Top 7 Async Poker Tools for Remote & Distributed Teams

Planning Poker is beyond dropping numbers into a field. It’s a way for your team to discuss scope, identify unknowns, and align on the work before committing. That collaboration is tough when your team is in different time zones. If you try to force it, you’d have meetings in inconvenient times that exclude people, and reduce this activity to a silent voting with little shared understanding.

To prevent this, you need to make your planning poker asynchronous and also find async planning poker tools for remote or distributed teams. We’ve created a list of these tools and categorizes them into those that work with Jira as well as stand alone tools.

Choosing an Async Planning Poker Tool: Jira Plugins vs Standalone Tool

When it comes to estimating work asynchronously, you have two options:

• Use a Jira plugin that brings planning poker directly into your Jira workflow.
• Use a standalone tool that syncs with Jira but has its own platform.

The best option depends on how your team works. If you want to stay inside Jira and keep things simple, a plugin may be the way to go. If you prefer more flexibility, better UX, or additional integrations (to Slack, GitHub, or retrospectives), a standalone tools might be a better fit.

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The Best Planning Poker Plugins for Asynchronous Teams

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1. Async Poker by DoAsync: Async Poker is built for distributed teams that want to estimate without requiring everyone to participate at the same time. To use this tool, you create estimation “games” where each member can vote on story estimates independently and on their own schedule. Only issues with disparate votes require a follow-up discussion.

If you want to encourage your team to write their story description, this tool is one asynchronous poker planning tools that’d help you build that culture.

What Users Love:

• Many users say that Async Poker is efficient and provides developer support. 
• They love  that everyone can estimate “in their own time” and that only non-unanimous estimates trigger discussion, which helps they cut down unnecessary meeting time
• They also say that the app is “constantly evolving” with new features and that the developers actively listen to feedback and implement features they request.

In general, most times liked the quick responsive support, incredibly fast fixes, and a good user experience.

Best for: Teams working across time zones who want easy estimation inside Jira.

‍Pricing

To start, Async Poker offers a free plan for Jira Cloud accounts with 10 or less. If you need more than that, you'd have to move to a paid plan which is based on how many users you have, starting at the 25-users and scaling up from there.

For example, 100 users costs around $1,000 per year, while 1,000 users costs about $5,200 per year. As your team grows, the cost per user decreases. If you prefer monthly payments instead of committing annually, you'll pay roughly one-tenth of the yearly price each month.

For large companies with 5,000 or more users, Atlassian offers their standard enterprise rates with even bigger discounts per user.

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2. Agile Poker by Appfire: Agile Poker is one of the most widely used planning poker tools in the Jira ecosystem. A lot of teams use it to estimate issues in real-time or asynchronously within Jira. It pulls in story details and pushes back estimates into Jira. That way, you don’t have to use external sites or cards.

You can also choose from multiple estimation modes like Interactive (real-time planning poker), Asynchronous (Wideband Delphi style), Relative (Magic/affinity estimation), and even an AI-assisted mode, depending on what you need.

What users like:

• Multiple estimation techniques in one: Most users love the flexibility of having different estimation methods to choose from. You can start with classic Planning Poker, switch to a Magic Estimation for fast backlog sizing, or let your team estimate asynchronously before a review. This flexibility means the app can adapt as your team’s estimation process evolves. Having options (including support for custom card decks, T-shirt sizes, Fibonacci, etc.) is a big plus for many Agile teams.
  
  
• Jira-native convenience: Appfire is integrated into Jira. Most users like that this reduces switching between tools as estimations happen inside Jira Cloud or Data Center, and the results are saved to the issues automatically. Agile Poker’s UI fits well with Jira’s look and gives a sense of project status (it even offers velocity charts and a sprint capacity calculator in-app).
  
  
• Remote planning effectiveness: Most remote teams using Agile Poker say that it has made their remote sprint planning easier and more engaging than other solutions like spreadsheets or chat voting, which they tried before. The real-time mode with reveal-after-vote ensures everyone votes independently without influence. 

Users also like the discussion feature. After a round of voting, the app highlights the estimates (and can even show an AI-suggested estimate), prompting you to have a conversation on outliers. 

What users dislike:

• UI issues for certain tasks: Some users pointed out some usability issues. For example, one reviewer complained, “it is [a] very horrible experience when I try to filter the user stories by user [in Agile Poker]. And [I’m] not able to find the previous sprint user stories.”

Technical differentiators:

• Multi-field estimation: Teams assign story points, T-shirt sizes, and priority scores simultaneously, with optional weighted final scores
• Historical benchmarking: Compares current estimates against past similar tickets using Appfire AI, reducing anchoring bias.
• Capacity analytics: Projects sprint velocity based on estimated effort and team availability, integrated with Jira’s native reporting.

Enterprise adoption:
Large organizations favor its SOC2-compliant infrastructure and granular permission controls. A Reddit PM shared: "The audit trails saved us during compliance reviews". However, mobile users say that the navigation is clunky in async mode, recommending desktop for complex sessions.

Pricing:

Agile Poker works on both Cloud and Data Center. On Cloud, there's a free plan for up to 10 users. Data Center doesn't have a free option. Licenses start at 50 users.

For Cloud, pricing depends on how many users you have. Paid plans begin at 25 users for $873 per year (about $87 per month if you pay annually). As you grow, costs scale up: 50 users runs $1,745 per year, 100 users is $3,490 per year, and 1,000 users costs $12,550 per year. At the highest end, 10,000 users costs around $30,400 per year.

Data Center pricing works differently and tends to be lower per user as you grow. The smallest tier is 50 users at $2,750 per year. Moving up, 100 users costs $4,150, 500 users is $7,150, and 1,000 users runs $11,000. For very large teams, 15,000 users costs around $33,000 per year, while 50,000 users is about $39,500. There's also an Unlimited tier for companies with 150,000+ users at a flat rate of $83,000 per year.

As your team grows, the cost per user drops on both Cloud and Data Center. Cloud subscriptions are paid annually or monthly, while Data Center licenses renew at full price each year.

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Best for: hybrid teams that need multiple estimation modes and enterprise features.

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3. Magic Estimations by Magic Apps: Magic Estimations combines both Magic Estimation (Affinity Estimation) technique and Planning Poker. Most teams use Magic Estimations to quickly size a large number of backlog items. To use it, you lay out all user stories on a board and your team members silently drag and group them into size-based columns (or lanes). This gives you a relative estimate for dozens of items. 

A lot of people use this for initial backlog estimation or quarterly planning, where speed is prioritized over deep discussion for each item. Because of this, most Users say that it is  “super fast compared to alternatives” for getting a sense of story sizes. In the Atlassian Marketplace, one review says that with Magic Estimation, they “can estimate months’ worth of work in an hour.” 

In addition to the Magic Estimation mode, the app also includes a Planning Poker mode and an Async Poker mode. So many teams use Magic Estimations as an all-in-one estimation app where they do quick relative sizing of the whole backlog with Magic Estimation, then later use the Planning Poker mode for sprint grooming of individual stories.

What users like:

• Very fast backlog estimation: For most users, speed is the primary benefit of this tool. They have the option to estimate a large backlog in a fraction of the time a traditional story-by-story poker would take. By visually sorting items by relative size, as one user put it, the app makes it “much easier to make a sizing decision for a user story. Users who have to estimate many items love this visual approach. They find it more intuitive and efficient than calling out numbers for each item sequentially.
  
• Simplicity and intuitiveness: A lot of users say the app is straightforward to use. You need little to no training to get started. If you can drag and drop cards on a board, you can use the app. 
• Multiple modes (flexibility): Users like that they can get Magic Estimation mode, Planning Poker and Async Poker in the same app. They can do both silent grouping estimations and interactive poker with one tool. Magic Apps also added features like built-in chat for discussion, a dark theme, and the ability to estimate any numeric field (not only story points) – addressing various user needs.
  
  
  

What users dislike:

• Occasional technical hiccups: A few user comments alluded to minor “session hiccups” – for example, a refresh needed here or there, or a momentary sync issue when multiple people drag cards at the exact same time. These were infrequent and not catastrophic, but they did occur. Magic Apps has been updating the app to improve performance, but being a smaller vendor, their releases are not as frequent as Appfire’s. No user reported any data loss or major bug in 2024, just some rough edges that could be smoothed out.
  
• Feature gaps vs. competitors: Magic Estimations is a free tool. So it doesn’t have some of the advanced features of a paid product. For example, it may not have deep analytics, AI suggestions, or deep Jira customizations that larger teams might want. Though there weren’t specific complaints about missing features in reviews, in direct comparisons, other products like Agile Poker offer more in-depth features (like multi-field estimation, capacity planning, etc.) In summary, this estimation tool covers the core estimation functions very well, but if you’re a power user, you might eventually want more.

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4. Quely: Quely is more than a planning poker tool. It’s a full estimation and planning workspace that integrates into Jira. While it supports traditional story point voting using Fibonacci, its AI goes further by analyzing tasks, breaking down what’s involved, and even estimating based on the experience level of different team members. It also supports time-based estimation, so teams can plan based on time as well as complexity.

Where Quely stands out is how it supports context-rich, asynchronous decision-making. AI-generated questions help surface blind spots, and team members can vote and comment without needing a meeting. Since everything happens directly in Jira, it’s easy to keep track of discussions and stay aligned.

Why teams choose it:

• Auto-generated questions that analyzes Jira work items and provides questions that uncover blockers
• Supports both story points and time-based estimates
• Fully embedded in Jira
• Built-in planning components like agendas, diagrams, and capacity planning

Best for: Agile teams that want estimation to be collaborative and smarter, not just faster.

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5. Parabol: Many scrum teams use Parabol for both sprint retrospectives and planning poker (estimation) sessions. They run retrospective meetings in Parabol, where members add “cards” of feedback (good or bad) anonymously and then group and discuss them. 

In Parabol, everyone goes through each user story one by one and can vote on story points simultaneously, which then syncs back into Jira, removing the need to manually update the story points in Jira.

Overall, Parabol serves as an all-in-one agile meeting tool: teams use it to facilitate retrospectives, estimation/planning poker, and even team check-ins, especially for remote or distributed teams. 

What Users Like

• Ease of use and inclusivity: Parabol’s top feature is its simplicity. Users also like that it supports anonymous input and simultaneous voting, which encourages quiet team members to contribute equally
• Streamlined retrospectives and discussions: Parabol provides built-in meeting templates and a step-by-step flow that keeps retros focused. Many users like how it facilitates grouping similar feedback cards, voting on topics, and timing discussions so the team spends time on what matters most. This approach helps moderators focus only on important topics and link action items to discussion cards for context. 
• Integrated estimation with fun elements: For sprint poker, Parabol lets everyone vote on story points at once and reveals the results for consensus. Most users love that it can push the chosen estimate to Jira automatically, which saves time and reduces the incidence of errors. Another feature users love is the ability to add comments or reactions to each card and discuss outliers right within the app.

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What Users Dislike

Despite high ratings, users have noted a few minor frustrations or missing features in Parabol:

• Limited administrative controls in meetings: Facilitators cannot lock or freeze individual cards during the reflection phase. Most users want this feature because eam members sometimes start grouping or moving cards too early, disrupting the initial silent reflection.  Another issue around admin control is that the moderator can’t tell who still has votes remaining during voting, as there’s no indicator to show those who haven’t voted. This is one way Quely’s estimation feature is different. You can see everyone who has voted.
  
  
• Notification and summary controls: By default, Parabol emails a meeting all participants a meeting summary. Some facilitators found this inconvenient. They wish there were an option to disable this. A G2 reviewer said, “It’s great that summaries are automatically generated, but unfortunately, I (as the facilitator) can’t specify that those summaries shouldn’t be sent to everyone”. Team members can individually opt out of emails, but the organizer cannot control it globally.
  
  
• Feature limitations for advanced use cases: A few reviews mention that Parabol is not yet suitable for certain large-scale agile events or advanced needs. For example, one user said, “I would be great if we could use Parabol for the PI event as well, but that is not possible yet.”. Another user wished it had more template variety and customization (e.g., more retro formats out of the box). And while Parabol added a health-check feature and AI meeting summaries in its paid tier, some felt its customization was not flexible enough to tailor to their workflow. 

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Pricing

Parabol has a free plan that includes up to 2 team workspaces with unlimited meetings and unlimited users. On the free plan, you get several meeting types (retros, poker, check-ins), over 40 templates, and integrations like Jira Cloud. The trade-off is that meeting history only saves for 30 days.

If you want more, the Team plan costs $8 per active user each month. You only pay for people who actually join meetings that month, which makes it affordable if some team members use it occasionally. This plan gives you unlimited workspaces, unlimited meeting history, unlimited custom templates, team health surveys, and AI-generated meeting summaries.

For large companies, there's an Enterprise option with custom pricing. This includes advanced security (like SAML SSO), an admin console to manage teams across your organization, a dedicated account manager, uptime guarantees, and advanced analytics. Enterprise customers can also host Parabol on their own servers or private cloud, and get support for Jira Server and Data Center.

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6. Scrumpy Planning Poker: Scrumpy is a simple, browser-based tool for estimating story points during sprint planning. Teams can use it as a standalone app or integrate it with Jira. The typical workflow is straightforward: a team lead opens Scrumpy, imports the issues they want to estimate, and shares a link with the team. No login is required. Everyone on your team just clicks the link and starts voting in real-time. Once everyone votes, the facilitator reveals all the estimates at once, and the team discusses any big differences before settling on a final number. If you're using the Jira plugin, Scrumpy automatically updates the story points in Jira. The tool supports different estimation styles like Fibonacci numbers, T-shirt sizes, or custom scales. There's also an async mode where people can vote at their own pace, though it's pretty basic.

Because Scrumpy is extremely simple, most people use it in situations where they want a quick planning poker session with minimal setupup. For example, a small co-located team might project the Scrumpy session on a screen, or a remote team that wants to do async planning poker might all join the Scrumpy link shared in a Zoom/Teams call.

You have to note that the asynchronous planning poker is very basic. It doesn't have notifications or deadlines, or other features that make it easy for your team to vote asynchronously. 

What Users Like

• Simple and fast: No installation or signup needed. You can set up an estimation meeting in seconds, and anyone can join with a single click, even non-technical people or stakeholders. This low barrier to entry is a huge plus for small teams with tight schedules.
• Completely free: The web app with full planning poker functionality costs nothing, making it ideal for teams with tight budgets. The Jira plugin is also very affordable if you want it. This means you can save significant money compared to other paid poker apps, especially if you don't need advanced capabilities.
• Flexible voting options: Scrumpy supports multiple estimation modes like standard Fibonacci numbers, Powers of 2, T-shirt sizes, time-based estimates, or even custom scales. 
• Fun and engaging: Beyond functionality, Scrumpy includes quirky touches like funny image card designs and jokes on the cards. It also has a real-time chat feature and emoji reactions so team members can interact during sessions. These small details make what could be a dry meeting more light-hearted and fun.
• Real-time effectiveness: For teams meeting together—in person or on video—Scrumpy works perfectly. All votes are revealed simultaneously, and everyone sees the results instantly. The minimalist interface with no confusing settings flattens the learning curve. Most people say that Scrumpy keeps the estimation process snappy and focused.

What Users Dislike

• Weak async support: While Scrumpy allows async voting, it has no built-in deadline or reminder system. There are no notifications to prompt team members who haven't voted yet, and no way to close a session automatically. This makes Scrumpy poorly suited for distributed teams. Using it for async work is clunky compared to more advanced tools that have structure for async workflows.
• Limited features: Scrumpy does planning poker and nothing else. It lacks extras like capacity planning, reporting and analytics, AI assistance, or multi-team coordination. Teams looking for velocity charts, workload distribution, automatic note generation, or confidence voting will find Scrumpy lacking. It also won't help with different estimation techniques like Wideband Delphi or magic estimation.
• Doesn't scale well: As organizations grow, Scrumpy's minimal approach becomes a constraint. There's no user management, team administration, or persistent team tracking. Scrumpy sessions are essentially one-off rooms. With multiple teams and frequent sessions, there's no dashboard or overview to see all meetings for a certain team. Scrumpy is best for a single team or a small handful of teams—it doesn't work well for large enterprises.
• Jira-focused integration: Scrumpy's integrations are limited to Atlassian tools (Jira and Confluence) and a few developer platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps. If your organization uses something else for project tracking like Azure Boards or Trello, you won't get deep integration. This is a known trade-off since Scrumpy started as a Jira add-on.

Pricing

Scrumpy's main appeal is that the core planning poker app is completely free. You can create unlimited sessions with unlimited people, and you get access to all integrations like Jira, Confluence, and Slack at no cost. 

If you want Jira integration, that is, the tool appears directly inside Jira instead of being a separate tab, Scrumpy offers a paid app through the Atlassian Marketplace. It’s free for the first ten users and then charges $1 for each additional user.

7. Planning Poker live: PlanningPoker.live is an estimation tool designed for remote and hybrid teams. You can run planning poker sessions directly inside video calls on Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Webex using browser extensions. This means everyone stays on the call while a sidebar shows the voting interface no need to switch tabs or apps. Alternatively, you can use the standalone web app or Slack integration. To use this app for async poker, you create a room and share a link, and your team members join easily. 

Planning PokerLive integrates with Jira and Linear, so you can import issues directly into the session. After your discusses and pick an estimate, the story points automatically save back to your project management tool with one click. Planning Poker Live supports both real-time voting (where everyone votes at the same time and results show instantly) and async mode (where people vote on their own schedule). This flexibility makes it convenient for teams across different time zones.

What Users Like

• Easy to use and accurate estimates:  Alot of users say that the interface is easy and straightforward, which helps them focus on discussion rather than finding their way around the tool. Votes are also clearly visualized with averages and consensus indicators. The app even shows a "happy robot" icon when everyone agrees on a number, which gives teams confidence in their estimates.
  
  
• Seamless integrations: The biggest appeal is how well it works inside video meetings. The Jira and Linear integration is also excellent. You can pull in issues directly and push story points back instantly, eliminating manual copy-paste work that other tools require.
  
  
• No barriers for participants: Anyone can join a session just by clicking a link. There’s no sign-up or payment required. Only the host needs an account. This makes it easy to invite product owners, designers, or other stakeholders without worrying about licensing costs.
  
  
• Smart pricing model: The credit-based system appeals to many teams because you only pay for what you use. If your team does planning poker occasionally, you might spend almost nothing. Heavy users can switch to an unlimited plan. This is different from traditional per-user pricing and feels more fair to some users.
  
  
• Good design and fun features: The UI is minimalist with thoughtful touches like dark mode, a "throw stuff" feature for virtual reactions, and the smiling robot when the team reaches consensus. One reviewer said, "Thanks to this app our meetings are even fun now!" It's rare to hear that about an estimation tool.
  
  
• Smart features: Planning Poker Live includes anonymous voting to reduce bias, async mode for distributed teams, a PokerBot that generates AI summaries of meetings, and the ability to save and export session history for future reference.
  
  
• Active developer support: The tool is open-source and the developer is engaged with the community. Users appreciate the quick improvements and direct communication. They say it feels like you're working with a team that actually listens.
  
  

What Users Dislike

• Credit-based pricing can be confusing: While flexible, the pay-per-session model isn't typical. You have to monitor your credit balance and remember to top-up or switch to unlimited when running low. Some teams prefer simple, flat subscriptions. Procurement teams might also find this approach less straightforward than standard licensing.
  
  
• Ads on the free tier: The free welcome credits come with ads in the interface, which can feel unprofessional in a work setting. Ads disappear once you purchase credits, but they're there initially.
  
  
• Estimation only: Planning Poker Live focuses solely on planning poker. It doesn't do retrospectives, task management, or other agile ceremonies. If you're looking for one tool to replace several, this won't do it. You'll still need separate tools for retros or capacity planning.
  
  
• Newer product with security questions: As a smaller, newer vendor, some enterprise users have concerns about data security and compliance. While the company is GDPR compliant and ISO 27001 certified, the tool is cloud-only without SSO integration or self-hosted options. Large organizations with strict security requirements might see this as a limitation.
  
  
• No self-hosted or offline option: If you need an on-premise solution for a closed network, Planning Poker Live won't work since it's a hosted web service. This isn't a common complaint, but it's a limitation for certain industries or setups.
  
  

Pricing

Planning Poker Live uses a unique credit-based system where only the person running the session pays. Everyone else joins for free. Here's how it works:

Free Starter Credits

When you sign up, you get 5 free credits to try out the tool. On top of that, you get 1 free credit each month just for having an account. Each credit covers one planning poker session. This means you can run at least one session every month at no cost. The downside is that your starter credits expire after 2 months if you don't use them, and they come with ads in the app. But for small teams that only estimate occasionally, this free tier could cover most of your needs.

Pay-Per-Use Bundles

If you need more sessions, you can buy credit packs. The bundles are:

• Small Bundle: 7 credits for $9 — good for a team that does planning every other week (covers about 3–4 months)
  
  
• Large Bundle: 15 credits for $17 — aimed at teams that plan weekly (covers about a quarter)
  
  
• Mega Bundle: 50 credits for $50 — economical for multiple teams or very frequent sessions (could last a small organization a full year)
  
  

Purchased credits never expire, and once you buy any bundle, ads disappear from the app. This pay-per-use approach means a team doing weekly estimation could spend just $17 every few months.

Unlimited Subscription

For heavy users, there's an unlimited subscription option where you pay a fixed fee for unlimited sessions. Organizations with many teams can also set up shared credit pools so multiple people can run sessions without each person buying their own credits.

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Conclusion

Estimation is a critical part of sprint planning but it often gets derailed by time zones and meetings that drag on.

That’s why async planning poker tools like Quely has become essential for modern Agile teams. Quely is built to meet the unique needs of distributed teams, offering seamless Jira integration, Fibonacci sequence estimation, task duration planning, and dedicated spaces for work item discussions. By capturing every team member’s input asynchronously, Quely helps you estimate with precision, plan smarter, and avoid unnecessary meetings.

If you’re ready to streamline your estimation process, align your team, and focus on what matters most, Quely is the async planning poker tool designed to help Agile teams thrive. Try it today and make your next sprint the easiest one yet!

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