livehuddle vs Miro
The open-source Miro alternative for meetings and workshops
Miro is a powerful, sprawling online workspace, and much of what teams do on it is meet: retros, stand-ups, planning, workshops. livehuddle is built for exactly that part. Open a Space from a link, walk in as your own character, and run the session on the board with a timer, votes and polls built in, free, open source and with no sign-up.
At a glance
| Feature | livehuddle | Miro |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, every feature | Free tier, then paid plans |
| Open source | Yes, MIT-licensed | No, proprietary SaaS |
| Start without an account | Yes, create and run a session as a guest | An account to create boards; guest editing on paid plans |
| Real-time multiplayer | Yes | Yes |
| Session tools | Timer, dot votes, polls, quizzes, estimates, Q&A and a facilitator baton, free | Timer, voting and facilitation tools, several on paid plans |
| Meeting in a place | Avatars walking round offices, team pods and halls | Boards; meeting presence through cursors and video |
| Programmatic access | REST API, a command line and an MCP server for AI tools, all free | Developer platform + marketplace |
Which to pick
Why pick livehuddle
- It's free for everyone and MIT-licensed, with no per-seat pricing and nothing to upgrade to.
- Open a link and you are in, with no sign-up wall, even to create a Space.
- Meet in a place, not just on a board: everyone walks their own character round a virtual office, a team pod or an all-hands hall, with a status, speech bubbles and reactions.
- Session tools on every board: a shared timer, dot-voting, live polls, planning-poker estimate cards, temperature checks, quizzes, an anonymous idea box and a Q&A board.
- One person runs the room: hand the facilitator baton to whoever is running it, and the timer, votes and reveals answer to them alone.
- Run the meeting itself on the board: an agenda that starts the timer for each segment, a roll call, a random picker, reveal zones that cover work until the room is ready, and decision records that keep what was agreed.
- Participant links let a workshop add stickies, write and vote without being able to reshape the board.
- Assign action items to teammates on the board itself, so the follow-ups leave the meeting with an owner.
- 39 templates, from five retro formats and Lean Coffee to town halls, quizzes and offices to walk round.
Where Miro is the better pick
- Facilitating very large workshops: breakout-scale sessions and a marketplace of meeting apps around the board.
- A deep template and integration marketplace (Jira, Slack, and more).
- One workspace for everything visual: diagrams, docs, tables and video walkthroughs beside the workshop boards.
- Enterprise admin, SSO, and compliance at large scale.
Built for the meeting, not the whole workspace
Miro grew into a broad workspace: boards, docs, tables, diagrams, video walkthroughs and a marketplace of apps. livehuddle does one part of that and goes deep on it: the time a team spends together. Every board is a workshop board, with the Session strip at its foot holding a timer, votes and polls, and a palette of the things a facilitator reaches for, from a Q&A board and an idea box to a quiz with a countdown.
Workshops are built in rather than bolted on. A facilitator runs the room with a shared timer, dot-voting, live polls, planning-poker estimate cards, quizzes and responses kept hidden until the reveal, and templates cover retrospectives in five formats, Lean Coffee and town hall Q&A. When the session ends, the actions it produced are assigned on the board.
A place to meet in
A board shows where people are pointing; a Space shows where they are. Open the Team Pod or the Virtual Office and you walk in as a little character in your own colour, sit at a desk, gather round the meeting table, and say hello in a speech bubble. A status above your head tells the room whether you are free, focusing, in a meeting or away, and portals take everyone from one room or tab to the next.
Free means free, not a free tier
Miro's free tier is real, but it's the top of a pricing funnel: board limits and gated features exist to move teams onto paid seats. livehuddle has no paid tier and no plan to introduce one. The hosted version at livehuddle.app is free, every user gets every feature, and there is nothing to upgrade to.
The whole codebase is MIT-licensed and public, so anyone can read exactly how it works.
Collaboration without the onboarding
In Miro, creating a board starts with an account, and anonymous guest editing depends on the plan you are on. In livehuddle, joining is a URL. Anyone can create a Space without signing up; a guest’s new Space is kept in their browser until they press Share, which syncs it in one step. A link is an Editor, Participant or view-only link (a Participant adds stickies, writes and votes but cannot reshape the board), and it can carry a password or an expiry date when you need it locked down.
For programmatic use there is a free REST API with personal tokens, a command line, and an MCP server at mcp.livehuddle.app that lets AI assistants read and change your Spaces directly. None of it sits behind a plan.
Miro alternative FAQ
Is livehuddle really free?
Do my teammates need an account to join a session?
Can I import my existing Miro boards?
Can livehuddle run workshops the way Miro does?
See how it feels
No sign-up, nothing to install, free forever. Open a Space and judge for yourself.
Comparisons reflect each product’s general positioning and may change. Check Miro’s own site for current details. Last reviewed .