What both tools have in common
First, a disclosure: SprintBee is our product, and this page lives on sprintbee.net. We have tried to keep the comparison genuinely fair. Everything we say about PlanningPoker.com comes from its public website, pricing page, and help docs as read in July 2026, and where we could not verify a claim, we left it out.
The two tools agree on the fundamentals. Both run planning poker in the browser with nothing to install. Both keep votes hidden until a simultaneous reveal, so nobody anchors on the first number said out loud. Both let participants join through a shared link without creating an account — on PlanningPoker.com, players never pay or sign up on any plan, and SprintBee rooms work the same way. Both support custom estimation decks, Jira integration, and CSV export of results, though the tiers those land on differ: on PlanningPoker.com all three are paid features, while SprintBee includes custom decks and CSV export on its free plan.
With the basics solid on both sides, the decision comes down to three things: how your team estimates (live meetings versus async), how each pricing model maps to your situation, and which integrations you need.
New to the technique? Start with our planning poker guideWhere PlanningPoker.com is the better fit
PlanningPoker.com has real pedigree. It was originally created by Mountain Goat Software — Mike Cohn's company — and has been rebuilt and operated since 2014 by the agency 352 Inc., with the Planning Poker trademark behind it. If your procurement team asks who makes this and how long it has existed, PlanningPoker.com has one of the best answers in the category. SprintBee, launched in 2026, cannot match that track record.
Its pricing model is genuinely clever for large audiences. Plans are priced per game organizer, not per player: one facilitator pays, and up to 50 participants on the Pro plan join free without accounts. If you run big refinement sessions, estimation workshops, or training classes with one host and a large rotating audience, that model is hard to beat on cost.
It also offers enterprise procurement affordances that are unusual for this category — purchase orders, annual invoicing, bulk discounts, and reseller purchasing — plus very broad browser support and a simple pricing structure where every paid plan has identical features.
Choose PlanningPoker.com if you want the established, trademarked tool with the longest history, you run large live sessions with a single facilitator, your organization buys software through POs and resellers, or you need CSV/XML story import for tools like TFS, Rally, or VersionOne.
See how both tools stack up in our full roundupWhere SprintBee is the better fit
The free plans are also very different. SprintBee's free plan includes one active room with unlimited teammates, async estimation, custom decks, voting settings, current-session insights, and CSV export — no ads, no credit card. PlanningPoker.com's free Basic plan caps games at 5 players, is ad-supported, and puts Jira, custom scales, story details, CSV import/export, and velocity tracking behind the paywall.
One workflow difference stands out: SprintBee can also run estimation asynchronously. Instead of requiring everyone in a live session, you can queue items into a voting window: teammates vote privately on their own schedule over a day or two, items whose votes agree settle automatically, and the team meets only to discuss the items that split. PlanningPoker.com is built entirely around real-time sessions, with no async mode documented anywhere on its site — though if your team is happy estimating live, both tools cover that well.
SprintBee's paid plans add Jira and Linear integrations, Slack and Microsoft Teams voting-window notifications, room security controls, historical insights and team trends, and reopenable session history. A few features have no equivalent on PlanningPoker.com's public feature list: in-room story splitting with write-back, end-of-session scorecards, and a Browser Companion Chrome extension that pairs a Jira browser tab with a room without needing Jira API access — and works on the free tier.
To be fair about our own limits: SprintBee is a newer product, has no native mobile apps (responsive web only), and integrates with Jira and Linear but not Azure DevOps, GitHub, or Trello. Choose SprintBee if you want a usable free tier for a whole team, prefer flat per-organization pricing over per-organizer seats, use Linear, or want the option to estimate asynchronously.
How async planning poker works in SprintBeePricing compared
The two tools charge for different things. PlanningPoker.com charges per game organizer — the person hosting sessions — and meters the participant cap per game. SprintBee charges a flat price per organization and meters the number of active rooms; every plan allows unlimited teammates per room.
Both sets of prices below are as of July 2026.
- PlanningPoker.com Basic (free): up to 5 players per game, ad-supported; Jira, custom scales, story details, and CSV import/export are paid-only; new accounts get a 14-day Pro trial
- PlanningPoker.com Standard: $14.95/mo, or $12.50/mo billed annually ($150/yr), up to 10 concurrent participants per game
- PlanningPoker.com Pro: $49.95/mo, or $41.50/mo billed annually ($498/yr), up to 50 participants; features are identical to Standard — you pay for the higher cap
- PlanningPoker.com Enterprise: custom pricing that bundles Standard and Pro accounts in bulk, with purchase orders, invoicing, and reseller options
- SprintBee Free: $0, one active room, unlimited teammates, async estimation, custom decks, CSV export, no credit card
- SprintBee Pro: $29/mo or $290/yr for 3 rooms; Growth: $59/mo or $590/yr for 10 rooms; Business: $119/mo or $1,190/yr for 25 rooms; all paid tiers share the same feature set, and more than 25 rooms is contact-sales
- The honest math: a single facilitator running occasional sessions for one team pays less on PlanningPoker.com Standard ($12.50/mo annual) than on SprintBee Pro ($29/mo); an organization with several teams or facilitators usually comes out ahead on SprintBee's flat pricing, since PlanningPoker.com charges per organizer
Full SprintBee pricing detailsHow async estimation differs
This is the sharpest functional difference between the two tools. PlanningPoker.com's model is a live 'game': the organizer runs the round, players vote at the same time, and the session ends when the meeting does. That is the classic format, and for co-located or meeting-friendly teams it works well. No asynchronous estimation feature is documented on its plans page, homepage, or help center.
