What people previously said about Retool

Older than the 25 on Retool’s page
“We love it, but we're at a crossroads and would really value your take.”
Just-Telephone4143 · reddit ·
“We’ve made some huge upgrades to the chat inside the app builder, and I really think it’s worth another look! If Claude Code is working for you, our new MCP server might be what you want to reach for.”
kkoppenhaver · reddit ·
“With my work we have been hitting some major limitations with retool. Apps getting too big to save. These then can’t run well.”
yknawSroineS · reddit ·
“Was building project in retool for 6months, felt like every update is a big deal. Get used to slow ai chat and his mistakes.”
Normatyvas · reddit ·
“With vibe coding and all using Retool feels like doing manual work now”
tomgekeerd · reddit ·
“It is too slow and labor intensive work to get simple things done. AI has spoiled me. LLMs can do it new few minutes what used to take days in Retool.”
tulsm · reddit ·
“Hey u/kdanovsky, I'm a student applying for a PM internship at Retool and want to come in with real user insight rather than just my own takes. Mind if I ask you a couple of questions about how you've been using it?”
New_Marionberry4029 · reddit ·
“Retool shines most when you use it for internal dashboards, admin panels, approval workflows, support tooling, inventory tracking, or anything that normally lives in spreadsheets and Slack messages.”
Mobile_Sir_1512 · reddit ·
“the retool mcp open beta is the right move but it won't fix the real bottleneck, which is that llms don't have enough retool-shaped training data to reason about app structure even when they can read it.”
Deep_Ad1959 · reddit ·
“Start by building a simple CRUD app (Create, Read, Update, Delete) using Retool’s built in database to learn how to connect data to buttons and tables. Focus on mastering the Table and Form components first, and use the "Ask AI" feature to help you write any SQL or JavaScript you need along the way.”
parky85s · reddit ·
“Retool is good for that, and I’d also compare it with Appsmith or UI Bakery depending on how much structure, permissions, and database/API work you need. The main mistake is starting with a “cool app idea” instead of a painful workflow you already understand.”
MistressMinaDear · reddit ·
“Retool shines when it replaces a real pain, not when you try to build something generic first.”
LeaderAtLeading · reddit ·
“If you were starting building apps with retool today where would you start?”
No_Oil_6874 · reddit ·
“It's definitely not as powerful as Claude Code or Codex outright, but you get a lot more enterprise scalability within Retool. You can use your Claude or Open AI API (I use Claude API myself).”
neoncorey · reddit ·
“I've been building a few Retool apps lately and the only way I've found to use AI is just copy pasting code back and forth into Claude or ChatGPT. Its pretty tedious, especially when your app grows and you've got 50 queries and components to keep track of.”
liamgwallace · reddit ·
“can you build basic dashboards with retool?....yes but why would you. wrong tool for the job.”
GreyHairedDWGuy · reddit ·
“On the other hand you have retool which has lots of possibilities é.g. Being able to change data, showing forms or having filters from multiple sources.”
_TheMostWanted_ · reddit ·
“My current company is looking into ReTool. I'm looking to see if anyone who has used this has any context on the capabilities/limitations of their Dashboards? Specifically vs PowerBI would be very helpful.”
butteredtostada · reddit ·
“Retool can be great for internal tools, yeah - especially if you need to move fast and don’t wanna build a whole frontend from scratch.”
lampasoftware · reddit ·
“Foundry’s wiring is literally just retool (app builder) + lookml (ontology) — it’s the most commoditized layer in the stack”
TheEthanDing · x ·
“the retool situation should honestly be a case study in how to lose developer trust. per end user pricing, then self hosting quietly moved behind enterprise, by the time most teams clocked it they were already too deep to leave without a painful migration.”
Successful_Art_1447 · reddit ·
“ToolJet gives you everything Retool does, plus a lot of additional AI-native features on top of that, and you still get open-source flexibility.”
Annual_Two4906 · reddit ·
“A bit of a background, i build mostly internal tools at my 500 ish person organization, been using retool ever since then honestly, i get why people like retool, but the pricing can get pretty spicy once you scale (builders + internal users adds up fast).”
Most-Interview4372 · reddit ·
“Retool is just JDSL”
Accomplished_Net_839 · reddit ·
“I totally agree, the built-in editor hits limits fast. And yeah, PR’ing components into Retool’s official repo is something we looked at too.”
