Retool alternatives: Complete guide for 2024

Retool is a popular choice for building internal tools quickly with low code. But if you're reading this, you might be feeling a bit stuck. Maybe the cost, complexity, or missing features aren't quite the right fit.

This guide dives into the best Retool alternatives in 2024. We'll compare features, pricing, and overall functionality to help you find the perfect match.

Retool

Retool stands out as a robust platform for building internal tools, particularly for larger organizations. It boasts a comprehensive feature set, allowing you to connect various data sources and craft sophisticated applications. This breadth of functionality and overall quality make it a strong contender in the market.

🚫 Retool limitations

Retool is a popular tool for building internal tools, but it's not perfect. Here are some limitations to consider before you dive in:

Learning curve:  Not everyone is a coding whiz. Retool can be tricky for non-technical users, slowing down adoption and creating headaches for your team.

Bugs and performance:  Hitting a snag can be frustrating.  Some users report occasional bugs and performance issues, especially with complex tools. This can affect reliability and user experience.

Limited code flexibility:  Need to go beyond the basics? Retool might not be your best friend.  Limited code extensibility, including a lack of support for languages other than Javascript and custom components, can restrict customization options for developers.

Performance lag:  Internal tools need to be snappy. Retool's one-page app architecture, single-step queries, and lack of global edge caching can lead to sluggish performance for some applications.

On-premise deployment woes:  On-premise deployment can be a hassle. Retool's on-premise solution is resource-intensive and complex, making it difficult to access new features and security fixes quickly.  This can also increase the total cost of ownership for businesses with strict data security needs.

Slow feature rollouts (On-premise):  Want the latest and greatest? On-premise users might be left behind. New features often take time to reach self-hosted Retool, potentially hindering access to cutting-edge tech for on-premise deployments.

Closed source concerns:  Security and control are paramount. Retool's closed-source nature prevents code audits by security teams and reduces extensibility. This could be a concern for organizations with specific security and customization requirements.

Workflow UI complexity:  Flowcharts are great, but they have limits. Retool's flowchart-based workflow UI can become unwieldy with complex logic, making it difficult to understand, navigate, and debug workflows.

By understanding these limitations, you can make a more informed decision about whether Retool is the right tool for your internal tool building needs.

💰 Retool pricing

Free plan: $0/month per any user (limited features and up to 5 users)

Team plan: $12 / month per standard user (monthly billing); $7 / month per end user (monthly billing)

Business plan: $65 / month per standard user (monthly billing); $18 / month per end user (monthly billing)

Enterprise plan: Custom plan for teams & orgs operating at scale

🗣️ Retool ratings and reviews

Retool’s rating is 4.6 out of 5 and based on 188 reviews on G2.

UI Bakery

Need a better way to build internal tools than Retool? Look no further than UI Bakery. It offers similar features, but with a focus on streamlining the development process, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises in need of enterprise-level functionalities like advanced roles, permissions, and single sign-on (SSO), yet constrained by budget limitations that make Retool's enterprise version unfeasible. 

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✅ UI Bakery advantages

UI Bakery empowers businesses to build internal tools faster and more efficiently. Here's how.

Cost-effective: UI Bakery offers a budget-friendly alternative to other low-code platforms. You get powerful features without breaking the bank, perfect for businesses that prioritize value.

Lightning-fast support: UI Bakery's responsive support team ensures you get the help you need quickly, keeping your projects on track. Enterprise plans even include a dedicated Slack channel with the development team.

Sleek design: UI Bakery boasts the most modern and user-friendly interface among low-code tools. Build visually appealing applications with high-quality components that enhance the user experience.

Effortless building: Drag-and-drop functionality makes creating applications a breeze. Simply assemble components within a user-friendly layout system, streamlining development and maximizing efficiency.

Granular control: UI Bakery provides robust roles management with predefined and custom roles. Tailor access levels for admins, editors, users, and more, ensuring data and application security.

Mobile-ready: Build applications that adapt perfectly to any device. UI Bakery's granular mobile responsiveness settings empower developers to optimize the mobile experience for a seamless user experience.

