As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates Microsoft Whiteboard 2/5 and Miro 3.5/5 in Online Whiteboard. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Microsoft Whiteboard and 6 pick Miro. Miro scores higher on 6 of 6 criteria (Integrations, import & export, Security, AI controls & deployment, Workshop facilitation & participation, plus 3 more). Provenance — Microsoft Whiteboard: Rest of world, United States; Miro: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The lean runs one way: 6 judges to 0 for Miro on seven of seven criteria, and the six weighted totals span 6.4 to 7.3 for Miro against 3.3 to 4.4 for Microsoft Whiteboard. Miro's verdicts score 7 to 8 on facilitation, access and administration, and security and deployment — guests join by QR code or link, and an administrator can block AI outright. Microsoft Whiteboard's best criterion is access and administration at 6 to 7, boards as OneDrive files under retention, legal hold, DLP and eDiscovery. The genuine splits sit inside the sovereignty verdicts: Miro spans 5 to 7, the San Francisco contracting party and US subprocessors against a published data processing agreement with Dutch-law EU Standard Contractual Clauses and EU residency on every plan; Microsoft Whiteboard spans 2 to 4, from the US provider entity to the EU Data Boundary commitment for qualifying tenants.
Choose Microsoft Whiteboard if
You need boards to live as files in the creator's OneDrive under your existing retention policies, legal hold, DLP and basic eDiscovery — access and administration is Microsoft Whiteboard's top criterion, scored 6 to 7.
Your tenant relies on Microsoft Entra conditional access, audit logging and a tenant-wide on/off toggle — each is named in the access and administration verdict.
You must be able to transfer a departing user's boards — named in the same access and administration verdict.
You are a qualifying tenant that counts the EU Data Boundary commitment — the higher end of Microsoft Whiteboard's 2-to-4 sovereignty band rests on it.
You compare offers on capability rather than a published price — no per-user price is published and pricing transparency is excluded from Microsoft Whiteboard's totals.
Choose Miro if
You run sessions where guests must join by QR code or link with no account — Miro's facilitation verdict scores 7 to 8.
Your administrator must be able to block AI outright — Miro's security and deployment verdict names that switch and scores 7 to 8.
You need SAML single sign-on, SCIM provisioning and Enterprise audit-to-SIEM — named in Miro's access and administration verdict, scored 7 to 8.
You need a published data processing agreement with Dutch-law EU Standard Contractual Clauses and EU residency on every plan — the higher end of Miro's 5-to-7 sovereignty band.
You rely on integrations — the lean there is 6 judges to 0 for Miro, though the captured pages give different figures for the count (over 160 on one, 250+ on others).
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Microsoft 365 Admin
Runs Microsoft 365 and Teams for a machine builder with 2,400 staff and found 600 free whiteboard accounts on company addresses, boards shared publicly by link among them. Has to decide between the whiteboard that comes with Teams and a licensed one. Wants single sign-on, SCIM, domain capture of the existing accounts, sharing rules set once for everyone, audit logs in the SIEM, retention rules, and an AI that can be switched off until legal has read the terms.
Microsoft Whiteboard
Miro
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Canvas, templates & content
Microsoft Whiteboard
The captured pages document an infinite canvas designed for pen, touch and keyboard, with sticky notes, inking and customizable templates for meetings, plus a Copilot that visualizes, categorizes and summarizes thoughts — the note-clustering AI I asked about, though its data use is only covered by Microsoft's general privacy terms. We found no public information on connectors, frames, embedded files or video, tables and diagrams, centrally managed organization templates, or documented limits on large boards. A solid workshop canvas, but the structured-content side is undocumented.
Miro
The captured pages describe an infinite canvas with sticky notes, 7,000+ templates, flowcharts, ERDs and UML and sequence diagrams on one board, embedded video and audio walkthroughs, and comments with tagging on any element. We found no public information on tables, kanban, mind maps, search across boards, large-board limits, or AI clustering with its data use stated.
Workshop facilitation & participation
Microsoft Whiteboard
Real-time collaboration and running the board inside Teams meetings, chats and channels are documented, with admin-controlled anonymous meeting access, external users limited to meeting-only collaboration, and a read-only mode. The help centre lists an accessibility tools section, but we found no public information on timers, voting, a private or anonymous note mode, bringing participants to the facilitator's view, breakout areas, or per-session participant limits. That covers the Teams-meeting scenario well, not the facilitated-workshop toolkit.
Miro
Guests join by QR code or link with no account and no installs, there is a private and anonymous mode, a timer, dot voting and polls with instant results, breakout frames, bring-everyone-to-me, presentation mode through frames, locking of diagram sections, and boards running inside Teams meetings, with participant limits stated (up to 50 for Engage activities) and an accessibility claim. A published conformance report and session summaries with their data use stated would be needed to go higher.
Integrations, import & export
Microsoft Whiteboard
Documented connections are all inside the Microsoft estate: Teams meetings, chats and channels, OneNote, Loop components, Surface Hub and Teams Rooms devices, administrator PowerShell cmdlets, and boards stored as files in the creator's OneDrive. We found no public information on export to PDF, image or CSV, on a REST API or webhooks, on import from other whiteboards, or on links to Jira, Azure DevOps, Slack, Zoom or Confluence. Without a documented export path another tool can open, I can only credit the integrations, not basic interchange.