SprintBee treats async as a first-class mode, on every plan including free. A moderator opens a voting window over a queue of items, teammates vote privately whenever they have time — across time zones, around focus blocks — and items where votes converge settle without a meeting. Divergent items get flagged, and the team meets only to discuss those. For distributed teams, the practical effect is that estimation stops consuming a full recurring meeting.
If your team is happy with its live estimation meeting, this difference may not matter, and PlanningPoker.com's live-only model is not a real limitation. If estimation meetings are the thing you are trying to shrink, it is the whole decision.
Running planning poker with a remote teamJira and other integrations
Jira is PlanningPoker.com's flagship integration, and it is a good one: two-way sync that imports stories into a game and automatically writes accepted points back to Jira, available on paid plans. One caveat from their own documentation: setup requires a Jira administrator to create an application link with incoming authentication, a roughly 10-step process — teams without admin access will need to coordinate with IT. Beyond Jira, PlanningPoker.com supports CSV or XML file import for tools like TFS, Rally, and VersionOne, but no live integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, or Azure DevOps are documented.
SprintBee's paid plans integrate with Jira and Linear: import issues, estimate them, and write accepted points back to the mapped story-point or estimate field. Paid plans also send voting-window notifications to Slack and Microsoft Teams. On the free tier, the Browser Companion Chrome extension pairs an open Jira tab with your room — no API setup and no Jira admin required, which helps when you cannot get an application link approved.
If you need to pull stories from TFS, Rally, or VersionOne files, PlanningPoker.com covers that and SprintBee does not. If you use Linear, only SprintBee of the two has an integration.
How SprintBee's Jira integration worksTrying both before you decide
Neither tool locks you in. Your estimates ultimately live in your backlog tool, so switching costs are close to zero — this is a decision you can revisit after a sprint or two with each.
PlanningPoker.com gives every new account a 14-day free trial of its Pro plan, which is enough time to run real sessions with your team and test the Jira sync.
SprintBee has a public demo room that needs no sign-in at all — open it and try a round in under a minute. The free plan requires no credit card, includes async estimation and custom decks, and supports your whole team in one room. A reasonable test: estimate one sprint's backlog in each tool and see which one your team actually wants to keep.
Try the SprintBee demo room — no sign-in neededFrequently asked questions
Is PlanningPoker.com free?
Partly. The free Basic plan supports up to 5 players per game and is ad-supported, with four preset pointing scales, a game timer, and a printable results page. Jira integration, custom scales, story details, CSV import/export, and velocity tracking require a paid plan. Players joining someone else's game are always free and never need accounts, and new accounts get a 14-day Pro trial. Details as of July 2026.
Does PlanningPoker.com integrate with Jira?
Yes. Paid plans include two-way Jira integration: import stories into a game and automatically sync accepted points back to Jira. Per their documentation, setup requires a Jira administrator to create an application link with incoming authentication in a roughly 10-step process. Other tools like TFS, Rally, and VersionOne are supported only through CSV or XML file import.
Does PlanningPoker.com support asynchronous estimation?
No async estimation mode is documented on PlanningPoker.com's site — the product is built around live, real-time sessions where the organizer runs rounds and players vote simultaneously. If your team wants to estimate asynchronously, SprintBee includes async voting windows on every plan, including the free one.
How does SprintBee's pricing differ from PlanningPoker.com's?
As of July 2026, PlanningPoker.com charges per game organizer ($14.95/mo Standard, $49.95/mo Pro) and meters participants per game (10 or 50); players join free. SprintBee charges a flat price per organization and meters active rooms: free for one room with unlimited teammates, then $29/mo for 3 rooms, $59/mo for 10, and $119/mo for 25. One facilitator with one team usually pays less on PlanningPoker.com; organizations with multiple teams or facilitators usually pay less on SprintBee.
Do participants need accounts on either tool?
No. Both tools let participants join through a shared link without creating an account. On PlanningPoker.com, players are free on every plan and only game organizers pay. In SprintBee, teammates join a room via one shared link, and only the account that owns the rooms signs in — with a passwordless email code.