Internal apps

Internal apps are Retool’s oldest and most popular use case. These apps—such as inventory management tools, data entry apps, custom CRMs, and admin panels—can be built using a visual drag-and-drop builder and a library of front-end components like tables, buttons, and forms. These components can be connected to SQL databases like Postgres, NoSQL databases like MongoDB, third-party services like HubSpot, and REST/GraphQL/gRPC APIs.

External apps or portals

In 2024, Retool launched "Retool for External Apps", introducing dedicated pricing and key portal-related features. These include custom branding, built-in login and user account management, and the ability to fully customize and brand user flows, such as sign-up, login, and password reset pages. It also offers granular role-based permission controls to manage access.

Mobile apps

Retool recently launched Retool Mobile for developing native iOS and Android apps. It comes with built-in functions for scanning, offline mode, push notifications, and more. Similar to the web builder, users can create multiple screens, drag and drop components onto the mobile canvas, write queries, and bind everything together with JavaScript. The biggest difference is the library of mobile-specific components designed for native mobile apps.

Workflows

Retool Workflows enable users to build automated processes, such as cron jobs, ETL tasks, and custom alerts, which can be triggered on an event-based or recurring schedule. The workflow builder provides a visual interface for creating multiple blocks and branches, writing conditional logic, and connecting to external resources.

Scalability and Tech debt

Retool was built on the premise of “There’s a faster way to build internal CRUD apps,” and while it has evolved drastically since then, at its core, it is still most often used to build simple internal apps and prototypes. Like all other alternatives, it has many limitations (here’s an example of such limitations) compared to coding and is not meant to replace traditional programming, especially when building large-scale customer applications or complex internal tools. When used correctly, though, it can be a great tool to save engineering resources or quickly ship a prototype to test a hypothesis.

The universal concern is scalability and technical debt, but this applies to all low-code platforms that don’t allow code export (which, at this time, only WeWeb and ToolJet do). Larger teams, in particular, often struggle to fit Retool into their established workflows. Regular developers in these teams tend to have a love-hate relationship with Retool, as they are the ones dealing with the technical debt and the challenge of integrating Retool into their processes. As much flexibility as Retool offers, it is still in a different weight class compared to traditional programming and struggles with apps requiring highly customized visuals and complex user flows. For many larger teams, these limitations may be difficult to manage if Retool (or most other alternatives on the list) becomes part of their workflow.

However, this problem largely comes down to data management—if you have best practices in place for processing and managing data, queries, and components, Retool can help streamline front-end development and save time without creating too much technical debt. This issue is also partially addressed by open-source alternatives, which we will cover later in the article.

Pricing and vendor lock-in

Another big concern is pricing and vendor lock-in. Despite programs like Retool’s Startup Program, which offers up to $60K in credits, costs can still become a significant burden, potentially putting companies in a tough financial spot. Retool recently adjusted its pricing, offering better rates for external users in apps like client portals, but compared to some alternatives, it is still expensive—especially for early-stage ventures that don’t yet have solid revenue to cover the costs.

Learning curve for non-technical users

Another issue arises for non-technical users or teams without spare engineering resources who want to build MVPs, prototypes, and production-ready internal apps quickly. The key challenge is that you MUST know JavaScript to build even the simplest apps in Retool. For example, to link two components and display a value from a selected row of a table in a text input, you need to know how to reference that variable and write the expression {{table_name.selectedRow.value}}. For users without technical knowledge, no-code alternatives may be a better fit, which we will cover in this article down below.

Builder experience

Finally, apart from raw functionality, there’s the builder experience aspect—even some seasoned programmers find it difficult or inconvenient to build in Retool but are happy with a similar alternative. This comes down to personal preference and background, and the best way to evaluate it is by actually trying out different platforms.

Use Case and Capabilities

Similar to Retool, Superblocks allows users to build a wide range of internal tools, including KYC tools, admin panels, and inventory management apps. However, it does not currently support external apps like client or partner portals.

When it comes to target users, Superblocks also requires a good understanding of technical concepts, such as JavaScript basics, dot notation, APIs, and functions. Some users describe working with Superblocks as operating at a lower abstraction layer, somewhere between Retool and traditional coding.

