Retool pricing starts at $12 per standard user and $7 per end user each month, but your actual costs depend on more than just headcount. Pricing also varies by billing cycle (annual or monthly), deployment model, external user pricing, and how much you spend on agent hours and prompt credits.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- A breakdown of every plan and what it offers
- How it compares to alternatives like Superblocks, Appsmith, and UI Bakery
- Whether or not it's worth the cost
Retool pricing plans: TL;DR
Retool’s plans range from a free starter tier to fully customized enterprise pricing. Below is a quick side-by-side look showing how Retool’s plans stack up:
Retool pricing plans breakdown
Retool has four pricing plans. The Free plan is fine for very small teams of five or fewer. The prompting credits are enough to build and iterate over one internal tool. You’ll hit limits on workflow runs and agent hours if you’re building automations.
The Team plan adds staging and release management, yet it still leaves out critical features like audit logs and SSO.
The Business plan gives you audit logs, but you’ll need to upgrade to the Enterprise Plan if you need SSO. That jump isn’t cheap, especially for small teams.
Free plan
What's included:
- Up to 100 monthly AI prompting credits
- 500 workflow runs per month
- 20 agent hours per month
- Up to 5 reusable components
- Custom React components
- Unlimited web and mobile apps
- Unlimited workflow steps
Best for: Individuals or very small teams (≤5 users) prototyping and evaluating Retool before scaling.
Pros:
- You can build unlimited apps and workflows without paying.
- You can build, test, deploy, and use AI agents.
Cons:
- The plan limits you to just five users.
- You only get a single development environment, so you cannot properly separate staging and production.
Team plan: $12/standard user and $7/end user per month
What's included:
- Unlimited AI prompting credits for a limited time
- 5000 workflow runs per month
- Access to staging and production environments
- Define environment-specific configurations and secrets across Retool
- App release versions
Best for: Small teams that want to start running production-ready apps with proper staging and release management.
Pros:
- You can separate staging and production environments, which makes it easier to test changes before going live.
- App release versions let you roll back or iterate more safely.
Cons:
- It doesn't include support for external users.
Business plan: $65/standard user and $18/end user per month
What's included:
- Audit logging
- Portals and embedded apps
- Unlimited reusable components and development environments
- Offline mode and push notifications
- Access to external user pricing
Best for: Mid-sized organizations that need audit logs for compliance and the ability to serve external users.
Pros:
- The plan adds audit logging, which helps organizations meet compliance requirements and track activity across apps.
- External user pricing makes it possible to scale apps beyond internal teams without paying full per-user rates. Pricing is free for the first 50 users and costs $10/month for 51-259 users.
Cons:
- Apps with external user pricing require a custom annual plan if you are self-hosting.
Enterprise plan
What’s included:
- Source control with Git for version management
- Custom SAML/OIDC single sign-on (SSO)
- Usage analytics across apps and users
- Full access to platform APIs and workflow triggers
- Dedicated support with SLAs
Best for: Large enterprises that need advanced security, governance, and integration with existing developer workflows.
Pros:
- Enterprise SSO support lets IT teams enforce centralized identity and access policies across all Retool apps.
- Full access to Retool’s APIs allows teams to manage their projects programmatically.
Cons:
- Pricing is not transparent and requires negotiation with Retool’s sales team.
- SSO is only available on the Enterprise tier, which forces smaller organizations to upgrade even if they don’t need the rest of the features.
Which Retool plan should you choose?
Most teams start on the Team plan, but they often have to move up to Business as soon as they need external users or audit logging. If they require SSO, they must jump to Enterprise, even when they don’t need its other advanced features.
Choose the Free plan:
- You are an individual developer or a very small team testing Retool for prototypes.
- You want to experiment with unlimited apps and workflows without spending money.
Choose the Team plan:
- You are a small team ready to move into production apps with staging and release controls.
- You don’t need external users or advanced audit features, but want better security with environment-specific configs.
Choose the Business plan:
- You need to build apps for both internal and external users, with portals and embedded apps.
- You care about compliance and visibility through audit logging.
Choose the Enterprise plan if:
- You need enterprise-grade governance with SSO, Git-compatible source control, and usage analytics.
- You need programmatic management of apps and users through Retool’s APIs.
Is Retool worth the cost?
If you take advantage of all of Retool’s features, like internal apps, external apps, mobile apps, and workflows, it can be worth the cost since all plans support unlimited usage. But if you need features locked behind expensive tiers like SSO and source control, it’s not.
