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With so many different scrum tools available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to organize and manage project tasks and enhance team collaboration but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different scrum software with various teams and projects, with my picks of the best scrum tools.

What Are Scrum Tools?

Scrum tools are software that help teams manage projects using the Scrum methodology. This methodology is a part of Agile, a way of working that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and iterative progress. These tools provide a digital platform to track progress, assign tasks, and manage timelines, making it easier to follow Scrum practices.

Using scrum tools, teams can better organize their work, prioritize tasks, and keep everyone on the same page. They help in visualizing the workflow, tracking the progress of tasks, and identifying any roadblocks. This leads to improved team coordination, more efficient project management, and often results in projects being completed more quickly and efficiently.

Overview Of The 10 Best Scrum Tools

Here are the detailed overviews of each tool along with screenshots and pricing information.

1

monday.com

Best Scrum tool for remote teams

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7
8702 reviews

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats)

monday.com is a great tool for managing Scrum teams and projects. The platform has robust time tracking capabilities as well as customizable notifications and automations that allow you to focus on what’s important. You can create, visualize, and share your roadmap to keep everyone in sync.

Backlogs, dependencies, and sprint planning are available as well in a very intuitive interface.

Backlogs are easy to create and use. You can filter or sort them according to any column you choose. With many different columns, monday.com helps teams plan their sprints in a completely customizable interface, which helps workflow creation fit to the team’s needs. monday.com offers multiple views from which you can create burndown charts and analyze your work, such as Kanban, timeline, and files, among many others.

While monday.com doesn’t offer the full range of Scrum reporting features like a burndown chart, it does offer some simple reports and charts to get an overview of sprint progress, capacity, and effort.

monday.com’s integrations include project management apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

2

ClickUp

Best Scrum tool for customizability

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7
4135 reviews

Freemium plan available

From $9/user/month

ClickUp strikes an impressive balance between high performance and practicality and offers a wide range of training resources. Overall, ClickUp is simply one of the best Scrum tools out there—not only is it focused on being easy to learn, integrate, and customize, it’s also a forward-looking application that incorporates leading-edge technology like NLP and ML.

As far as Scrum tools go, ClickUp has broader functionality than many other Scrum apps, offering high value for the straightforward price of $5/user/month. The tool includes Gantt charts, project templates, time tracking, and scheduling, in addition to all of the Scrum essentials. ClickUp is consistently expanding its functionality—you might start using ClickUp just for the Scrum tools, but it could easily become your core business process management tool. Notably, ClickUp also makes use of AI: the tool applies natural language processing (NLP) to interpret dates and times so users don’t have to concern themselves with exact formatting. They’re about to roll out machine learning (ML) for automatically predicting task assignees, time estimates, etc.

ClickUp has 1000+ integrations and imports the existing data from CSV files or apps like Airtable, Asana, Trello Jira, todoist, Flow, and 50+ more platforms.

ClickUp costs $5/user/month. They also have a free version that’s quite generous, with unlimited users and unlimited projects.

3

QuickBase

Best for building no-code custom apps and workflows

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4
225 reviews

30-day free trial

From $35/user/month (billed annually)

QuickBase is a platform that provides no-code solutions for work management across various project types and industries. It enables users to create, connect, and customize applications to manage work effectively without requiring extensive coding skills, positioning it as a leading choice for no-code dynamic work management.

QuickBase stand out is its comprehensive visibility for every project, which is crucial for managing scrum processes effectively. I believe QuickBase is best for no-code dynamic work management due to its ability to support complex projects and foster continuous innovation on a single platform, along with providing resources and a professional community for additional support.

QuickBase is a versatile platform that enables users to create custom applications tailored to their specific business needs without coding, utilizing customizable app building features. It enhances productivity through automation tools that trigger actions like notifications and task creation. The platform also offers robust reporting and analytics for data insights, integrates with other services for data synchronization, and provides security measures like role-based access controls.

QuickBase supports mobile access and fosters a professional community for knowledge sharing.

Integrations include Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, Tableau, QuickBase Pipelines, Slack and Zapier.

