Miro vs Mural Basic Interfaces and UX Flow
When you open Miro for the first time, it immediately throws you into a clean infinite canvas. There’s a vertical toolbar on the left that reminds me of design tools like Figma or Canva. You get sticky notes, shapes, connectors, and then a few AI-powered actions tucked under the usual menus. On a touchpad, zooming in and out feels smooth, but using a regular mouse — especially without a scroll wheel — can be oddly frustrating. I tested using only keyboard shortcuts, and while they’re decent, there’s no way to customize them inside the tool.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Now, Mural does something slightly different. Instead of making you start with a blank page, it pushes templates right away — even if you choose “Start from scratch.” It’s geared toward workflow structure from the get-go. The sidebar is chunkier; icons are bigger, probably for workshop facilitators who are screen sharing. If you like tidy icons and fast access to framing tools, you’ll appreciate it. But it’s slightly more click-intensive.
| Feature | Miro | Mural |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Canvas Action | Blank space, freeform | Template-driven |
| Toolbar Design | Slim, like design apps | Bold, easier to spot |
| Mouse Support Quality | Smooth but not customizable | More consistent with older setups |
To sum up, Mural tries to gently guide your hand while Miro leaves you to wander — which works only if your team is already aligned on the format.
Generative AI Brainstorming Features Compared
Both Miro and Mural now include some form of generative AI — typically used to auto-sort sticky notes, draft brainstorm structures, or suggest content. But here’s where things deviate pretty clearly.
When I tested Miro’s “AI Assistant” during a live retro meeting, I dropped in twenty or so multi-line notes typed in different styles (some were lists, some were rants, a few were just emojis). Miro grouped some of them with the label “Frustrations,” except it oddly threw in a sticky that read “🚀 good pacing.” Obviously not a frustration. The groupings improved when I removed the emojis and rewritten all the notes in full sentences — but that defeats the point of an assisted retro.
In Mural, the “AI Summarize” feature did slightly better. Using a template with pre-labeled quadrants (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For), I pasted in similar notes and asked the tool to summarize per quadrant. The output showed up as editable text blocks off to the side — not embedded in your notes, which helps if you’re screen sharing. The groupings weren’t perfect, but at least nothing felt weirdly misplaced.
The killer difference? Mural allows you to choose tone — casual, serious, or even questions. That meant I could click “Make this conversational,” and several dry notes were rewritten with light humor, which actually helped spark new comments.
The bottom line is, Mural’s AI took a more collaborative tone and had better feedback tools — while Miro focused on speed but made more classification mistakes under pressure.
Team Collaboration and Permissions Logic
With AI in brainstorming, real-time team handling gets complicated — especially when permissions aren’t granular. If you’re working in hybrid teams like mine, you’ll run into this often.
Miro offers visitor access without sign-up. This sounds great until someone pastes in contributions and your AI grouping tool fails to process them — because technically, they’re anonymous users with restricted comment rights. For instance, someone pasted bullet points as comments directly on a shape, but Miro’s “Smart Clustering” ignored it. You’re stuck unless the guest converts to a registered user.
Mural does ask users to sign up by default, which some teams find clunky. But here’s why it might be worth it: every sticky, text box, or edit gets tracked. That means if an AI transform fails, I can actually trace who triggered it and what context they were working in. This makes post-session editing way more reliable. Also, Mural lets you adjust view-only vs. edit mode live in-session, which saved us during a messy async feedback loop.
Under the hood, both apps have automation to convert text into categories, but they behave differently depending on ownership:
- Miro: Guest stickies often can’t be transformed using AI
- Mural: Any input, as long as it’s typed into the canvas, is fair game
To wrap up, permissions aren’t just about access — they actually change the output of AI tools depending on who contributed the original content.
Template Quality and Use Speed
If you expect your team to brainstorm fast with AI’s help, the template system can make or break your flow. I ran a dry test of 3 common retros — using default templates plus AI prompts — to see how fast we could produce usable summaries under five minutes.