Retool is worth it if:
- You’re building many internal tools and want to save time. Retool provides prebuilt UI components, templates, and database/API connectors.
- You already have strong infrastructure and DevOps, so your team can absorb the extra work of deployment, monitoring, and maintenance that comes with self-hosting Retool.
Skip Retool if:
- You want an app builder that gives you more flexibility with custom code support and code export features in case you need to move off the platform later.
- You want a no-code builder. You’ll need some technical skills to customize your apps.
Retool alternatives and pricing comparison
If Retool feels too closed or ends up costing more than expected for self-hosting, there are other platforms worth considering.
Here’s a quick pricing and positioning comparison of Superblocks, Appsmith, and UI Bakery:
Retool vs Superblocks: Which should you choose?
Superblocks is better if you value being able to jump into your own IDE and customize your AI-generated apps without limits or vendor lock-in. The hybrid deployment option also saves you the cost and overhead of managing a full on-prem setup.
Retool is better if your priorities are its specialized features, like building native mobile apps for field teams or customer-facing external portals.
Try a free Superblocks demo.
My bottom line on Retool pricing
Retool's pricing looks simple at first (e.g., a fixed price per user per month), but your final bill can become much larger and more unpredictable than you expect. This is because the new AI capabilities are consumption-based, so you’ll pay based on how much you use them.
Currently, all the paid plans have an unlimited number of prompt credits, but expect it to become a metered cost in the future.
If you self-host, you’ll need to factor in infrastructure costs, time for deployment, upgrades, and downtime during maintenance.
Plus, the features many teams want, like SSO and Git integration, are gated behind Retool enterprise pricing. You often end up paying more, sooner, than you thought. Retool reviews show that smaller teams can see their costs jump into five figures just to unlock a handful of Enterprise-only features.
Build secure and governed internal tools with Superblocks
Superblocks enables responsible and secure democratization of AI app building with a centrally-governed platform. Unlike Retool, it provides a true low-code and AI app-building option that’s open and fully extensible. You can solve the complexity, risk, and overhead of building and maintaining internal tools without lock-in.
Its extensive set of features supports this balance:
- Flexible development modalities: Teams can use Clark to generate apps from prompts, the WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor, or code. Superblocks syncs the changes you make in code and the visual editor.
- AI guardrails: Every app built with Clark abides by organizational standards for data security, permissions, and compliance. This addresses the major LLM risks of ungoverned shadow AI app generation.
- Centrally managed governance layer: It supports granular access controls with RBAC, SSO, and audit logs, all centrally governed from a single pane of glass across all users. It also integrates with secret managers for safe credentials management.
- Keep data on prem: It has an on-prem agent you can deploy within your VPC to keep sensitive data in-network.
- Extensive integrations: It can integrate with any API or databases. These integrations include your SDLC processes, like Git workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
Ready for fast, secure internal tool generation? Book a demo with one of our product experts.
Frequently asked questions
What is Retool?
Retool is a low-code platform for building internal business applications, native mobile apps, and external apps. It provides prebuilt UI components, templates, and connectors for databases and APIs, so teams can create apps fast.
How much does Retool cost?
Retool costs $12 per standard user and $7 per end user per month on the Team plan. The Business plan costs $65 per standard user and $18 per end user, while Enterprise pricing is custom and requires talking to sales.
Is Retool free?
Retool is free for the limited free tier that includes up to 5 users, unlimited apps, 500 workflow runs per month, and 20 agent hours. For larger teams, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan starting at $12 per standard user per month.
How much does Retool self-hosted cost?
Retool’s self-hosted pricing starts at $12 per standard user and $7 per end user, but the real cost is higher because you also need to pay for infrastructure, databases, storage, and the DevOps time to manage upgrades.
Does Retool charge for external users?
Yes, external users are billed separately under the Business plan and higher. The first 50 users are free. After that, pricing starts at $10 for 51-259 users and decreases to $5 for over 500 users.
What are the hidden costs of Retool software?
The hidden costs of Retool come when you self-host infrastructure and use the consumption-based AI features. You’ll need to account for deployment and upgrades, and downtime during maintenance windows.
Does Retool support self-hosting?
Yes, Retool supports self-hosting, but it requires dedicated infrastructure and DevOps resources to manage. Many teams find the cost and complexity higher than expected compared to cloud hosting.
What are the disadvantages of Retool?
The main disadvantages of Retool are that it doesn’t have a prompt-to-AI app builder, it doesn’t give access to the underlying code, and its self-hosting option is complex and expensive.
