Retool

Retool is a low-code platform for building internal tools, dashboards, and automations, with Retool AI adding LLM features and AI agents on top of your connected data. It is best for developer-adjacent teams that want speed without giving up the ability to write SQL and JavaScript, and it supports both cloud and self-hosted deployments.

Retool started as a way for engineering teams to stop hand-building CRUD admin panels and instead assemble internal apps from drag-and-drop components wired to databases and APIs. Over time it added Workflows (scheduled and event-driven automations), a mobile app builder, and Retool AI, which lets teams add LLM-backed features such as text generation, classification, summarization, and retrieval-augmented answers, along with AI Agents that can take actions across connected systems. The platform sits between no-code and traditional development. You can get far by dragging tables, forms, and charts onto a canvas and binding them to queries, but almost every property accepts JavaScript, and data logic is often written in SQL or API calls. That flexibility is Retool's main draw for developer-heavy teams, and also why non-technical users sometimes find it steeper than tools like Glide. Retool is used heavily for operations, support, and admin tooling at startups and enterprises alike. It offers cloud hosting as well as self-hosted deployments for teams with strict data-residency or compliance needs, and its pricing is based on user types (builders, standard/internal users, and external users) plus usage-based components for Workflows and AI credits.