Worldly-Egg-6832 · reddit ·
“We also ran into similar limitations with the built-in rich text editor, thanks for sharing this! We’ll check it out.”
blackholesun88 · reddit ·
“Latency added to all requests and no ability control it is a deal breaker.”
dupeddogfish · reddit ·
“We’ve been building internal tools with Retool for years and often hit a limitation with text inputs, especially when apps require rich text or structured content.”
stackdrop · reddit ·
“* If you have very tailored UI requirements and a few weeks to invest, Retool is a solid choice.”
DarioDiCarlo · reddit ·
“These reliability issues come in a stream, with no recourse.”
madsbuch · reddit ·
“Compared to Retool, you’re not dragging together an MVP you’ll need to rewrite later, you’re shipping real apps from day one, with AI handling the boilerplate and humans staying in the loop. There's also zero vendor lock-in under the hood.”
pgblocks · reddit ·
“PS: Since you are coming from Retool, you might like our pricing model, too. Customers who migrated to ToolJet seem extremely happy about the decision.”
navaneethpk · reddit ·
“Been using Retool forever, but it’s like coding in slow motion now. Dragging stuff around, hooking up APIs by hand.....”
LookWise5814 · reddit ·
“Of the tools you mentioned seems only UI bakery falls in a category similar to Retool (i.e. a previously established visual dev tool adding ai capabilities). I've seen it does prompt-based ui and jumps straight to design , no review steps”
gayasach · reddit ·
“I’ve been using Retool on and off for internal tools, and it’s fine… but lately I’m seeing more platforms claiming they can generate whole apps from an AI prompt — not just templates or code snippets, but actual UI, logic, and data hookups.”
kdanovsky · reddit ·
“Totally normal low-code tools like Retool get messy fast beyond CRUD apps. Moving repeated logic into global functions early helps a lot.”
Few-Poet-68 · reddit ·
“6) Treat low-code/no-code solutions as "proof of concept" of your app. It won't get you very far.”
dusttailtale · reddit ·
“It's becoming a nightmare to maintain. when i need to update validation logic, Im hunting through multiple components to find where i wrote similar code before.”
ProfessionalView8232 · reddit ·
“We have been using Retool for two years now, and we absolutely love it. Previously, we managed hundreds of our program data in Google Sheets, but now our entire back office operation is run through Retool.”
calvintyc · reddit ·
“You may want to sign up for the Retool copilot waitlist. It's definitely changed how fast I can whip something up, beginning with a data source as inspiration. Here's the [wait list link](https://retoolin.tryretool.com/form/d56c26d9-4847-449b-a4f5-bddda838d9bf) and [tweet](https://x.com/retool/status/1922693085340876913) showing a preview of it.”
PsychologicalSalad39 · reddit ·
“AI + Retool Dashboards”
Bigrodvonhugendong · reddit ·
“Did you give Windmill a shot before this? Feel like that's the audience you're targeting, not Retool's.”
vulture916 · reddit ·
“You're absolutely right about Retool's strength in connecting to various data sources. That's definitely one of its biggest advantages.”
aktky · reddit ·
“I'm researching no/low-code tools for an internal app and your list is a good indicator that Retool could meet the requirements. However there are still a couple questions I'd like to clarify, if possible:”
fmaiabatista · reddit ·
“I like retool a lot. Mobile is still terrible though unfortunately. Hopefully they will improve that part of it soon.”
macphreak · reddit ·
“But i keep going back to retool, so i suspect ill choose this and build on it.”
pumapuma12 · reddit ·
“We’re an agency building internal tools for companies, and Retool has become our default stack for 90% of projects. It’s fast, flexible, and great for turning messy ops workflows into something clean and usable.”
Wiresharkk_ · reddit ·
“My issue with retool is: I can 90% add a complex feature to my MRP in a hour, then I have to spend 4 hours working around dumb quirks to do the final 10%.”
1Plus2Equals3D · reddit ·
“I fought hard for Retool as an solution to shipping RAD apps when the low-code aspect was appealing as a pathway to self-service and GPT 3 was yet not available.The ultimate way to go in my situation was to build a library of single-use Streamlit or Gradio code with the aid of an LLM.”
itomato · hn ·
“If you are interested in Retool but with public facing apps, checkout SkyMass. It’s a code-first alternative to Retool that gives you the high level UI components, auth etc + flexibility of writing normal code.https://skymass.dev”
psadri · hn ·