Pricing for QuickBase starts from $35/user/month (billed annually). A 30-day free trial is also available.

4

Jira Software

Best for software engineering and testing

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2
4683 reviews

7-day free trial

$10/user/month

You’ve likely heard of Jira—it’s probably the most widely-used cloud and subscription-based software for agile teams. Because it’s so popular, many of the other project management apps include integrations with Jira. This tool has just about everything, but we do find that other tools like Targetprocess offer greater degrees of customization, especially in building custom reports and dashboard visualizations. Even so, it’s a well-rounded, familiar tool with reasonable pricing schemes for small teams, mid-sized teams, and enterprise.

Jira delivers a well-balanced array of Scrum project management tools, including customizable Scrum and Kanban boards, custom filters for backlog grooming, customizable workflows, and dozens of visual reports (burndown, cumulative flow, velocity, etc). It also includes some higher-level BPM functionality: roadmapping, process templates, and a “sandbox” tool for testing out different scenarios before allocating resources and making estimates.

Jira integrates with over 3000 other apps, has a robust set of APIs, and is available on all mobile devices. One of Jira’s stronger selling points is the way it integrates with the software development ecosystem. It integrates with numerous developer tools (HipChat, Confluence, BitBucket, etc) and provides a real-time overview of tasks for easily identifying outstanding bugs, failing builds, and pull requests.

Jira costs from $10/month for up to 10 users. They offer free licensing for qualifying charitable organizations, educational settings, and open source initiatives.

5

Zoho Sprints

Best Scrum board for real-time collaboration.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4
2512 reviews

15-day free trial

From $3 /user/month for up to 100 users

Zoho Sprints is an agile project management tool that helps Scrum teams organize user stories, manage backlogs, and track progress on Scrum Boards. It’s a simple and clutter-free Scrum tool that helps teams to focus on shipping great quality work.

The drag and drop planning builder helps teams plan their upcoming sprints by moving items from their project backlog to their sprint backlog. The project backlog serves as the repository of all user stories, tasks, and bugs. The dedicated planning center equips teams to refine their project backlog with options to filter, sort and search items across default and custom parameters.

The Scrum Board in Zoho Sprints is highly customizable and provides visibility and transparency of everyone’s progress. It is effortless to drag-and-drop stories into completion, create custom statuses and set WIP limits. Teams can sort work items into swimlanes based on priority, story, or estimation points, and track the progress of sprints in an exclusive sprint dashboard.

Zoho Sprints provides real-time reports and insights into the overall progress. The Velocity Chart calculates the amount of work delivered in each sprint and helps teams to plan and estimate future sprints. Meanwhile, Burndown and Burnup charts help teams to track the pace at which they are burning estimation points by comparing the current and ideal progress line. 

Communication and collaboration are crucial in every aspect of life, and they're especially critical when you're working with cross-functional teams. With Zoho Sprints, product teams can collaborate within the context of their work through features like built-in chat, virtual meetings, and an interactive project feed. 

Zoho Sprints integrates well with popular code repository management tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket. DevOps teams can also automate their CI/CD pipelines by integrating with developer tools like Jenkins and Azure DevOps. Teams can leverage webhooks and APIs to build their integrations or browse through a growing library of apps listed on Zoho's marketplace. 

Zoho Sprints offers a free trial for 15 days (no credit card required). Zoho Sprints has one paid plan starting at $6/per user per month billed annually. Also has a freemium version up to 3 users for 3 projects.

6

Visor

Best for collaborating across time zones

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
5
3 reviews

Free plan available

From $9/user/month

Visor is a cloud-based Scrum tool that allows teams to collaborate in real-time, making it easier to manage projects and streamline communication. With Visor, you can share files, chat with colleagues, and work on projects together from anywhere in the world.

Some of Visor's standout features include the ability to create and manage tasks, set deadlines, and assign team members to specific projects. Easily switch between different projects and keep everything organized in one place. It also includes API, dashboards, data export/data import, data visualization, external integrations, Gantt charts, project management, task scheduling/tracking, resource management, and third-party plugins/add-ons.

