Planning poker for agile teams

Planning Poker or Scrum Poker is a collaborative estimation technique used by agile teams to estimate the effort required for user stories and tasks. Team members use cards with numbers to vote on complexity, promoting discussion and consensus-building for more accurate sprint planning.

A Planning Poker room is your team's virtual space for estimation sessions. Create a room, share the permanent URL, and start voting on user stories. After each round, you'll see the average, agreement level, and other metrics to help set the final estimate in your project management tool. Rooms created with an email login support unlimited players, rooms created as a guest hold up to 10 people, and every room stays active for future sessions.

We support multiple voting scales, including the popular Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…), T‑shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL), Powers of Two, and more. Choose the one that best fits your team's estimation style and project needs, or use Spooky Planning's exclusive feature to create and edit your own scales!

Planning Poker promotes transparency, reduces estimation bias, and ensures all team members contribute to the estimation process. It helps teams gain shared understanding of work complexity and makes sprint planning more accurate and collaborative.

By having everyone vote simultaneously and then discuss their reasoning, Planning Poker encourages open dialogue and knowledge sharing. Team members can challenge assumptions, share insights, and learn from each other's perspectives, leading to better estimates and stronger team alignment.

You can estimate any work item: user stories, technical tasks, bug fixes, epics, or research spikes. Planning Poker works for any item that needs effort estimation for planning purposes, making it versatile for different types of agile work.

By having everyone vote anonymously first, Planning Poker prevents anchoring bias where early estimates influence others. The discussion phase allows team members to challenge assumptions and share different perspectives, leading to more balanced and accurate estimates. Spooky Planning offers an exclusive Hidden Keyboard feature, letting presenters share their screen without revealing their vote.

Use Planning Poker during sprint planning, backlog refinement, or whenever you need to estimate work items. It's most effective when the whole team participates and you have user stories that need effort estimation before committing to a sprint.

Spooky Planning works on all modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) and is fully responsive on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. No app installation required - it works directly in your browser.

Yes, your data security and privacy are our top priorities. We do not track or collect your personal information beyond what is necessary for service functionality. We only collect anonymous metrics regarding overall website usage to improve our service. You can start as a guest without registering, with every feature available; the only difference is that rooms created as a guest hold up to 10 people until an email is added. If you do create an account, you can request deletion of all your information at any time. The service runs on Cloudflare Workers with data stored in Cloudflare D1, and we operate under EU data protection rules (GDPR). We maintain transparent history of all changes and updates in our Changelog.

Spooky Planning stands out as the ultimate Planning Poker tool because free accounts get the full experience: unlimited sessions and rooms, unlimited players once you log in with email (guest rooms hold up to 10 people), plus permanent URLs, session history, and even exclusive features like editable scales and the Hidden Keyboard (so presenters can share their screen without revealing their vote).

There's no setup hassle, no ads, no email needed to start, and no core feature locked behind a paywall. While other tools charge $30+ a month for stripped‑down versions, Spooky Planning gives agile teams everything they need for estimation, with an optional membership for extras like priority support, feature requests, and beta access.

Yes! Studies show that Planning Poker consistently produces more accurate estimates than individual estimation or traditional group discussions. The combination of independent thinking followed by collaborative discussion leverages collective intelligence while minimizing cognitive biases.

Haugen, N. C., & Moløkken‑Østvold, K. (2006). An empirical study of using Planning Poker for user story estimation. In AGILE 2006 (AGILE’06 Conference) (pp. 23‑31). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/AGILE.2006.16