Enterprises choose Superblocks over Retool

Unlike Retool, Superblocks is a true low-code platform without limits. You can extend further with code, build faster with an AI Copilot, self-host without the overhead, and deliver performant apps at scale – all while adopting affordably across your teams.

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Testimonials

Papaya, Alchemy, Clearco, and Moveworks all chose Superblocks

Top enterprises use Superblocks to deliver custom operational software at blazing speed, while meeting increasingly stringent security, compliance, scalability, and uptime requirements.

Ofer Herman
Co-Founder & CTO
"As CTO of a high growth operationally intensive business, we chose Superblocks because it was simple to deploy, billed by usage and intuitive for our engineering teams to build a suite of tooling for our global partner network."
Arsalan Siddiqui
Director of Engineering
"Superblocks is ideal for Fintech companies where KYC, fraud and risk are critical tooling areas that evolve weekly. The on-prem agent is a unique low-overhead solution to keep our customer data within our VPC."

Rishub Kumar
Internal Tools Lead
"Superblocks has saved us 100s of engineering hours on internal tools and reduced support ticket resolution time by 50%."
Rubab Uddin
Customer Engineering Lead
“We built apps on Superblocks for Support teams to troubleshoot our enterprise AI platform without involving Engineering. As a result, we can resolve customer issues faster, increase adoption, and deliver a superior chatbot experience.”

Why Superblocks

Why are companies choosing Superblocks over Retool?

Superblocks is the only low-code platform with all the capabilities enterprises need to build secure, scalable, and extensible internal tools.

Greater extensibility with code
Retool apps support client-side JS only while Superblocks supports React, JS, NodeJS, & Python. Retool Custom Components rely on one HTML file, with web-based imports limited to an iframe, while Superblocks provides full extensibility with React.
Scalable architecture & better performance
Retool JS queries are limited by browser CPU & memory, causing major latency for large apps. Superblocks application front-ends are multi-threaded for smooth UI rendering, while back-end queries scale elastically with on-demand cloud compute.
Simpler, more cost-effective self-hosting
Self-hosted Retool is a legacy on-premise deployment, requiring dedicated infrastructure, DevOps engineering, and downtime for upgrades. The Superblocks On-Premise Agent is stateless, simple to deploy, and new App Builder features are instantly available from the cloud.
Build real-time streaming apps
In Superblocks it’s easy to stream data from Kafka, Kinesis, Confluent, OpenAI, and others for real-time fraud alerting, live gameplay dashboards, best-in-class AI chatbots, and more. Retool does not support streaming, preventing organizations from harnessing real-time insights.
Production monitoring & observability
Superblocks integrates with observability providers like Datadog, New Relic and Splunk, so you can view metrics, traces, and logs from your internal tools within your preferred provider. Retool does not have observability, leaving you blind when errors arise.
Best-in-class customer support
Superblocks provides exceptional support across tiers - customers consistently highlight responsiveness and dedication to customer satisfaction in G2 testimonials. Retool’s support is limited to the enterprise tier and has mixed reviews.

Nadeesha Cabral

SVP of Engineering

Read the case study

"Previously we were using Retool but found the self-hosted version challenging to deploy and expensive to maintain, as it required running 6 RDS databases in clusters across three VPCs. The pricing model was also limiting for our scale. Moving to the Superblocks On-Premise Agent made it much simpler to deploy the data plane as a stateless container, and build apps for multiple VPCs with Profiles. In addition, the pricing flexibility enabled us to roll out Superblocks to hundreds of Support agents in a cost effective way."

Comparison

Compare Superblocks to Retool

See the full feature breakdown between Superblocks and Retool across pricing, extensibility, performance, AI, security, SDLC, hosting, and support.