Positioning itself as Retool’s main competitor, Superblocks has focused on larger teams and the bottlenecks they face with Retool, which we covered earlier. It offers more flexibility in building workflows and scheduled jobs, particularly in triggering logic and interacting with external and internal resources. In particular, Superblocks provide native support for Kafka, Kinesis, Confluent Cloud, AWS MSK, Redpanda, and other streaming platforms while Retool supports only Kafka. However, all of this comes at a cost—users are expected to write more code and have a higher level of technical expertise compared to Retool.

Superblocks also provides better integration for low-code development within modern engineering workflows, offering CI/CD integrations (in Beta as of Feb 2025) and superior observability, with native integrations to Datadog, Splunk, and New Relic. On the flip side, it has yet to introduce support for CI, unit, and end-to-end tests, which Retool does offer (also in Beta as of Feb 2025).

Pricing

Both Retool and Superblocks have user-based pricing, where editors (builders) and end users are charged separately. They also charge for workflow runs, but Superblocks’ pricing scales better—$55 for 10,000 runs vs. $75 for 5,000 runs in Retool.

Both tools have a free tier to get started, and their most popular paid plans—Business for Retool and Startup for Superblocks—are priced similarly and offer almost the same features. That includes granular permission management, audit logs, custom integrations and components, unlimited reusable modules, AI copilot, and LLM integrations.

One big difference is that Superblocks doesn't have dedicated external user pricing and only offers external user seats on its Enterprise plan, which means you’ll need to go through sales to get pricing.

Strengths and weaknesses compared to Retool

In a nutshell, Retool offers more functionality overall and has a more polished UX (User Experience) due to a larger team and being on the market longer.

Superblocks, on the other hand, is aiming to win against Retool by providing a richer feature set when it comes to integrating into modern teams’ Software Development Life Cycles (SDLC).

Other Retool low-code alternatives: Honorable mentions

There are only a few low-code platforms that directly compete with Retool and don’t fall into other categories like no-code or open-source. We thought it made sense to include them here, even though we chose Superblocks as the winner.

UIbakery has been around for a while and, compared to Retool, offers better UI visual design and a shorter learning curve, striking a good balance between ease of use and customization.
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DronaHQ could be a solid option if you’re looking to optimize your budget while also getting extra perks like SSO in a lower-tier business plan. Functionality-wise, it’s pretty close to Retool.

Use Case and Capabilities

Similar to Retool, Jet Admin allows users to build both internal apps—such as onboarding tools, KYC tools, CRUD apps, and admin panels—and external apps, including client portals, marketplace vendor apps, and partner sales portals.

Jet Admin is designed for users in the middle of the tech-savviness spectrum—those who understand technical concepts like data schemas and foreign keys but either don’t know programming or don’t want to write JavaScript every time they need to fetch a variable. Completely non-technical users can also build apps with the help of a knowledge base or partner experts.

As a more user-friendly alternative to Retool, Jet Admin offers larger chunks of functionality out of the box, making it easier to speed up prototyping and simplify the building process. All CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) actions are auto-generated when connecting to relational databases or apps like Airtable or Google Sheets, removing the need to write SQL queries for every function.

The same applies to many UI components—Jet Admin automatically fetches the data schema and generates ready-to-use UI elements with built-in filtering, sorting, and search functions. For example, forms in Jet Admin are generated automatically from your data, eliminating the need to write curly braces for every field.

Aiming to strike a balance between flexibility and out-of-the-box functionality, Jet Admin provides access to a more granular level when building your app’s business logic without relying on JavaScript. It offers a visual branched workflow builder and an intuitive “nested drop-down”-style interface for variable referencing, common data transformations, conditional logic, and math calculations, along with a JavaScript editor (with external library support) for anything not covered by no-code.

Finally, the second biggest differentiator from Retool is its focus on external users and the ability to build fully on-brand portals and products with named users, such as marketplaces for more design-sensitive industries like e-commerce or retail. To support this, provides extended authentication options, custom branding for full user journey, and has recently launched a pixel-perfect in-app designer and added the ability to import custom designs from Figma.

Pricing

Both Retool and Jet Admin use per-user pricing, with each tier offering a specific set of features. Both platforms also have dedicated pricing for external users, making it possible to build apps like client portals. Unlike Retool, Jet Admin doesn’t charge separately for workflow runs.