Integrations include Jira, Salesforce, and HubSpot.

The tool costs $9 per user per month and a free plan is available.

7

Miro

Best with a large template library

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8
3414 reviews

Free plan available

From $10/user/month

Miro is an online whiteboard and collaboration software that can be used by distributed teams in real-time to document workflows, brainstorm ideas, and plan projects. Users can use any of the platform's numerous templates to create new boards for their work, including Kanban and Scrum style boards, mind maps, and other formats. It's a highly flexible tool that can be used for virtually any stage of project planning, from ideation through planning and execution.

Each new whiteboard can be added to with shapes, lines, charts, text boxes, flowcharts, sticky notes, and wireframes. Whatever business function or industry, your team can use the boards to cater to their unique needs in a way that makes sense for them. Clustering and voting are also available, and timers can be set in the system to help facilitate creative sessions and collaborative meetings.

The software integrates with other workplace tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, Asana, monday.com, Jira, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Unito, among others. A free plan is available and paid plans start from $10 per user per month.

8

Parabol

Best tool for Scrum meetings

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8
25 reviews

Free version available

From $6/user/month

Parabol is an agile meeting tool that helps remote and co-located Scrum teams run guided retrospective, check-in, and Sprint Poker estimation meetings.

Every meeting includes optional icebreakers, anonymous voting/reflections, and space for asynchronous discussions. After a meeting ends, Parabol follows-up with an automatic summary, which means team members can remain fully present at the meeting without taking notes.

The tool integrates with Jira, GitHub, and Slack, so users can export follow-up tasks from retrospective or estimation meetings for use in your agile project management tool or other places according to your process.

Parabol is easy to use for all team members, taking the burden off facilitators and allowing any team member to run meetings.

The tool is free for up to 2 teams.

9

MeisterTask

Best simple-to-use Scrum tool

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.6
170 reviews

Free trial available

From $8.25/month (billed annually)

MeisterTask is a simple, beautiful task management tool for agile teams. The web-based platform provides flexible Kanban boards to manage your backlogs and sprints. This is a great tool for companies who are just starting out with the Scrum methodology, but thanks to its built-in automations and large number of integrations with other tools, it easily scales to your needs.

Using MeisterTask’s Kanban-based boards, you can create backlogs, sprints, and manage tasks collaboratively with your team. Boards are divided into vertical sections through which tasks can be moved from left to right until completion. You can use tags to prioritize tasks and visualize dependencies using task relationships. Real-time notifications keep both the project team and the product owner up to date about project progress, while detailed statistics and reports provide insight into the team’s performance. A personalized dashboard ensures that you see at a glance what you need to focus on today and keep track of all tasks relevant to you.

While MeisterTask was originally built for agile software teams, its simple and versatile boards can easily be used by all departments in your organization, which is great if you’re looking to get all team members onto the same platform and improve cross-departmental collaboration. If you need some help getting started, MeisterTask offers free webinars for beginners as well as an extensive online help center and quick email support in multiple languages.

MeisterTask integrates with the mind mapping app MindMeister where you can brainstorm and plan with a mind map and then export it onto a Kanban board. MeisterTask comes readily integrated with popular tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, GitHub, Zendesk, Harvest, and various email apps. In addition to these native integrations, you can use Zapier or IFTTT to connect your projects with hundreds of other tools.

MeisterTask costs from $8.25/user/month. They also offer a free plan with limited functionality.

10

ProjectManager.com

Best Scrum software for using hybrid methodologies

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4
93 reviews

30-day free trial

From $16/user/month

ProjectManager.com isn’t a specialized Scrum tool per se, but as an award-winning PM software used by big name brands like NASA, Volvo, and Ralph Lauren, it’s worth considering. And while it’s used in enterprises, ProjectManager.com’s basic plan can have as few as 5 users, so it’s still a sensible solution for small teams.

So, as I mentioned, ProjectManager.com isn’t a specialized Scrum tool—but I include it here because it has some really useful features that a team adhering to a Scrum methodology could do well to take advantage of. You’ll find Kanban boards with real-time dashboards that help you visualize your work, and you can switch seamlessly between different task and project views to help visualize work, too. The notifications are basic but useful—you can set up automated alerts to stay on top of due or overdue tasks.