AI-powered development: UI Bakery goes beyond low-code. Not only can you leverage AI for code generation with AI App Generator, but also for intelligent debugging with the built-in AI Assistant. This advanced feature provides invaluable support throughout the development process.

Streamlined collaboration: Shared Permission Groups make UI Bakery cost-effective for large teams. This feature simplifies permissions management, allowing for efficient collaboration while maintaining secure access control.

💰 UI Bakery pricing

Free plan: $0 / month per user

Standard plan: $6 / month per user (monthly billing); $12 / month per developer (monthly billing)

Business plan: $12 / month per user (monthly billing); $50 / month per developer (monthly billing)
Shared Permission Group (unlimited users): $300/month

Enterprise plan: Prices are tailored specifically to your organization needs.

🗣️ UI Bakery ratings and reviews

Retool’s rating is 4.9 out of 5 and based on 24 reviews on G2.

Appsmith

Appsmith stands out as another competitor to Retool, sharing many similarities with its counterpart. Initially crafted as an open-source solution, it boasts a thriving community.

✌🏼 Appsmith pros

• Open-source, which means that other developers can potentially audit the code they write.
• Large community on GitHub.
• Git integration.

👎🏼 Appsmith cons

• Not a transparent pricing model. It’s really hard to predict the final product price, especially with per hour/per user approach.
• UI builder might be buggy sometimes.
• Only sample databases.
• Not as many embedded components as Retool and UI Bakery have.
• Not as many native data source connections, though it is almost commonly used.
• No Workflows/Automation feature.
• No Environments feature
• The more components the app has, the slower it works.

💰 Appsmith pricing

Free plan: $0/month per any user.

Business plan: $0.40 per hour per user (capped at $20 per user per month).

Enterprise plan: Customized for large teams that need more security and scalability.

🗣️ Appsmith ratings and reviews

Appsmith’s rating is 4.6 out of 5 and based on 25 reviews on G2.

Budibase

Budibase represents another low-code offering with distinctions in external and conceptual aspects compared to Retool. However, it doesn't closely compete with Retool in terms of feature breadth.

✌🏼 Budibase pros

• Implements some no-code concepts that allow people without coding skills to build internal apps.
• Though sometimes it is implemented quite user-unfriendly.
• Embedded DB.
• Workflows/Automation feature.

👎🏼 Budibase cons

• The application's pricing model is per user. While it is cheaper than Retool's, it might still be quite cost-inefficient for larger teams, especially with infrequent users. Moreover, there are several restrictions imposed on the number of logs, automations, and applications, which may add to the difficulty of calculating the overall pricing.
• UI builder doesn’t have an absolutely positioned canvas for elements, which complicates the process of UI composition. Canvas is slow and buggy.
• Requires learning additional concepts, e.g. data providers.
• No Git integration.
• No query/action performance information.
• The system for creating queries and automations is not very user-friendly. They are jumbled and you have to work in a lot of narrow overlay windows.
• Small amount of native data source connections.
• Small amount of embedded components.

💰 Budibase pricing

Free plan: $0 /month per user.

Premium plan: $60 per app creator/month; $6 per app user/month.

Enterprise plan: Custom price for maxed up security and support.

🗣️ Budibase ratings and reviews

Budibase’s rating is 4.7 out of 5 and based on 19 reviews on G2.

DronaHQ

With a notable footprint in the low-code and no-code domain, DronaHQ has been primarily focused on providing a mobile-friendly user experience. However, it is now evolving into a more comprehensive platform capable of generating internal applications.

✌🏼 DronaHQ pros

• The largest amount of data sources and 3rd-party services.
• The largest amount of components.
• Performance information only on the connector level
• Git integration.
• Workflows/Automation feature.

👎🏼 DronaHQ cons

• UI builder canvas has usability issues.
• The end-user UI is large in size.
• The layout can be cluttered and confusing due to the excessive number of small sidebars and panels. Some settings are arranged in a chaotic manner.
• Cloud instance may have performance issues.
• Not advanced level of roles management like Retool has.
• Developers and end-users are priced equally, which reduces the cost efficiency for large user bases.

💰 DronaHQ pricing

Starter plan: $12 per user monthly.

Business plan: $28 per user monthly.