	Superblocks	Retool
Application Builder
Drag & drop application builder Build internal UIs connected to your data via a drag & drop interface	Yes	Yes
Integrate with any Database or API Integrate with any standard database or API endpoint	Yes	Yes
Multi-step application APIs Program your application with multi-step business logic executed on the server-side	Yes Multi-step APIs are composed of data source queries and language steps in NodeJS and Python for processing, all executed server-side with elastic scaling	No All application queries are single-step, resulting in excess network requests and latency overhead for business logic execution
Build Real-Time Streaming Applications Build real-time applications based on event-driven architectures like Kafka	Yes Native support for Kafka, Kinesis, Confluent Cloud, AWS MSK, Redpanda, and other streaming platforms	No No support to integrate with streaming data sources
Open-source execution engine	Yes The Superblocks Developer Community can contribute to the open source agent	No Closed source. Need to wait on Retool to prioritize additional features
Workflow & Scheduled Job Builder
Build Webhooks with Workflows Invoke workflows over HTTP as webhooks	Yes	Yes
Execute scheduled jobs Invoke programmatic workflows on a schedule, replacing cron jobs	Yes	Yes
Build API Endpoints with Workflows Build reusable programmatic workflows which can be called within applications or as REST APIs	Yes Full REST API endpoints with customizable responses	No Workflows are fire-and-forget and do not respond with success or error
Intuitive Visual Builder for Business Logic Linear code-like UX to build custom business logic that scales as complexity increases	Yes	No Convoluted flow diagram is difficult to read, maintain, and debug
Self-Host Workflows Without Additional Overhead No need to deploy additional services to use workflows when self-hosting	Yes	No Convoluted flow diagram is difficult to read, maintainMust self-host Temporal cluster for fully on-premise deployment, and debug
Extensibility with Code
Write frontend JS Write frontend JavaScript that is executed within the browser	Yes	Yes
Write Backend Code in NodeJS & Python Write backend code executed on the server-side, as you would for a standard application backend	Yes NodeJS and Python supported within Application APIs and Workflows. Import any library	No Application Queries support client-side JS-only, with imports limited to packages bundled for use on the web
Build fully-featured custom components Augment the built-in component library by developing your own custom components in React	Yes Build fully-featured components in React, with full DOM control and the ability to share component state. Develop locally in your IDE, import any package, and bundle multiple files	No Custom Components written in a single HTML file in the browser, limited to an iframe with no ability to share state or interact with the DOM. Imports are limited to packages bundled for use on the web
Build custom integrations Integrate with non-standard databases via a custom integration	Yes Extend the open-source agent to build custom integrations	No No extensibility due to closed source code
Performance
Fast query performance on large datasets Execute queries efficiently as data volume and throughput scales	Yes Multi-step APIs executed server-side provide horizontal scalability and elastic compute, ensuring minimal network requests and data transfer	No Client-side code execution is limited by browser CPU and memory, resulting in increased latency & overhead for app loading and query processing
Global edge caching network Cache applications globally to reduce app latency	Yes Apps are cached at the edge across US West (Oregon), US East (N. Virginia), EU (Ireland), Middle East (Bahrain), & Asia Pacific (Hong Kong)	No No edge caching available
Generative AI
Fully-featured AI copilot across languages AI Copilot to write, edit, debug, and explain code	Yes JavaScript, Python, SQL, JSON, HTML	Yes JavaScript, SQL
User-Friendly AI Integrations Native integration with AI services with user-friendly methods and parameters	Yes	Yes
Copilot for REST API Calls AI Copilot to integrate with REST APIs	Yes	No GraphQL only
Generate Mock Data with AI Use AI to generate mock data when building applications	Yes	No
Enterprise Security
Granular permissions (RBAC) Control access to tools granularly with role-based access controls	Yes	Yes
SSO / SAML / SCIM Use SAML and other protocols for identity and access management & synchronize user management with your IdP using SCIM	Yes	Yes
Audit logs Retain a history of user actions taken within the platform	Yes	Yes
Secrets Manager Integrations for Cloud & Self-Hosted Integrate with your preferred secrets manager to keep credentials secure	Yes AWS Secrets Manager, Google Secret Manager, Hashicorp Vault	No Supported for self-hosted only
Security Extensions Extend with custom security policies	Yes Agent can be extended with custom security layer code	No No extensions possible
Security Auditability Audit the platform's source code for bugs and vulnerabilities	Yes Agent source code is available on GitHub. Run your own security scanners, auditable by security teams	No Closed source code cannot be audited
Software Development Lifecycle
Commit previews Create and preview commits, then deploy to production	Yes	Yes Not supported natively. Developers must manually set up separate dev environments and keep them in sync
Source Control with Git Integrate with your git provider to sync changes for code review and CI/CD	Yes	Yes
Integrate with Multiple Environments through a Single Deployment Configure integrations to dynamically work with multiple development environments and regions without needing to deploy separate instances	Yes Seamlessly leverage Profiles to connect to different environments and regions, enabling apps to query across VPCs	No Dedicated Retool on-premise stack must be deployed into each VPC, resulting in large DevOps overhead and expense
Production Observability Integrate tools with observability platforms to track metrics, traces, and logs	Yes Integrate with your preferred observability provider, such as Datadog, Elastic Cloud, AWS OpenSearch, Kafka, Confluent Cloud and more	No
Hosting
Keep data in customer network Ensure sensitive data never leaves your VPC	Yes Using the Superblocks open-source, stateless On-Prem Agent	Yes Using a fully on-premise installation including custom vendor databases
US and EU cloud hosting Cloud-hosted offering is available in US and EU regions	Yes US & EU hosting regions	Yes
On-premise deployment effort The level of effort required to deploy the software	Yes Negligible. 5 min to deploy a lightweight, stateless agent to keep data within your private network	No High. Complex on-premise installation that includes managing databases and migrations
Platform upgrade effort The frequency and level of effort associated with on-premise upgrades	Yes Negligible. Access new features without upgrading your agent. Upgrades are simple, comparable to the initial deployment	No High. Full upgrades are required to access new features and critical security and bug fixes. Upgrades are expensive and require complex database migrations with downtime
Customer Support
Live Chat with Technical Support from Engineer	Yes	No
Extended Support Hours	Yes	No
Recognized by G2 for Best Support	Yes	No