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 Workshop Facilitator
Freelance facilitator and agile coach who runs three to four remote workshops a week for clients from car suppliers to city utilities, most of them with participants who have never used the tool and will not create an account. Builds the board the evening before from their own templates. Needs guests in by link, a timer, anonymous brainstorming, dot voting and a way to pull twenty people to the same frame, and a client who asks where the board is stored before the session starts.
Microsoft Whiteboard
Miro
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Canvas, templates & content
Microsoft Whiteboard
The captured pages show a free-form infinite canvas built for pen, touch and keyboard, sticky notes, inking, customizable templates, real-time collaboration and a Copilot that categorizes and summarizes ideas, with whiteboard files indexed for keyword search in OneDrive. We found no public information on shapes and connectors, frames, embedded images and files, tables or saving my own organisation templates, which is what I need to build a retrospective board the evening before. Device coverage spans web, desktop and mobile clients plus Surface Hub and Teams Rooms.
Miro
The infinite canvas, sticky notes, frames and 7,000+ templates cover everything I build the evening before a session, and the diagram page (flowcharts, ERDs, UML), the mind-map templates and video/audio walkthroughs embedded on the board go well beyond basics. What holds me back from the top band is that search across boards, tables and kanban on the board, and stated limits for large boards are not described on the pages I read.
Workshop facilitation & participation
Microsoft Whiteboard
Real-time collaboration inside Teams meetings, chats and channels is well documented, and anonymous participants can interact with the board during a meeting when the tenant allows it — my account-free guests work, but only meeting by meeting, with no share link, not in Teams channel meetings, and sharing outside the organisation outside a meeting is documented as not supported at this time. Links created in meetings or channel tabs reach anyone in the organisation. We found no public information on a timer, dot voting, anonymous brainstorming, bringing everyone to the facilitator's view, a presentation mode, locked objects or stated participant limits, though an accessibility-tools section exists in the help centre.
Miro
This is nearly my whole kit list: people join by QR code or link with no installs and no account, there is a timer, dot voting, polls anyone can answer from a phone, a private anonymous mode, Bring Everyone to Me, live reactions and breakout frames, plus presentation mode through frames and locking of sections. The gaps to the next band are real for me: a voting-results export, a session agenda or facilitator panel and a published accessibility report are not described, and the only stated participant figure is Engage activities up to 50 participants on Business and Enterprise.
Integrations, import & export
Microsoft Whiteboard
The board runs inside Teams meetings, chats and channels, is described alongside OneNote and Microsoft Loop components, and administrators manage it through a PowerShell module. We found no public information on export as PDF, image or CSV, import from other whiteboards, a public API or an editable export format — so I cannot confirm a client's board leaves the tool as a workshop report.
Miro
The REST API, Web SDK, live iFrame embed, a marketplace with private apps and a documented Visio and Lucidchart import give this a real ecosystem, with named Jira, Confluence, Slack and Microsoft 365 integrations. But no page I read names the export formats — only that customers may export their content using the export features in the documentation — and a Jira two-way sync and webhooks are not described, which matters when a client wants the workshop output handed over.
Sharing, permissions & administration
Microsoft Whiteboard
Administration is genuinely enterprise-grade: Whiteboard can be switched on or off for the whole tenant, anonymous meeting access is a PowerShell setting that must be enabled for every site, conditional access comes through Entra, and a leaver's boards can be transferred in bulk before the account is deleted. Because boards are files in the creator's OneDrive, retention policies, quota, legal hold, DLP, basic eDiscovery and audit logging of create, modify, share and delete all apply, with sensitivity labels planned. Sharing from the clients reaches specific people or anyone in the organisation, and we found no public information on per-board roles, SCIM provisioning or audit logs exportable to a SIEM.
Miro
SAML single sign-on on Business and Enterprise, SCIM with just-in-time provisioning, company/user/content admin roles, organisation-wide audit logs with SIEM integrations, sensitivity classification and automated retention are all documented, and departing employees lose access immediately. Domain capture, link expiry or password rules on shares, and what happens to a leaver's boards are not described on the captured pages.
Security, AI controls & deployment
Microsoft Whiteboard
The admin documentation lists SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and EU Model Clauses, privacy and diagnostic data are configurable, GCC and GCC High environments exist, and Windows deployment runs through Intune or Configuration Manager. The German privacy statement, however, says personal data may be used to develop and train AI models — the one question every client asks me about Copilot before a session. We found no public information on encryption in transit and at rest, an administrator switch for Copilot, stated deletion periods for boards and accounts, or a statement for works councils.
Miro
TLS 1.3 in transit and 256-bit AES at rest are stated, encryption keys can sit in the customer's own AWS account as a paid add-on, and AI is genuinely controllable — administrator switch-off, choice of model providers, prompt blocking and AI audit logging — with Anthropic in the United States named as an AI subprocessor and a note that AI features may share limited data with Microsoft. Deletion is promised but without a stated period, and an on-premises or private-cloud edition, what managers can see of individual activity, and a works-council statement are not described.
European sovereignty
Microsoft Whiteboard
The declared provider is Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, and the German legal notice states explicitly that Microsoft Deutschland GmbH is not the provider, while the privacy statement says personal data may be stored in the user's region, the United States and any jurisdiction where Microsoft, its affiliates or its service providers operate facilities, passing data to affiliates and unnamed vendors. An EU Data Boundary commitment exists but only for tenants that qualify — EU or EFTA sign-up, Multi-Geo customers excluded — and the same documentation acknowledges limited circumstances where customer data continues to be transferred outside the boundary. We found no public information on a published data processing agreement for Whiteboard or a named subprocessor list, so I cannot answer a city utility that asks where its boards sit.
Miro
The contracting entity is RealtimeBoard Inc. dba Miro in San Francisco under California law, with an EU representative in Amsterdam and a Berlin-registered Miro DACH GmbH imprint; boards run on named AWS infrastructure with EU data residency included on every plan, though no page states which region hosts a new account by default. The subprocessor list is published and every provider named on the trust page — AWS, Anthropic, Braze, Gainsight, ElevenLabs — is in the United States, with the published data processing agreement relying on EU Standard Contractual Clauses under Dutch law plus Data Privacy Framework certification, and ISO 27001 and SOC 2 stated. European hosting is available and the chain is transparent, but the contracting party and the named processing chain sit on the US side, so this is the answer I would hand a client who asks where the board is stored: EU possible, US by company.
Pricing transparency
Microsoft Whiteboard
The only pricing facts are one-month free trials of Microsoft 365 for home and Business Standard that auto-convert to a 12-month paid subscription, require a credit card and can be cancelled during the trial. We found no public information on any per-user price, tier structure, free-plan limits, guest counting or enterprise terms, so a client cannot compute what a workshop series would cost.
Miro
Free is €0, Starter €8/month per member billed yearly, Business €20/month per member billed yearly with 50 AI credits/member/month, Enterprise is "Custom pricing—from 30 members", and the plan matrix even lists MCP calls per day and which items are paid add-ons. But how guests and external participants are counted, the free plan's board limits, prices for the add-ons, and VAT treatment are not stated, so I cannot compute the annual cost of a workshop series with twenty non-account guests.
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.