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Pealboard and Canny

Canny is a more developed feedback product than Pealboard’s portal, with a changelog, a roadmap, widgets and single sign-on that ship today. The difference is where a post lives. In Canny it is a Canny post linked to a GitHub issue. In Pealboard it is the GitHub issue.

Which one fits your team?

Canny is a better fit if…

You want a public feedback board with voting, a roadmap and a changelog in one mature product.
You want an embeddable widget or an in-app feedback button. Pealboard offers neither.
Single sign-on for your customers has to work today rather than in a later release.
Your engineers do not track work in GitHub Issues, so a GitHub-backed portal would have nowhere to write.

Pealboard is a better fit if…

A customer request lands in GitHub as an issue, where your engineers already work.
Portal customers are unlimited and never billed, however many of them you have.
Each request is visible to its requester and their company, not to everyone with a board link.
The status a customer sees comes from the issue itself. Nobody has to remember to update it.

What Canny offers

Every line below comes from Canny’s own pages. Each footnote names the page and the date we read it.

Free is $0 with 25 tracked users and 5 managers. Pro is $79 a month billed yearly with 100-plus tracked users and 10 managers. Business is a custom price.^[1]
Canny prices by tracked users: "End-users associated with feedback count toward tracked user limits." The "unlimited contributors" figure refers to internal contributors, not to the people who submit feedback.^[1]
Across the twelve feedback portals in this research, the norm is that portal users are free and unlimited. Canny is the exception.^[8]
The GitHub integration is available on the Pro and Business plans.^[1]
Canny’s own marketing describes the GitHub integration as "Push issues from Canny to GitHub and link between the two."^[2]
The help center describes it as linking: "search a GitHub issue by name and link it. Only open GitHub issues can be linked", and "Each idea can only be linked to one GitHub issue." The Canny bot leaves a comment on the GitHub issue linking back to the post.^[3]
There are six statuses — Open, Under Review, Planned, In Progress, Complete, Closed — with custom public statuses on Pro and above. The end-user roadmap shows exactly three of them: "You must set exactly three."^[4]
Board access has three modes. Public is visible to anyone with the URL. Private is visible only to Canny admins. Custom access, on Pro and above, is limited by authentication, user segment, email domain or named individual.^[5]
On custom-access boards, "All Canny admins will be able to view all custom access boards, regardless of their admin role."^[5]
Single sign-on is a JSON Web Token signed HS256 with a private key, carrying id, email, name and avatar. The expiry claim is optional. "The JWT expiry field exp is optional, but is respected when provided."^[6]
Canny offers a standard data processing agreement, and "All data is stored in the United States."^[7]

Side by side

Pealboard	Canny
The request is the GitHub issue. There is no post, and no link between two objects to keep in step.	A Canny post is a Canny object that can be linked to one open GitHub issue, with a bot comment on the issue linking back.^[3]
Portal customers are unlimited and never billed, on every plan including Free.	Pricing is by tracked users, and end users associated with feedback count toward the limit. Free allows 25.^[1]
Visibility is set per request: private, company or public. A new request is private to its requester and your workspace.	Access is set per board. On a custom-access board, every Canny admin can see every board whatever their role.^[5]
Seven status words, worked out from the issue and the project’s Status field each time they are shown. Nothing is stored, so nothing goes stale.	Six statuses, set on the post, with rules that map a GitHub event onto one. The end-user roadmap shows exactly three of them.^[4]
Portal single sign-on requires an expiry claim of ten minutes or less. It is named for v1.1 and does not ship today.	JWT single sign-on ships today. The expiry claim is optional, and respected when provided.^[6]

What we could not check

We could not confirm these details on Canny’s own pages, so we make no claim about them either way.

Whether Canny’s current "Ideas" GitHub integration can create a new GitHub issue, or only link an existing one. The marketing page says "push issues" and the help center describes linking, which we could not resolve.
Whether Canny carries an edited comment across the link. We found no documentation either way, for Canny or for any other bridge we looked at.

What Canny has that Pealboard does not

A changelog board, an embeddable widget, an in-app feedback button, custom portal domains and JWT single sign-on all ship in Canny today. In Pealboard the first three are out of scope, and the last two are named for v1.1.

The widget is a choice. A Pealboard customer goes to the portal, and the portal is never a snippet on somebody else’s page. The changelog board and the public roadmap are on the list for a later release, and the pricing page does not offer them as though they were here.

One issue, one request

Canny limits the link on purpose, to one open GitHub issue per idea. That is the right call for a bridge between two systems, because a many-to-many mapping creates conflicts nobody can resolve. Pealboard applies the same limit, with one fewer object to keep in step. The request is the issue, and what the customer sees is a view of it.

Try it on your own repositories

The Free plan connects three repositories and needs no card. Nothing is imported. Nothing in GitHub changes.

Start free

More comparisons

Sources

canny.io/pricing — Free at $0 with 25 tracked users and 5 managers; Pro at $79 a month billed yearly with 100-plus tracked users and 10 managers; Business at a custom price. "End-users associated with feedback count toward tracked user limits." The GitHub integration is "available on Pro and Business plans". Fetched 2026-09-09.
canny.io/integrations/github — "Push issues from Canny to GitHub and link between the two.". Fetched 2026-09-09.
help.canny.io/en/articles/3481076-github-integration — "search a GitHub issue by name and link it. Only open GitHub issues can be linked." "Each idea can only be linked to one GitHub issue." The Canny bot leaves a comment on the GitHub issue linking back to the post. Fetched 2026-09-09.
help.canny.io/en/articles/673583-post-statuses — the six statuses — Open (no status), Under Review, Planned, In Progress, Complete, Closed — custom public statuses on Pro and above, and the roadmap rule: "You must set exactly three". Fetched 2026-09-09.
help.canny.io/en/articles/3831745-choosing-the-right-board-access-public-private-or-custom and .../9829559-custom-access-boards — the three board access modes, and "All Canny admins will be able to view all custom access boards, regardless of their admin role". Fetched 2026-09-09.
developers.canny.io/install/widget/sso — JSON Web Tokens signed HS256 with a private SSO key, payload id, email, name and avatarURL, and "The JWT expiry field exp is optional, but is respected when provided". Fetched 2026-09-09.
help.canny.io/en/articles/1876821-is-canny-gdpr-compliant — a standard data processing agreement, and "All data is stored in the United States". Fetched 2026-09-09.
platform/research/portals-and-feedback-tools.md §1.2 — the report's finding that the market norm is portal users free and unlimited, and that Canny is the notable exception with tracked-user pricing. Fetched 2026-09-09.

Our notes are in platform/research/category-and-table-stakes.md and platform/research/portals-and-feedback-tools.md. Canny is a trademark of its owner. Pealboard is not affiliated with it.