Enterprise plan: Specialized price plans for large businesses.

🗣️ DronaHQ ratings and reviews

DronaHQ’s rating is 4.4 out of 5 and based on 38 reviews on G2.

Superblocks

Superblocks offers an enterprise-ready, limitless low-code platform designed for crafting customized internal applications, automated workflows, and scheduled tasks. Developers have the flexibility to endlessly expand Superblocks with code, enabling the delivery of high-performance apps at scale, seamlessly adopted throughout their organization.

✌🏼 Superblocks pros

• Allows complex backend APIs with NodeJS and Python, leverage Javascript on the front-end, and build custom components with React within their own IDE and filesystem.
• Multi-threaded front-end for smooth UI rendering.
• Superblocks AI Copilot with support to generate, explain, and debug.
• Available both as On-Premise Agent a Cloud App Builder.
• Integrates with observability providers like Datadog, Splunk and New RelicSupports event-driven architectures like Kafka, Confluent, and Kinesis.
• Offers usage-based pricing.

👎🏼 Superblocks cons

• Components library is quite tiny.
• No Workflows support for scheduled jobs and webhooks
• Exists only a couple years, meaning not mature enough.
• No support for responsive apps.
• Git integration is only at basic support.
• Doesn’t support an air-gapped deployment.

💰 Superblocks pricing

Free plan: $0 per user / monthPro.

Business plan: $70 Monthly Per Creator; $21 Monthly Per User.

Enterprise plan: Custom pricing plan.

🗣️ Superblocks ratings and reviews

Superblock’s rating is 4.7 out of 5 and based on 144 reviews on G2.

ToolJet

ToolJet brands itself as an open-source alternative to Retool. While it has adopted certain concepts from Retool, its execution may suffer from quality issues despite being available for free.

✌🏼 ToolJet pros

• Embedded DB.
• Open-source, which means that the other developers can potentially audit the code they write.
• Has a free version for self-hosting.
• Has light and dark UI builder mode.

👎🏼 ToolJet cons

• UI builder has a buggy canvas with overlaps.
• Though it has a decent number of components and data sources, often they lack configuration capabilities.
• Git sync has no branches support.
• No query/action performance information.
• Has issues with the quality of the builder.
• No Workflows/Automation feature publicly available.

💰 ToolJet pricing

Basic plan: $0 /month per builder; $0 /month per end user.

Business plan: $30 /month per builder (monthly billing); $10 /month per end user (monthly billing).

Enterprise plan: Custom pricing that matches customer’s needs.

🗣️ ToolJet ratings and reviews

ToolJet’s rating is 4.7 out of 5 and based on 17 reviews on G2.

Jet Admin

Jet Admin stands as yet another illustration of a no-code internal tools builder. With this platform, users can effortlessly craft internal tools devoid of any coding requirements.

✌🏼 Jet Admin pros

• No coding skills required for building UI. But it is necessary to be familiar with the general concepts.
• Easy to build CRUD apps.
• Workflows/Automation feature.
• Nice looking UI, but is too large for business apps.

👎🏼 Jet Admin cons

• Rather large limitations for creating applications because of the no-code approach.
• Vertically stacked and container based drag'n'drop - a rather atypical method of constructing an interface that differs from other similar applications.
• No Git integration.
• No query/action performance information.
• The price for a minimum plan is quite high. Besides that with a lot of apps and users, the cost might scale rapidly.

💰 Jet Admin pricing

Free plan: $0  per user / month.

Starter plan: $24 Monthly Per User.

Pro plan: $48 Monthly Per User.

Enterprise plan: Custom pricing plan.

🗣️ Jet Admin ratings and reviews

Jet Admin’s rating is 4.7 out of 5 and based on 17 reviews on G2.

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🏁 To sum it all up 

After comparing Retool's alternatives, it's clear that each tool offers different advantages and drawbacks. The flexibility and speed of low-code platforms make them a great option for many development projects.

Among these options, UI Bakery shines the brightest. It combines user-friendly features with powerful functionality, making it the most comprehensive and approachable solution available.

Not sure which low-code platform is right for you? Let UI Bakery's tech experts help! Just contact us to discuss your needs.