Both tools offer separate agency pricing for experts and contractors building apps for clients. However, these plans are gated, meaning you need to contact sales to get the details.

A free tier is available on both platforms with limited functionality to get started. The most popular paid plans are similarly priced—$65/user in Retool vs. $60/user in Jet Admin. However, the lowest paid tier differs in both price and functionality. Jet Admin offers extra features like granular permissions, audit logs, and environments, but at a higher price—$30/user for Jet Admin vs. $12/user for Retool.

One of the biggest pricing differences is external users. Retool charges $8 per external user on the Pro plan, while Jet Admin offers unlimited external users for a fixed price—$39/month for the lowest tier and $290/month for the Pro tier. This makes Jet Admin a much more budget-friendly option for client portals with 20–50+ external users.

Strengths and weaknesses compared to Retool

In a nutshell, Retool offers more functionality and a better experience for both developers and non-developers. Appsmith’s main advantage is being open-source and having a thriving community. If you strongly prefer open-source over proprietary software, Appsmith is a solid alternative. Otherwise, Retool is the better choice, especially for more mature companies.

Other Retool no-code alternatives: Honorable mentions

These are the Retool alternatives that qualify as no-code rather than low-code:

Softr is a no-code builder with a very short learning curve. Instead of a traditional drag-and-drop builder, it offers a variety of pre-built layouts that you can combine. It made significant upgrades in 2024, adding key native integrations, making it a simple but solid option for building basic internal apps and portals—especially for personal brands and small businesses.
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Glide is a Softr alternative focused on mobile apps. Like Softr, it’s limited to simple user flows, but it’s less suited for internal tools due to fewer integration options with databases and APIs.

Pory.io positions itself as a portal builder, allowing users to create simple interfaces with basic CRUD functionality and record visualization capabilities.
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Stacker is another pure no-code alternative, ideal for simple portals and basic internal tools. Like Softr, it doesn’t use drag-and-drop UI components but auto-generates layouts based on configurations.
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Airtable Interface Designer is the most basic option on this list. It’s worth considering only if you exclusively use Airtable as a data source and don’t need anything beyond viewing records, charts, and very basic data editing.

Use Case and Capabilities

Choosing Appsmith over Budibase was a close call due to some limitations, such as its code-heavy workflow builder and lack of autogenerated CRUD views. However, the sheer size and engagement of the Appsmith community tipped the scale. Community is the heart of open-source, and Appsmith has built a formidable one, with 35K stars on GitHub and 3.8K forks (as of Feb 2025).

That said, Appsmith has significant limitations: it lacks external user pricing and has limited branding options (you can’t white-label the entire user journey). It also doesn’t have a dedicated native mobile app builder, which may be problematic for certain internal use cases, like field agent operations apps.

However, Appsmith covers all essential functionality for building internal apps, which remains its sole focus. It can be used to build support apps, delivery management tools, and custom CRMs, among many others. Appsmith provides a UI component library along with extensive front-end scripting capabilities using JavaScript and external libraries. Although it lacks a built-in database (which Retool has), Appsmith offers a wide range of native integrations, including relational and NoSQL databases, third-party APIs and services like HubSpot, storage solutions, authentication providers, and custom APIs. It also provides a self-hosted option, supporting deployment via Docker, Kubernetes, and other providers, as well as Git-based source control.

When it comes to target users and the builder experience, Appsmith is more code-heavy. Unlike Retool, it hasn’t pivoted to cater to less technical users, which is evident in both its functionality (e.g., its workflow builder is essentially a JS editor) and its learning materials, which maintain a technical focus.

Pricing

Appsmith is definitely a cheaper alternative to Retool overall. It has only one paid tier (apart from Enterprise) that costs $15 per user (compared to $65 per user in Retool) and, unlike Retool, includes source control and granular permission management. Appsmith also doesn’t charge extra for workflow runs, whereas Retool charges $75 for 5,000 runs.

Both Retool and Appsmith offer a free tier, but it’s fairly limited and mainly useful for testing features or getting familiar with the platform.

However, unlike Retool, Appsmith doesn’t have dedicated pricing for external users. This means that when building client or vendor portals, you’ll have to pay $15 per external user, the same as for internal users. That said, this aligns with Appsmith’s positioning as a purely internal tool builder for developers.

