Open source alternatives to Retool

By GitHub stars it is Appsmith, with 41,249 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose Appsmith when you want admin panels and dashboards built on your own servers from an Apache 2.0 codebase you can extend. Next come ToolJet (41,229 stars) and Refine (36,035 stars).

Yes. The code of all 8 is public under Apache 2.0, AGPL 3.0 or MIT, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

Start from the job you use Retool for. Choose ToolJet when you want to host it yourself and keep your data on your own server. Choose Refine when you want internal tools as plain React code that you own, version in Git and deploy on your own servers.

7 of the 8: Appsmith, ToolJet, Refine, Reflex, Windmill, Plasmic and Convertigo. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

7 of the 8 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them Appsmith, ToolJet, Reflex and Windmill. The quietest is Refine, last changed on 10 Sep. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

AGPL 3.0 (3), MIT (3), Apache 2.0 (2). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely. GPL and AGPL ask you to share your changes under the same licence when you give the software to others, and AGPL also counts letting people use it over a network.

The hosting. Retool's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.