SprintBee vs PlanningPoker.live

First, a disclosure

SprintBee is our product, and this page lives on sprintbee.net. Read it the way you would read any vendor's comparison: as a well-researched but interested take. Everything we say about PlanningPoker.live comes from its public website, pricing page, and marketplace listings as we read them in July 2026, and we have tried to be specific about what it does well. Where its site left something unclear, we say so rather than guessing. If we have gotten something wrong, we want to know and we will fix it.

What both tools have in common

These two tools overlap more than most pairs on our comparison list, which is why the decision usually comes down to pricing model and workflow depth rather than a missing feature. Both run entirely in the browser, and in both, teammates join a session and vote without creating an account. Both handle the core planning poker loop well: vote, reveal, discuss where estimates diverge.

Shared ground includes:

• Browser-based planning poker with no accounts required for participants
• Custom estimation decks
• Jira and Linear integrations that import issues and write estimates back
• Asynchronous voting, so people can estimate before the meeting rather than during it
• Session history and statistics on how the team estimates over time
• A free tier that a small team can genuinely use, not just trial

Where PlanningPoker.live is the better fit

PlanningPoker.live's standout is where it runs. It ships as an embedded app inside Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex, so the cards appear directly in the meeting window instead of a second browser tab. If your team's estimation habit is "during the call, in the call," that is a real ergonomic win, and its Google Workspace Marketplace listing shows over 26,000 installs, so plenty of teams already work this way. SprintBee has no meeting-platform embeds; it runs in a browser tab.

It is also open source, with the codebase public on GitHub, and the hosted version runs on Google Cloud servers in the EU with voting data encrypted at rest. For privacy-minded teams, being able to read the code — or deploy it yourself — matters. And its pricing model rewards light use: joining and voting are always free for unlimited participants, and room creation runs on credits, with free credits at signup and a small one-time bundle ($9 for 7 rooms as of July 2026) covering months of occasional sessions. All features, including the Jira sync, async voting, anonymous voting, and its PokerBot AI session summaries, are available on the free tier; the limit is how many rooms you create, not what you can do.

Choose PlanningPoker.live if you estimate monthly rather than weekly, you want the cards embedded in Zoom, Teams, Meet, or Webex, you value open source and EU hosting, or you would rather pay a few dollars once than subscribe to anything.

Where SprintBee is the better fit

SprintBee runs a tight live session — hidden votes, simultaneous reveal, and divergence highlighting so the widest disagreements are obvious — and adds structured async voting windows for when a meeting is not practical: a moderator queues items, the team gets a day or two to vote privately, items where votes agree settle automatically, and the discussion covers only the items that split. PlanningPoker.live advertises async voting too, but its public site describes the concept at a high level without documenting deadlines, notifications, or how rounds close — SprintBee's window mechanics, with Slack and Microsoft Teams notifications on paid plans, are the more structured version of the workflow.

SprintBee also goes further after the reveal. When an item turns out too big, you can split it in the room into new items that inherit context, with the split written back to Jira or Linear. End-of-session scorecards summarize vote alignment and how estimates resolved. The Browser Companion Chrome extension pairs a Jira browser tab with a room without needing Jira API access at all, and it works on the free tier — useful when your Jira admin will not approve another OAuth app. Paid plans add room security controls (passwords, required sign-in, email-domain restriction) that teams with compliance requirements tend to ask about.

To be fair about the other direction: SprintBee is the newer product (launched 2026), has no native mobile apps (responsive web only), imports from Jira and Linear only, and does not embed inside meeting platforms.

Choose SprintBee if you estimate every sprint, split stories as part of refinement, want scorecards and write-back built in, prefer one flat predictable bill over managing a credit balance — or want async estimation with real mechanics rather than a checkbox.

Pricing compared, as of July 2026

The two pricing models are structurally different, so the cheaper option depends almost entirely on how often you estimate. Neither tool charges per user, which sets them both apart from much of the category.

PlanningPoker.live uses one-time credit bundles, where one credit creates one room:

• PlanningPoker.live free: joining and voting always free for unlimited participants; free credits at signup plus a monthly free allowance; starter credits expire after two months; the free tier shows ads
• PlanningPoker.live bundles (one-time, credits never expire, ad-free): Small $9 for 7 credits, Large $17 for 15, Mega $50 for 50
• SprintBee Free: $0, no credit card — one active room, unlimited teammates, async estimation, custom decks, current-session insights, and history with CSV export
• SprintBee paid (flat per organization, differing only in room count): Pro $29/mo or $290/yr for 3 rooms, Growth $59/mo for 10, Business $119/mo for 25; above 25 rooms, contact sales
• All SprintBee paid plans include Jira and Linear integrations, historical insights and trends, Slack and Teams notifications, room security, and priority support; a free trial is available
• Rule of thumb: for a team that estimates now and then, PlanningPoker.live's $9 bundle is hard to beat; for an organization running several teams every sprint, a flat subscription is easier to budget than a recurring credit purchase

How async estimation differs

Both products can run a round asynchronously, but they document very different levels of depth. PlanningPoker.live describes async as letting participants prepare for and vote on topics at their own pace before meeting to discuss results. That framing is right, and it is available on every plan — but as of July 2026 its public site does not explain the mechanics: how a round is closed, whether anyone is reminded to vote, or what happens when votes agree.

SprintBee gives async a defined process rather than an option. A voting window has an explicit open and close, teammates vote privately over a day or two, items whose votes agree settle automatically without a meeting, and the live session agenda is reduced to only the items where estimates split. On paid plans, Slack or Microsoft Teams notifications tell the team when a window opens. For a team spread across time zones that wants to estimate asynchronously, that difference — a defined process versus an at-your-own-pace option — is often the deciding factor; for teams that always estimate live, it simply will not come up.

Integrations, side by side

On tracker integrations the two are close. Both offer two-way Jira sync — import issues, estimate, write story points back — and both support Linear the same way. Notably, PlanningPoker.live includes its Jira sync on the free tier, which is rare; SprintBee's Jira and Linear integrations are on paid plans, though its Browser Companion extension gives free-tier teams a no-API way to pair a Jira tab with a room.

Beyond trackers they diverge. PlanningPoker.live adds Slack commands for starting sessions and, more importantly, the embedded apps for Zoom, Teams, Meet, and Webex. SprintBee's Slack and Teams integrations are notification-oriented, announcing async voting windows rather than embedding the game in a call. Neither tool integrates with Azure DevOps, GitHub Issues, or Trello, so if your backlog lives in one of those, both options mean copy-paste or a different tool entirely.

Trying both is cheap — so try both

Neither tool asks much up front. PlanningPoker.live lets anyone join and vote for free with no account, and its signup credits cover your first few rooms. SprintBee has a public demo room you can open right now with no sign-in, and the free plan gives you one full room — async voting, custom decks, and history export included — with no credit card.

Our suggestion: run one real refinement session in each during the same sprint. If the team's instinct is to keep the cards inside the video call, PlanningPoker.live has earned its spot. If the win is fewer meetings because most items settled before anyone joined a call, SprintBee is the better long-term fit. The cost of choosing wrong is one sprint.