Strengths and weaknesses compared to Retool

In short, Retool is best for teams with strong engineering resources that need maximum flexibility in a low-code platform, while Jet Admin offers more functionality for business users and technical non-engineers, especially for building internal tools and well-designed client portals.

Other Retool no-code alternatives: Honorable mentions

There are two more open-source low-code platforms worth considering as Retool alternatives.

Budibase is a close second to Appsmith and offers features that Appsmith lacks, such as auto-generated views and a visual workflow builder. It’s generally seen as a less code-heavy option, making it more accessible to non-engineers. While its community is smaller at the moment (20K+ GitHub stars as of Feb 2025), it’s quickly catching up.

ToolJet is the newest open-source internal tool builder and follows a more user-friendly approach, similar to Budibase, rather than the developer-heavy focus of Appsmith. It’s growing rapidly and is already approaching Appsmith’s numbers, with 30K+ GitHub stars as of Feb 2025.

Use Case and Capabilities

The OutSystems platform focuses primarily on professional developers from larger teams. It also caters to IT leaders and enterprise architects, providing unparalleled security, governance, and scalability capabilities that large enterprises typically require. To put it short, if your IT department has an EA (enterprise architect), you might be a good fit for OutSystems; otherwise, you likely need to look at other alternatives on the list.

OutSystems aims to provide low-code development capabilities at scale, and this is where its biggest differentiator from Retool resides. Similar to Retool, it allows building web applications and mobile-native apps for both internal and external users. However, OutSystems provides additional capabilities. It has a very strong focus on AI because, while a team of five developers can hack their way into Retool, with 500 builders, any inefficiencies will cost a lot. OutSystems developed an AI copilot with extensive capabilities that they call the “first full SDLC digital worker.” It allows users to generate apps, iterate on them, and test them all in one seamless workflow.

Another big part of the differentiation is a focus on performance and scalability. In their own words, they claim to be the only low-code platform that supports scaling to millions of users—a feat in and of itself, given that Retool has been reported to struggle with complex apps and large numbers of users. They also provide strong adherence to DevOps best practices with an automated testing suite and CI/CD integration.

Lastly, going back to one of Retool’s limitations—its lack of fit for workflows of larger, more mature teams and its inability to meet strict requirements—OutSystems addresses this by seamlessly integrating with existing enterprise platforms for ALM, IdP, iPaaS, testing, and more. It also provides a security infrastructure including process control, access control and network security, with features like SQL injection and XSS protection via the OutSystems web application firewall, a content delivery network (CDN) to prevent ​​DDoS attacks, and more.

Pricing

There’s not much that can be said about OutSystems' pricing, as they use sales as the main acquisition motion, meaning you must schedule a demo with a sales representative to get a quote. On their website, they list a starting price of $36,300 per year (as of February 2025). They do provide a 10-day free trial, but to get it, you also need to go through sales.

Strengths and weaknesses compared to Retool

Compared to Retool, OutSystems works better for larger organizations with strong budgets and similarly strong scalability, performance, governance, and security requirements.

Other Retool Enterprise alternatives: Honorable mentions

This category of enterprise-grade low-code platforms has the most entrants, so we will limit our honorable mentions to three.

Mendix is quite similar to OutSystems, with its strong focus on AI, governance, and security. Mendix, similar to OutSystems, provides a marketplace with widgets, UI components, and services.
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Appian is another enterprise-ready low-code platform that is focused more on constructing and improving business processes. It also caters to a slightly less technical audience, allowing technical non-developers to build parts of apps and workflows in Appian.
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Betty Blocks specifically positions itself as a low-code app development software for enterprises. Similar to Appian, it provides a wide range of capabilities for process automation, augmentation, and software standardization.

Use Case and Capabilities

Unlike Retool, Bubble allows you to build not only internal apps and client portals but all sorts of web and mobile apps, including websites, PWAs, project management tools, directories, landing pages, marketplaces, listings, and portals. While many of these use cases can technically be covered by Retool, it is not what it was built for, and Bubble will suit these cases much better.

On the other hand, Bubble falls short when it comes to internal apps, admin panels, operations dashboards, and other business-critical tools for several reasons. The biggest one is its reliance on plugins (many of which are third-party) for integrating with data sources and services, as it doesn’t have any native integrations. This can lead to compromised sensitive data and raises reliability concerns.

