreo has AI-assisted sticky grouping — it automatically sorts your sticky notes into themed groups. It’s useful during retros, but it’s not an AI platform.
Beyond built-in AI, both tools have an MCP server for connecting your own AI assistant, such as Claude or ChatGPT. Lucid’s covers Lucidchart and Lucidspark: it searches and summarises documents and generates diagrams. Spreo’s MCP server builds whole boards from a prompt — retros, workshops, mind maps, flowcharts, org charts, and timeline roadmaps — and can edit, read, and summarise the boards you already have. It’s included on every plan.
Lucidspark’s AI is designed for brainstorming: generating and organising ideas. None of it is agile-specific. There’s no retro sentiment analysis, no action tracking intelligence, no team health insights. If AI-powered brainstorming matters to you, Lucidspark has more of it. For agile ceremonies specifically, AI sticky grouping covers the most useful case, and more AI features are on Spreo’s roadmap.
Engagement Features
Spreo has gadgets designed to make remote meetings feel less like a chore: Jukebox, Spinner, Buzzer, Counter, placeable Timer, Object Trays, Voter Panels, confetti, virtual hats, and icebreakers. They’re a deliberate answer to the flatness of generic whiteboards, and often what gets quieter team members to engage.
Lucidspark has emoji reactions and some visual activities. They’re fine for brainstorming sessions, but there’s less ceremony-specific engagement tooling.
”Our engineering team has used Spreo for years. We love it! They’ve thought through all the small things that make a retro fun, as opposed to using a generic whiteboarding application. For us, it’s the small things. Hats, confetti, slaps. It makes retros super fun and engaging.”
— Anthony, CTO, Zable Health
Pricing
For agile teams, Spreo is the more cost-effective choice, and you stay in control of what you spend. You pay for the people who run sessions, add team members only when they need to sign in, and everyone else joins for free. Every feature is on one plan, so private writing and Jira sync don’t wait for an enterprise contract.
Spreo’s Team plan is priced by role. Editors, who create boards and run sessions, are $13 a month. Collaborators, who sign in and take part every week, are $3. Visitors join open boards for free, with no sign-in. Private writing, voting, timers, Jira sync, and single sign-on are all included. Lucidspark charges per user: $10 a month on Team, with private mode and the Jira integration on Enterprise. Prices are billed annually.
For a team of 10: Spreo is $40 a month with one Editor and nine Collaborators. Lucidspark Team is $100 a month, still without private mode or Jira sync.
A single Spreo Editor licence costs more than one Lucidspark Team seat, $13 against $10. But most of your team doesn’t need one. They can join your open boards as visitors for free, or be licensed as Collaborators at $3 once they need to sign in, see the team’s boards and past retros without an invite, get assigned actions with reminders, and use the Jira integration.
A note on Lucidspark’s free tier: Lucidspark has a free plan and an Individual plan at $9/month, billed annually. But the free tier is more restrictive than it looks for structured meetings. There’s basic dot voting, but voting sessions, the timer, laser pointer, and Collaborator Colors are gated to the Team plan. Private mode — anonymous writing — is Enterprise-only. So if you’re trying Lucidspark free for retros, you can’t run a timed vote and can’t write privately.
Spreo’s free options: Spreo Lite is free with no sign-up: one board, kept in your browser, that you can work on live with two other people. The 15-day trial of the Team plan has everything switched on, with no card. Nothing is deleted when the trial ends; boards go to read-only.
The bundling factor: If your company already pays for Lucid Suite (Lucidchart + Lucidspark), Lucidspark may be included at no extra cost. That’s the most common reason teams use it for agile ceremonies — not because it’s the best tool for the job, but because it’s already there. The question is whether “already there” is good enough, or whether a purpose-built tool would make those meetings noticeably better.
The Lucid Suite Advantage
If your organisation uses Lucidchart for architecture diagrams, process flows, or technical documentation, Lucidspark integrates directly. Ideas from the whiteboard can flow into structured Lucidchart diagrams without switching tools. That’s a genuine advantage for teams whose primary workflow is ideation-to-diagram.
Spreo doesn’t integrate with Lucidchart or any diagramming tool. It has its own basic diagramming (shapes and connectors), plus deep two-way Jira integration. If your team’s workflow runs from ideas into Lucidchart, Lucidspark’s suite integration is stronger for that specific path.
Spreo’s integration runs the other way: from ceremony to action. Retro insights become tracked action items. Planning sessions sync to Jira. The workflow is built around agile ceremonies, not diagrams. Most teams who use both Spreo and a diagramming tool use them independently — Spreo for meetings, the diagram tool for documentation.
Who Is Each Tool Best For?
Who Spreo is best for
- Scrum Masters who run retros regularly and want facilitation tools that give the host control over each phase — not just a blank canvas
- Teams that value simplicity — you want to open a template and go, not spend 10 minutes configuring a board
- Agile teams that need action tracking — retro actions with assignees, due dates, reminders, and carry-forward
- Teams doing sprint planning with Jira — collaborative estimation on a whiteboard that syncs back automatically, with native planning poker
- Budget-conscious teams — a team of 10 with everyone signed in costs less than half what it would on Lucidspark Team, or license only the facilitator and let the team join for free
- Freelance facilitators and coaches — run open sessions on one Editor licence, or use the Consultant plan to keep client boards secure with clients joining free
- Teams that want meetings people enjoy — icebreakers, confetti, virtual hats, and engagement features that make remote sessions feel less like a chore
Who Lucidspark is best for
- Teams already using Lucid Suite — if you have Lucidchart and Lucidspark is bundled, it’s effectively free and integrates with your diagramming workflow
- Brainstorming and ideation-focused teams who need a freeform canvas for generating and organising ideas
- Architecture and design teams who want ideas to flow directly into Lucidchart diagrams
- Teams that want AI-powered ideation — Lucidspark’s AI features are broader than Spreo’s for brainstorming use cases
- Organisations that need breakout boards for splitting large groups into smaller sessions
- Solo users who want the Individual plan at $9/month
What Customers Say
Aline Sillet, Agile Coach, XITASO
“Spreo has the best tools for the facilitator, it’s better than Miro, for instance. When you invite customers to your Spreo board, you don’t have to explain how to use Spreo, it is much simpler.”
Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
“Spreo takes the tool out of the equation and you can actually focus on having a retro. Previously I felt like half the time we were talking about the actual tool.”
Baptiste Grand, Agile Coach, XITASO
“Most of the other tools out there were either bland three-column templates or huge whiteboard monsters. Spreo was exactly what we needed.”
Bernhard Unger-Weber, Scrum Master, ryd
“Spreo is an intuitive product, the templates and user experience are ‘loveable’. It pulls you out of a stressful day of working and lets you enter a different mindset. It calms you and allows you to focus. It’s a place our teams like to be.”
Simone Greco, Scrum Master & Requirements Engineer, Eviden
“I’ve been using Spreo for a year and I couldn’t be happier. After trying many other tools, the ease of use along with the ad-hoc features have made Spreo my go-to platform for my team’s retrospectives. As a Scrum Master, providing an intuitive tool really facilitates the input from the most shy team members.”
On choosing the right tool for the job
“I was chatting to some leadership the other day about ‘why have you bothered with Spreo? Why don’t you just use one of our bigger more general tools like Miro?’ And it’s the little things for me. It’s not the big moves or big functionality. It’s almost the little things that make me think you’ve thought about how people want meetings to flow, how people use it.”
— Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
“Our conversations are more productive now — before we would often struggle to pick out the key topics to focus on. Spreo is the only retro tool that helps you focus on having the retro.”
— Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
Switching from Lucidspark
How to switch from Lucidspark to Spreo
If you’re currently running agile ceremonies in Lucidspark and want to try Spreo:
- Start with one ceremony. Most teams start with retrospectives — it’s the fastest way to see the difference in facilitation.
- No data migration needed. You’re not moving boards — you’re starting fresh sessions in a tool built for them.
- Your team picks it up immediately. Double-click to add a sticky note. That’s the learning curve.
”Three out of the 10 people there had literally never seen Spreo before. I didn’t really have to tell them anything about it. They just started using it.”
— Tim Gaye, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Kaluza
”Adoption of Spreo was the same across the company — it was so fast. It took like 30 seconds for people to be autonomous on it. You usually experience friction when switching people to a new product, but we had none of that with Spreo.”
— Alex Imbeaux, Head of Talent Management Products, Lucca
Final Verdict
Lucidspark is a capable brainstorming tool — and if your team lives in the Lucid ecosystem and needs a whiteboard that feeds directly into Lucidchart, it makes sense. Spreo doesn’t try to compete with that workflow.
But if your main need is running agile ceremonies well — retros that surface real issues, sprint planning with Jira sync, estimation sessions that stay on track — Spreo is the better fit. Templates come ready for agile meetings, the host controls are there as soon as a meeting starts, action tracking actually closes the loop, and a team of 10 costs less than half what it would on Lucidspark Team.
If you’re using Lucidspark primarily because it’s bundled with Lucid Suite, that’s worth questioning. “Already there” is a real reason, but not an indication it’s the right tool for structured agile meetings. A 15-day trial costs nothing — run one retro in Spreo and see if the difference matters to your team.
Frequently asked questions
Last updated: October 2026. Pricing and Jira plan re-verified against lucid.app/pricing and help.lucid.co in October 2026. Features verified against lucidspark.com in April 2026; MCP details verified against community.lucid.co and docs.spreo.io in October 2026. Plan-gating (voting, timer, laser pointer, Collaborator Colors — Team; private mode — Enterprise) verified directly via in-app upgrade modals on lucidspark.com.