Carv: AI assistant for recruiters that records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews and intake calls, then drafts documents and updates the ATS. Parabol: Free, open-source agile meeting tool for retrospectives, sprint poker, and standups with automated meeting summaries and AI topic grouping. Which one wins depends on your platform mix, budget, and how hands-off you want notes to be.
How Hosiqo compares and tests toolsFinal recommendation
Shortlist Carv when transcribing and summarizing candidate interviews hands-free matters most, and Parabol when facilitating sprint poker estimation sessions matters most. Try them side by side on real calls before deciding — needs vary by team.
AI assistant for recruiters that records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews and intake calls, then drafts documents and updates the ATS.
Free, open-source agile meeting tool for retrospectives, sprint poker, and standups with automated meeting summaries and AI topic grouping.
Carv is an AI platform for recruiters that records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews, intake calls, and hiring meetings so recruiters can stay present in the conversation rather than typing notes. During candidate interviews it captures a full verbatim transcript, flags any planned questions that went unanswered at the end of the call, and uses the transcript to auto-generate a candidate profile. For intake calls with hiring managers, Carv captures the requirements discussed and can automatically draft a job description in the recruiter's own style and tone of voice. Beyond note-taking, Carv positions itself as an agentic recruiting assistant that takes over repetitive administrative work, from document creation to updating the applicant tracking system, and includes an AI companion that carries context about how the user works. The platform integrates with ATS and HR systems and offers analytics and insights across recruiting activity. By turning recruiting conversations into structured notes, profiles, and documents, Carv aims to cut down on coordination and admin time so recruiters can focus on connecting with candidates and hiring managers. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Parabol is a free, open-source platform built for facilitating agile meetings, with a particular focus on sprint retrospectives alongside estimation (sprint poker) and team check-ins. Its retrospective experience follows a structured reflect, group, vote, discuss, and action workflow compatible with popular formats like Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls, and Mad/Sad/Glad, plus custom templates. Facilitators get multiplayer drag-and-drop cards, live task editing, timers, dynamic agenda items, discussion threads, emoji reactions, and a large library of retrospective formats and icebreaker questions. At the end of each retro, Parabol automatically generates a meeting summary that rolls up notes and tasks, posts them to a team timeline, and delivers them to attendees via email or Slack so next steps are clear. Its AI capabilities include automatic naming of grouped card clusters and AI topic summaries to speed up synthesis during retros. Parabol integrates with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Mattermost, and because the codebase is publicly available on GitHub, teams can self-host or review how it works. It is used by hundreds of thousands of people across distributed and remote teams. Pricing varies by plan. Check the official website for current pricing.
Best suited for
Carv is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium); Parabol is a free tier with paid upgrades (freemium). Always confirm current pricing on each vendor's site before buying.
| Feature | Carv | Parabol |
|---|---|---|
| Core capability | Records, transcribes, and takes notes during interviews, intakes, and meetings | Structured retrospective workflow (reflect, group, vote, discuss, action) |
| Standout feature | Full verbatim interview transcription with unanswered-question flagging | Automated meeting summaries delivered via email and Slack |
| Team usage | Auto-generated candidate profiles from interview transcripts | AI auto-naming of grouped cards and AI topic summaries |
| Integrations | Automatic job description drafting from intake calls | Sprint poker estimation and team standup/check-in templates |
| Languages & capture | ATS and HR system integrations with automated updates | Large library of retrospective formats and icebreaker questions |
| Best-fit workflow | AI companion that retains context on the recruiter's workflow | Integrations with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Mattermost |
Carv
Choose Carv if you need transcribing and summarizing candidate interviews hands-free — strengths include captures both candidate interviews and hiring-manager intake calls.
Parabol
Choose Parabol if you need running sprint retrospectives for remote and distributed agile teams — strengths include free and open-source with the option to self-host.
Carv
Parabol
It depends on your workflow. Carv is strong for transcribing and summarizing candidate interviews hands-free, while Parabol is strong for running sprint retrospectives for remote and distributed agile teams. Both transcribe and summarize meetings.
Carv is a free tier with paid upgrades and Parabol is a free tier with paid upgrades. Check each vendor's pricing page for the latest plans and free-tier limits.
You can — some teams pair them when each covers a different part of the meeting workflow.
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