ProjectManager.com integrations include native integrations with GoogleApps like Drive, Gmail, Calendar, etc. as well as Microsoft Office and Microsoft Project. For all other integrations, you can use Zapier to sync ProjectManager.com with other tools.

Pricing for ProjectManager.com starts at $15/user/month, with their basic “Personal” plan requiring a minimum of 5 users.

The Best Scrum Tools Comparison Chart

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the options out there. Here’s a table summarizing basic info about the tools described in this article.

Tool Trial Info Price
1
monday.com

Best Scrum tool for remote teams

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $8/user/month (billed annually, min 3 seats) Website
2
ClickUp

Best Scrum tool for customizability

Freemium plan available

From $9/user/month Website
3
QuickBase

Best for building no-code custom apps and workflows

30-day free trial

From $35/user/month (billed annually) Website
4
Jira Software

Best for software engineering and testing

7-day free trial

$10/user/month Website
5
Zoho Sprints

Best Scrum board for real-time collaboration.

15-day free trial

From $3 /user/month for up to 100 users Website
6
Visor

Best for collaborating across time zones

Free plan available

From $9/user/month Website
7
Miro

Best with a large template library

Free plan available

From $10/user/month Website
8
Parabol

Best tool for Scrum meetings

Free version available

From $6/user/month Website
9
MeisterTask

Best simple-to-use Scrum tool

Free trial available

From $8.25/month (billed annually) Website
10
ProjectManager.com

Best Scrum software for using hybrid methodologies

30-day free trial

From $16/user/month Website

Other Scrum Tools

I haven’t had the time to review these properly, but here’s a few more tools you can check out:

  1. VivifyScrum

    Best for Scrum beginners

  2. Targetprocess

    Best for SAFe and LeSS

  3. Planview Clarizen

    Best Scrum tool for enterprise

  4. Yodiz

    Best free Scrum tool for small teams

  5. nutcache

    Best Scrum tool for managing time, expenses, and billing

  6. Axosoft

    Best for complex projects

  7. Scrumwise

    Best simple Scrum software with core Scrum features

  8. Height

    Streamlining online Scrum development.

  9. Scrumfast

    Best for intuitive UI and UX

  10. Quickscrum

    Best Scrum software vendor for customer service and training services

  11. ScrumDo

    Best pricing for small and scaling agile teams

  12. Lucidspark

    Best Scrum board for integrations and collaboration

  13. Wrike

    Best for teams of all sizes

  14. Hive

    Best for flexible project views according to team needs

  15. SwiftKanban

    Best for Scrumban teams

  16. Orangescrum

    Best open source Scrum software

  17. VersionOne

    Best Scrum software for DevOps

  18. SprintGround

    Best for software and web developers

  19. Scrumdesk

    Best free tool for small teams

Check out our video review of the top tools.

How I Picked The Best Scrum Tools

First of all, I started with a list of scrum tools that positive high user reviews and satisfaction ratings. Then, using my experience in digital project management, I discerned what key criteria were most important for scrum software. I later compared how each of them stacked up against the rest.

Finally, I chose the criteria below as the basis of my evaluation:

User Interface (UI)

Is the tool engaging and easy to navigate? Can you easily find the features and information you’re looking for?

Usability

How easy is the tool to learn? What about onboarding new team members?

Integrations

Most Scrum software includes some PM features and tools in addition to integrations with third party apps and mobile-compatible apps. If you don’t have a programmer in house, it’s a good idea to stick to a Scrum software that easily integrates with other systems without the need to dig into an API.

Pricing

I’ve included some basic pricing info above to help you evaluate the best tool for your use case. Getting beyond the freemium versions, prices range from about $3/user/month to $25/user/month.

What key features are in Scrum tools?