Miro
A documented REST API, a JavaScript web SDK, Live Embed via iFrame, oEmbed, a marketplace with private apps, over 250 corporate tools, Jira and Confluence, Microsoft 365 with Teams, and Visio and Lucidchart import are all shown. Export is thin in the capture: the terms promise export "using the export features described in the Documentation" within 30 days of term end, but no PDF, image or CSV export, no editable-format export and no webhooks are described.
Sharing, permissions & administration
Microsoft Whiteboard
This is the strong side for my shadow-account cleanup: boards are files in the creator's OneDrive under existing retention policies, legal hold, DLP, basic eDiscovery and audit logging of create, modify, share and delete, with ownership transfer when someone leaves and a tenant-wide toggle, Entra enterprise app and conditional access on top. Sharing is organization-wide links or specific people, external sharing outside Teams meetings is not supported, and anonymous meeting access is one PowerShell setting — though the default sharing-link type is only planned, and sensitivity labels, analytics and fuller eDiscovery are listed as future. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, domain capture, or feeding the audit stream to a SIEM.
Miro
SCIM and just-in-time provisioning, SAML single sign-on demonstrated with Microsoft Entra ID, Company/User/Content admin roles, central internal and external sharing controls, guardrails that stop high-sensitivity boards being shared publicly, audit logs with SIEM integration, automated retention, eDiscovery and classification labels are all evidenced, with single sign-on from the Business plan and audit-to-SIEM Enterprise-only. The captured pages do not show domain capture of existing shadow accounts, nor transfer of boards when a person leaves.
Security, AI controls & deployment
Microsoft Whiteboard
SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and EU Model Clauses are listed, DLP and eDiscovery reach OneDrive-stored boards, and GCC, GCC High and Intune deployment give me options — nothing European, nothing customer-managed. We found no public information on encryption for whiteboard content, a dedicated switch to turn Copilot off, stated deletion periods, or works-council statements, and the German privacy statement says Microsoft may use data to develop and train its AI models, with customer agreements stated to take precedence over that policy. Until legal clears that clause, my only documented lever is the tenant-wide Whiteboard toggle.
Miro
256-bit AES at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit, customer-managed encryption keys hosted in the customer's own AWS account, AI an administrator can block completely on boards at chosen classification levels, prompt blocking and moderation filters, AI providers named with locations (Anthropic and ElevenLabs in the United States), AI data handling and training restrictions, discovery of PII, PCI and PHI on boards, and permanent deletion on account deletion are all stated. We found no public information on an on-premises or private-cloud edition, on what managers can see of individual activity, or on works council materials.
European sovereignty
Microsoft Whiteboard
The declared provider is Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, and the German imprint states outright that Microsoft Deutschland GmbH is not the provider; the EU Data Boundary documents EU datacenter countries, but only for qualifying tenants, excludes Multi-Geo customers and admits limited transfers outside the boundary, while the privacy statement says personal data may be stored in the United States and any jurisdiction where Microsoft or its affiliates operate. Subprocessors appear only as unnamed affiliates and vendors, and we found no public information on a published data processing agreement or on where AI processing happens, though SOC 2, ISO 27001, EU Model Clauses and the Data Privacy Framework are stated. Conditional EU residency with a US contracting entity and an unnamed chain is real, but it is not a chain I can hand to our data protection officer.
Miro
The contracting entity is RealtimeBoard Inc. of San Francisco, with a Berlin affiliate named in the imprint that an order may identify and an EU representative in Amsterdam; EU data residency is on every plan on named AWS infrastructure, and a published data processing agreement with Standard Contractual Clauses, Data Privacy Framework certification and audit rights covers transfers. The listed subprocessors for AI, captions, email and support — Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Braze and Gainsight — are all United States, and the privacy policy warns that data may be transferred to and processed in the US, which keeps this short of the top levels.
Pricing transparency
Microsoft Whiteboard
No price appears anywhere on the captured pages — not for Whiteboard itself, which is enabled by default for applicable Microsoft 365 tenants, nor for the Microsoft 365 plans it ships with; the only commercial terms are one-month free trials that auto-convert to a 12-month paid subscription with a credit card required. The applicable subscription fee is never stated, and we found no public information on seat minimums or VAT treatment. I cannot compute an annual cost from public pages.
Miro
Free at €0, Starter at €8/month per member, billed yearly, and Business at €20/month per member, billed yearly, are public together with per-tier limits such as 50 AI credits per member per month, MCP calls per day, and the plan gating of single sign-on and audit-to-SIEM; Enterprise is custom pricing from 30 members, and classification, key management, lifecycle management and eDiscovery appear only as unpriced "Paid add-on". Guest and viewer counting, free-plan board limits and VAT treatment are not described, so the real annual cost cannot be computed from public pages alone.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Microsoft Whiteboard
Miro
Legal entity
Incorporated in US
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates Miro higher: 3.5/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Microsoft Whiteboard and 6 pick Miro. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Microsoft Whiteboard or Miro European?
Microsoft Whiteboard is not European by provenance (Rest of world, United States). Miro is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Where do Microsoft Whiteboard and Miro store customer data?
Per the vendors’ own pages as captured — Microsoft Whiteboard: its pages as captured do not say. Miro: Default not stated; pages mention the EU, the US, Australia and Japan.
Do Microsoft Whiteboard and Miro have a free plan?
As of 1 Nov 2026, Miro’s own pages state a free plan; Microsoft Whiteboard’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.