In Miro, the templates were sleek but often minimalist — just sections and some color headers. The AI didn’t auto-populate anything beyond titles, so you’re still doing heavy lifting. Even their “Team Alignment” template just had prewritten instructions and big zones of empty space. AI assist helped create labels once notes were added, but it couldn’t generate starter ideas until I clicked thru 2 menus.
In Mural, I noticed something unexpected — many of the templates kick off with pre-seeded example stickies. This worked well with AI summarize actions, which treated the sample points like real data. The result? Fewer blank-page moments. Also, Mural prompts appear inline and suggest actions like “cluster similar,” “turn this into questions,” or “generate next steps,” which saved time.
I timed this in a group of four remote contributors. Mural got to an exportable report in just over three minutes. Miro took nearly double that — mostly because people had to populate the canvas manually or ask me how to trigger AI assistance.
As a final point, templates don’t just structure data — they unlock speed when the AI is part of the flow, not stuck behind extra clicks.
Exporting Artifacts After a Session
Usually, when the session ends, the AI-generated insights need to be turned into documents — not just screenshots. This is where friction sneaks in.
Miro lets you export to PDF or embed boards for external viewers. The problem? If you use the AI “Smart Clusters,” those groupings aren’t always preserved outside the session. In one export, our labeled stickies showed up, but the section titles applied by AI didn’t. That confused some stakeholders who weren’t in the original room.
Mural approaches this more systematically. After running an AI transformation (like summarization or question extraction), it offers a parallel text output block. These can be exported directly into Google Docs format. I tried it twice — once with editable prompts, once with rigid stickies — and both times, it preserved the logic of the meeting session more clearly.
Additionally, Mural includes an export setting that keeps comments and timestamps if needed, which has been helpful during follow-ups with clients. One minor quirk — if a sticky was moved during AI processing, it sometimes duplicated in the export log. That didn’t affect the content but looked messy.
To conclude, exporting matters more than you think — and Mural’s outputs hold their shape better when passed along for action.
Error Handling and AI Misfires
Neither tool is perfect. Sometimes, their AI hallucinations go unnoticed until someone triggers an awkward client follow-up.
During one Miro session, I had AI summarize our brainstorm. It confidently labeled a cluster as “Short-Term Wins” when half the notes were future roadmap items. Clicking “Undo” just rolled back the group label but kept the rearranged stickies. No auto-log of what was changed, and group members couldn’t restore their manual sort order.
In contrast, Mural includes a basic changelog attached to AI actions. When the AI turned sticky notes into a pros and cons list, it also linked the source notes that triggered each bullet. That’s a lifesaver, especially when outputs are ambiguous.
However, one weird case: Mural’s AI summary once included a note that didn’t exist on the board. It said “performance anxiety,” but that was a term none of us had written. Possibly the AI inferred it from adjacent notes like “nervous presentation” and “tight deadlines.” Relatable, but misleading. We flagged it during review, and the tool did allow for deletion without breaking other outputs.
Ultimately, both tools need better rollback tools — but at least Mural tags the changes for transparency.
Choosing Between Miro and Mural
So what does all this come down to? If your team is already fluent in brainstorming formats and wants freedom, Miro’s wide-open interface and aesthetic workspace might work better. But AI features are more brittle — and dependent on clean, structured input.
If you’re doing structured workshops, client co-creations, or cross-cultural retros, Mural simply behaves better. Its AI is more integrated into templates, its outputs are more traceable, and exports make life easier after the session ends.
The small things — like tone toggling in auto-summaries or inline comment logs — make a real difference on complex teams. And when people drop in notes at weird hours or from mobile, you’ll want something that doesn’t choke on the input format.
To sum up, Miro is a flexible playground if you want to improvise with visuals and light AI, but Mural is the pick when structure, traceable AI, and export clarity matter more than visual pizzazz.