Every organization is different—a marketing agency cannot necessarily use the same tools that a construction crew uses. However, there are certain elements that you should expect to see in any Scrum tool. We’ve identified these critical components for our evaluation:

  1. Product Backlog: An organized backlog makes future planning and allocation of resources easy to manage. An effective sprint backlog should include ample storage, and must enable prioritization of tasks and user stories. The tool should include features for backlog management and allow for changes and adjustments.
  2. Sprints: This is the heart of Scrum. Sprints are repeated, predetermined periods of time for completing sets of tasks or work items from the backlog (generally from 2 to 4 weeks).
  3. Burndown Charts: These are graphical representations of progress that provide insight into any delays and factors causing them. The horizontal axis of the burndown chart depicts sprints and the vertical axis shows the remaining work. A burndown chart is your basic visualization in Scrum; many tools also include several additional types of charts for measuring progress (burnup, cumulative flow, etc).
  4. Visualization: The backlog should provide visibility to each member of the team and should provide a convenient interface for the development team to manage tasks. The best tools have visualizations of progress displayed on a real-time dashboard. The tool should also include the ability to create and manage Scrum boards.
  5. Reports: Some teams don’t need elaborate custom reports, but any good tool should include some basic reporting features for gauging progress. A lot of the free Scrum software out there won’t include many reporting features; most often you’ll need to use a paid plan to access advanced reporting features.

What Does a Scrum Tool Do?

Scrum provides a set framework for producing a product, be it an email campaign, software, or consumer product. All Scrum tools are based off of a similar framework of basic Scrum elements.

If you’re unfamiliar with Scrum, have a look at our guide to 9 methodologies made simple. Because Scrum is related to agile, there’s quite a bit of crossover between software described as “agile tools” and as “Scrum tools”.

However, in general, agile project management tools will enable a wider scope of agile development and agile methodology functions, not just Scrum-related ones.

Scrum software is designed to facilitate the Scrum framework, encouraging collaboration, transparency, and efficiency among team members. In fact, Scrum software can prove beneficial for almost any organization, as it facilitates communication, organizes workload, and helps members to plan for multiple iterations.

The Basic Parts of Scrum Methodology And Software

A critical element of any Scrum project management software is the backlog. Like a whiteboard or sticky notes; this is where you list all the tasks and requirements for your final product. It is vital that you prioritize your backlog according to the urgency and importance of each task.

Another key element of Scrum is the Product Owner. This is the person who owns the discussion on which features are included or not as they manage the business and functional expectations for the product.

The Scrum framework divides time into predetermined chunks for completing each task from the backlog, known as sprints. The graphical representation of a sprint is called a burndown chart. These are helpful in visualizing progress in order to stay on track.

Daily scrums are a meeting for all the team members to discuss their progress and bring up any issues that need attention. Most tools have scheduling or meeting features to easily plan and coordinate daily scrums.

Each sprint ends with a retrospective, a time-boxed meeting where the team reviews the sprint and plans for future improvements.

Sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, make up the four scrum ceremonies.

How To Choose The Best Tool For Your Team

Here’s a list of key questions to ask yourself in order to choose the right tool for your team:

  • What do you need it for? Do you primarily need a task management tool (more basic), or do you need it for storing documentation or creating client-facing reports (more advanced)?
  • What is the size of your team? Very small teams are lucky to find several tools that give a full range of features for free. If you’re planning to scale, take this into account—how much will it cost to upgrade?
  • Which tools should it integrate with? At the very least, it probably needs to integrate with your calendar and document folders. Also consider whether you’ll want a tool that integrates with your existing development applications, CRM, time-tracking apps, document management systems, resource management apps, and other BPM tools.
  • How will it fit into your workflow and how easy is it to learn and set-up? If you’re new to Scrum, choose a tool with a large training resource library, online training, or even Scrum coaching as an add-on.
  • What’s your tool budget? Keep in mind future scaling requirements.
best scrum tools logos list

What's Next?

Keeping with the agile theme of this post, I recommend you read our explanation of 12 important agile principles. I think you'll also find it interesting to know the difference between Kanban and Agile and the 7 best Agile certifications for project managers.

Related tool posts:

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By Ben Aston

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I've been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS', games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. Ben's a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut.