Parley compared
Parley is a self-hosted planning poker and standup tool. If you are looking for a Thunderdome alternative, a Parabol alternative, or an open source retrospective tool, this page sets out what each one does, as honestly as we can, including where the others are ahead.
The claims about other projects were checked against their own sites and repositories on 2026-09-27, and each one links to its source. Projects move; if something here is out of date, open a pull request. Claims about Parley come from this documentation and the source; everything Parley does not do is in Known limitations.
At a glance
Section titled “At a glance”| Parley | Thunderdome | Parabol | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planning poker | Built in | Built in | Built in (“Sprint Poker”) |
| Standups | Built in, live round-robin with timer | Async check-ins | Check-ins and async “Team Prompt” standups |
| Retrospectives | Plugin, not preinstalled | Built in | Built in, with several templates |
| Story mapping | No | Yes | No |
| Hosted option | No | Yes, thunderdome.dev | Yes, parabol.co |
| Sign-in | Open mode or OpenID Connect | Built-in accounts, LDAP, OIDC, or proxy header auth | Hosted accounts; Microsoft/Azure AD SSO |
| Self-hosting | One Go binary plus Postgres | Docker, PostgreSQL | Node.js, PostgreSQL, Valkey |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 (dual-licensed) |
Parley
Section titled “Parley”- Built in: planning poker, a daily standup, and kudos.
- Retrospective: a plugin running in a Wasm
sandbox. It is not preinstalled: an operator builds the bundle, places it in
PLUGIN_DIR, and enables it for an org. - No story mapping, sprint board or other ceremonies today.
- Sign-in: open mode (a display name only), or OpenID Connect. A facilitator can also mint a guest link that seats one person in one room, for 24 hours and at most 25 redemptions.
- Deployment: one Go binary with the frontend embedded, plus Postgres. No hosted service.
- Google Meet: an add-on the operator deploys
themselves; it needs Parley served over
https. - Organizations are flat: no nested teams or departments.
Thunderdome
Section titled “Thunderdome”Thunderdome is an Apache-2.0 project offering planning poker, sprint retrospectives, story mapping and “async team stand-ups (checkins)” (README). It can be self-hosted with Docker and requires PostgreSQL (installation guide), and it is also offered as a hosted service. It supports built-in accounts, LDAP, OIDC and proxy header sign-in (configuration). Its README states it is “intentionally built without any AI driven features”.
Where Thunderdome is ahead: story mapping, retrospectives without an extra install step, and a hosted option if you do not want to run anything.
Parabol
Section titled “Parabol”Parabol is dual-licensed under the AGPL-3.0 (repository). It covers retrospectives with formats such as Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls and Mad/Sad/Glad plus custom templates; Sprint Poker with Fibonacci, T-shirt or custom scales; agenda-driven check-ins; async standups via “Team Prompt”; team health surveys; and integrations including Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Azure DevOps, Slack and Mattermost (all per its README). It is mainly used as a hosted service at parabol.co; a production self-host runs on Node.js with PostgreSQL and Valkey.
Where Parabol is ahead: more retrospective templates, team health checks, issue-tracker and chat integrations, collaborative pages and a task board, and a hosted service.
Choose…
Section titled “Choose…”- Parley if you want to self-host planning poker and a live standup with as little to run as possible, and keep everything inside your own network.
- Thunderdome if you need story mapping, or want poker, retros and check-ins in one self-hosted app without installing a plugin.
- Parabol if retrospectives are the main event, you want a wide choice of templates and tracker integrations, or you would rather not host anything.