Looking at Miro alternatives?
On September 10, 2026, Bending Spoons signed an agreement to acquire Miro. If that has you thinking about where your sessions live, here is the most useful thing we can offer you. Not a demo. Not a trial you have to figure out alone.
Send us a session you actually have to run. We'll build it in Kolab for you.
Pick something real from your calendar. A workshop, a cohort kickoff, a strategy day, a retro. Send us the agenda and whatever boards you already have. We will build the whole thing in Kolab, walk you through it on video, and hand it over. You run it. There is no charge for the first one and no card required.
Here's exactly what happens: you send the agenda, we reply within one business day with any questions, and within about a week you get a built Kolab space plus a short video walking you through it. Then you run it, or you don't. Either way the space is yours to keep.
What actually happened
The facts, without the speculation
A lot of the commentary has been guesswork. Here is what is on the public record.
$1.355B
Enterprise value of the agreement Bending Spoons announced on September 10, 2026, in an all-cash transaction.
Q4 2026
Expected close, subject to regulatory approval. Until then both companies continue to operate independently.
~90%
Share of Miro's roughly $600M in annual recurring revenue that comes from business and enterprise accounts. Worth knowing if you are an individual facilitator wondering where you sit in the new owner's priorities.
See the difference
Fifty people into breakout groups, without clicking a thing
This is the part that is hard to explain in a comparison table. In Kolab the canvas, the video and the breakouts are the same room, so people move themselves instead of waiting to be assigned. Two minutes will tell you more than the rest of this page.
Real Kolab spaces. Participants join by link in the browser, with no account and nothing to install.
Read this part before you switch
Kolab is not a drop-in replacement for Miro
We would rather tell you this now than have you find out three weeks in. Miro is a canvas. Kolab is a room. Those are different products, and which one you need depends on what you actually do.
Stay on Miro if this is you
- Most of your board work happens asynchronously between meetings
- You depend on deep Jira, Asana, or Azure DevOps integrations
- Your org has standardized on Miro across hundreds of non-facilitator seats
- You need the full third party marketplace and app ecosystem
- Your sessions run inside Teams or Zoom and that is not negotiable
Look hard at Kolab if this is you
- You facilitate live, and the session is the product
- You are paying for Zoom plus Miro plus Mentimeter plus a breakout workaround
- You run cohorts, fellowships, or programs that repeat on a cycle
- Participants get lost switching tabs, and energy drops every time they do
- You want the space to still be there between sessions, not rebuilt each time
Why people move
One room instead of four tabs
The reason facilitators end up on Kolab is rarely a feature. It is that the stack they have been holding together stops needing to be held together. Most people running live sessions are paying for a video tool, a board, a polling tool, and some workaround for breakouts, then spending the first ten minutes of every session getting forty people into the right places.
In Kolab those are one thing. The canvas is in the room with the video. Breakouts are places on a map that people walk into rather than assignments you administer. Spatial audio means a group of five can talk without anyone being muted or moved. Your agenda, timers and templates sit in the facilitator's view, not in a second window you are alt-tabbing to.
The compounding part is that spaces persist. A cohort that meets for twelve weeks comes back to the same room with last week's boards still on the wall, instead of a fresh empty link every Tuesday. If you run programs rather than one-off workshops, that is the difference that shows up in how people behave by week four.
And the prep gets shorter. 200+ templates designed to be run live, plus Kola, an AI co-facilitator that can see your canvas and help you build and adapt the session while it is happening.
Side by side
Where each one is stronger
Written as honestly as we can manage. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
| Kolab | Miro | |
|---|---|---|
| Infinite canvas | Yes, built for live use | Best in class, deeply mature |
| Async work between sessions | Lighter. Boards persist, but Kolab is built around the live session | Very strong. Comments, integrations, huge marketplace |
| Video and presence | Video is the room. Everyone is visible on the canvas and presence drives how the session moves | Video calling on the canvas, added more recently. Many teams still run the call in Zoom or Teams alongside |
| Spatial audio and mingling | Yes. Participants move and conversations happen naturally | No |
| Breakouts | Native. Facilitators can walk between groups | Usually handled by your video tool, separate from the board |
| Facilitator controls | Agenda, timers, presence signals and pulling everyone to a board, in a dedicated facilitator view | Timers, voting and facilitation tools on the canvas, with polls and interactive formats in Miro Engage |
| AI in the room | Kola, an AI co-facilitator that sees the canvas and helps you run the session | AI features on the canvas |
| Facilitation templates | 200+ curated, designed to be run live rather than filled in | Enormous community library |
| Pricing model | Per facilitator, or per program for organizations | Per seat |
| Ownership | Independent and founder owned | Acquisition by Bending Spoons pending, expected Q4 2026 |
Bringing your work across
Getting your boards across, honestly
Copy and paste from Miro into Kolab works, and it is getting better. It is not magic yet, and we would rather set that expectation now than have you hit it mid-migration.
Export your work now
Whatever you decide about Kolab, get your boards out of any tool you do not own. Good practice regardless, and worth doing this week.
Paste handles the simple stuff
Sticky notes and text copy across well. Frames, connectors and heavily designed layouts do not come over cleanly yet. We are actively working on it.
We rebuild the complicated ones by hand
For anything involved, we do not rely on paste. We rebuild the board with you, and that is included in the free session build rather than being an extra.
Testimonials
What our users say
For organizations, not just individual facilitators
Reviewing a Miro renewal for your whole organization?
Different conversation, and worth having properly. If you run cohorts, fellowships, accelerators or training programs, you are probably paying per seat for a tool that most of those seats only touch during live sessions. That is the part worth looking at before you re-sign.
Priced per program, not per seat
Grant and program funded teams budget by program. Our organizational pricing is built to match how the money actually arrives.
Security review, handled
We have a data protection and privacy overview written for IT and procurement, ready to send the day you ask for it.
We build your first program with you
Not a sandbox login. We design and build one real program cycle alongside your team so you are evaluating the actual thing.
Trusted by teams worldwide
Got it. We're on this.
Someone from our team will reply within one business day to ask any questions we need, then we'll get building. In the meantime, the easiest way to feel how a Kolab session actually runs is to sit in on one: see what's coming up.
Not ready to hand over a session yet?
Fair enough. Come sit in on a live one instead. We run open sessions for facilitators most weeks, you join as a participant, and you get to feel how a Kolab room actually works with no sales conversation attached. It is the lowest commitment way to answer the only question that matters.
Questions we get from people making this decision
What does Kolab cost?
It depends on whether you are an independent facilitator or an organization running programs, because those are genuinely different products. Tell us which you are in the form above and we will send you the right number rather than making you guess from a table.
Do I have to leave Miro to try this?
No. Run one session in Kolab alongside whatever you use now, then decide. Switching tools is a decision worth making after you have felt the difference, not before.
Do my participants need accounts?
No. They join by link, in the browser, with nothing to install. That matters when you are facilitating for an org whose IT team blocks new software.
Could Kolab get acquired too?
Fair question to ask anyone right now. Kolab is independent and founder owned, and we are not looking for an exit. What we can also tell you is that your boards, transcripts and session content are exportable at any time, which is the protection that actually holds regardless of who owns what.
I came from Butter. Is this the same thing?
Not the same, but you will recognize the DNA. Several of the facilitators in our network ran their practices on Butter and now help shape Kolab. If you want to talk to one of them before you talk to us, say so in the form and we will connect you.
What about security and data protection?
We have a security and privacy overview you can send to your IT or procurement team. Ask for it in the form, or read the summary at getkolab.ai/security.