When it comes to target users, Bubble caters to non-developers and business users. Although Bubble positions itself as a no-code builder, it is important to note that the learning curve for Bubble is massive, and many report that learning Bubble is similar to learning a new programming language. On the flip side, once you master Bubble, it provides great flexibility for UI and front-end logic, allowing users to build complex multi-view apps.

Bubble, unlike Retool, is very well suited for building pixel-perfect apps. Websites and portals in industries with traditionally heavy visuals, such as design, e-commerce, or retail, require a lot of flexibility to stay on brand and provide a great app experience for their clients. Bubble thrives here with a pixel-perfect drag-and-drop UI builder and import from Figma. It also has a massive community-driven marketplace of components and templates that have accumulated a lot of design variations over the years.

Bubble is also better suited for building native mobile apps. Its mobile app designer provides more building capabilities and better-looking UI components. While Retool-built native mobile apps give off the “internal tool” feel, Bubble’s builder has been used to create consumer-facing production mobile apps.

Pricing

Bubble, unlike Retool, has usage-based pricing. It charges according to the "resources" it takes Bubble to perform a unit of work (measured in workload units). The cost will vary based on the type of app and how extensively it is used, which could pose issues for budgeting. Bubble has several pricing tiers, each including a specific number of workload units. Given the different nature of pricing for Bubble and Retool, it is hard to directly compare their pricing plans. Additionally, plugins from the plugin marketplace might be a source of hidden costs as your app scales, as some of these plugins are not free.

Another complication can arise from having to purchase separate plans for every app (or upgrading to the $399 Teams plan, which includes sub-apps). However, if you’re building apps in Bubble for your clients as a freelancer or as part of an agency, Bubble provides a dedicated agency plan with unlimited client apps.

Similar to Retool, Bubble has a very stripped-down free plan suitable for learning purposes and very basic prototypes, as well as an enterprise plan for larger organizations.

Strengths and weaknesses compared to Retool

Bubble, although it has overlapping use cases with Retool, is designed for building a different set of apps. If you are looking to build an internal tool or a client portal on top of your existing backend, Retool is likely your choice. But for other apps and websites, Bubble could be the best Retool alternative, especially in design-intensive industries such as e-commerce.

Other Retool Multi-purpose alternatives: Honorable mentions

There are other no-code and low-code app builders that target public apps, mobile apps, and websites alongside portals and internal tools. Here, we list three alternatives to Bubble in the multi-purpose builder category.

WeWeb allows for building a wide range of web apps, although it lacks a native mobile builder. Unlike Bubble, it provides native integrations with the most popular databases and APIs, as well as custom APIs via GraphQL and REST. It also integrates natively with cloud-native backends such as Xano and Supabase.
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Noloco, similar to WeWeb, aims to win against Bubble due to its native integrations and better user-friendliness. However, compared to WeWeb, Noloco lacks some native integrations such as MySQL and Xano.
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FlutterFlow is more of a low-code alternative rather than a no-code one, as it requires coding for building many functional pieces. On the other hand, it is more versatile than the previous two, with granularity of control over UI components and logic that approaches the likes of Webflow.

1. Understand your use-case

What kind of app are you looking to build, and what kind of builder are you? Based on the answers to these questions, you can rule out a lot of options right away. If you are a team lead in a large organization with a solid budget and established processes you must adhere to, Superblocks and OutSystems could be on the shortlist, but you likely won’t go with Jet Admin or Bubble. If you don’t know how to code but need to build a portal that you wouldn’t be ashamed to show your clients, you will likely not look at Appsmith and Superblocks but rather Jet Admin or Bubble.

2. Test a functional piece of your app

After preselecting the apps, find the piece of your app that is the most important or resembles the nature of your app the most. List the capabilities that you will not compromise on. For example, if you’re building a client portal, decide to build a branded listings view with three user types: admins, users from Company A, and users from Company B. Then, build this simple app in each entry from your shortlist.

3. Learn and adjust

Once you’ve built simple apps with different alternatives, you will likely adjust the scope of features or the relative importance of these features, as you will most definitely learn something new and important about your app or the problem your app is tasked to solve. Then, reevaluate and make the final decision.