Is Storyvote really free? What free means here, and why

9 October 2026 · 5 min read

"Free" on the internet usually comes with a catch: a player limit, a trial that runs out, ads, or your data quietly paying the bill. Storyvote has none of these. This article explains what free means here, how you can check it yourself in two minutes, and why Storyvote is free at all.

The short answer

• No price. There are no paid plans, no premium features and no trials.
• No limits. Any number of rooms, players and stories.
• No sign-up. No account, no email address, no password.
• No payment details. You will never be asked for a credit card.
• No ads and no tracking. No analytics, no advertising, no third-party code.

That isn't a launch offer. The Terms of Service state it in writing: there are no fees, paid plans, trials or in-app purchases, and Storyvote won't start charging.

How "free" products usually make money

Running a website costs money, so it's fair to ask who pays. These are the usual answers, and how Storyvote compares:

Check it yourself

You don't have to take our word for it. Every claim above can be checked in a browser:

1. Create a room. Open the create-room page: it asks for a room name and your name, nothing else. No email, no password, no card.
2. Look for a price. There's no pricing page, no "upgrade" button and no feature marked "Pro". Every option is available in every room.
3. Count the cookies. In your browser's developer tools (Application or Storage tab), you'll find one cookie, storyvote.guest. It holds a random participant ID and your display name, and it disappears when you close the browser. There are no analytics or advertising cookies.
4. Watch the network. In the Network tab, every request goes to Storyvote itself. The site sends a Content Security Policy that tells your browser to run only Storyvote's own scripts, so ad and tracking scripts couldn't load even by accident.
5. End the session. When the host ends a session, the room, names, stories and votes are deleted immediately. Rooms nobody ends are deleted automatically 7 days after they were last used.

The Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Security page describe all of this in detail.

So why is it free?

It's a project, not a business

Storyvote is a non-commercial project run by one person. It was built to make estimation easy for agile teams, not to sell anything. There are no investors expecting a return and no sales team that needs leads, so there's no reason to put features behind a paywall.

Planning poker shouldn't need a purchase order

Planning poker is a simple ritual: pick a card, reveal, talk. A team should be able to start in the middle of a meeting, not after a budget request, a licence count or an admin creating accounts. Free and sign-up-free means anyone on the team can open a room on the spot, and anyone with the link can join.

It's built to be cheap to run

Every design decision keeps the running costs small. There are no accounts to manage. A room stores only names, stories and votes, and it's deleted after use. There are no third-party services to pay for besides hosting. The result is a small hosting bill, which the project's operator covers.

Collecting less is safer for you, too

Data that is never collected can't leak. A product funded by your data has a reason to keep as much of it as possible, for as long as possible. Storyvote has the opposite incentive: the less it stores, the cheaper and safer it is.

What you get for free

Everything. There is no other version. Every room includes:

• Hidden votes and a reveal countdown, so nobody anchors on the first number, plus fully anonymous voting if you want it.
• Fibonacci, modified Fibonacci, T-shirt sizes and powers of 2, or your own custom cards.
• Per-discipline estimates, such as frontend, backend and QA, with the story's total added up.
• A stories panel with ticket keys and a running total of saved estimates.
• Facilitators who can run the game alongside the host.
• Password-protected rooms.
• Unlimited players, rooms and stories, on desktop and phone.

What free doesn't mean

To be fair about it, free has some honest limits:

• No service-level guarantee. Storyvote is run with care, but there's no contract promising uptime. See the Terms of Service.
• No long-term storage. Rooms are deleted when they end or after 7 days, so copy your final estimates into your issue tracker.
• No integrations. Storyvote doesn't connect to Jira or Azure DevOps. You type or paste a ticket key next to each story, and Storyvote never needs access to your backlog.

Will it stay free?

Yes. Not charging is part of the Terms of Service, not a marketing line. Storyvote uses no analytics or advertising today. If that ever changed, the Privacy Policy says it would be updated first, and you would be asked for consent where the law requires it. Nothing about using Storyvote is hidden from you.

How you can help

Storyvote doesn't need your money, but it does grow with your help:

• Share it with other teams who estimate together.
• Tell us what to improve. Bugs, ideas and rough edges are all welcome at storyvoteapp@gmail.com.

← All articles