Retool

About Retool

Financials

Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.

Products by Retool

All products by Retool reviewed by our AI panel of experts.

RetoolAI Productivity

Build internal tools faster with a drag-and-drop UI builder

From $9/mo7.5/10

How Our Review Panel Scores Retool

Six independent reviewer personalities assessed Retool's product on their own terms. They disagreed by 3.9 points — The Skeptic was the hardest to convince, The Domain Strategist the most positive.

Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.

Competitive Landscape

Who Retool competes with, and how they differ.

A

Appsmith

Open-source, self-hostable low-code builder for internal tools; competes directly with Retool on developer-first positioning but appeals to teams wanting to avoid vendor lock-in or self-host on their own infrastructure.

M

Microsoft Power Apps

Low-code app platform bundled into the Microsoft Power Platform and tied to Dataverse and Microsoft 365; wins enterprise IT buyers already standardized on Microsoft, and leans toward citizen developers more than Retool's engineer-first audience.

Quickbase7.9/10

No-code, database-driven app platform aimed at operations teams and citizen developers building workflow apps, with less emphasis on custom code and direct API/SQL integration than Retool.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Airtable7.1/10

Spreadsheet-database hybrid extended with Airtable Apps and Interfaces for lightweight internal tooling; easier for non-developers to start with but less capable than Retool for tools requiring complex data connections or custom logic.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Glide7.4/10

Turns spreadsheets like Google Sheets and Airtable into simple, mobile-first apps for small teams; targets much simpler use cases than Retool's SQL/API-heavy internal tools built for engineering organizations.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in Retool's history, with sources.

1. Jun 26, 2024Launch

   Launched Retool for External Apps

   Retool expanded beyond internal tools with Retool for External Apps, adding authentication, React/JavaScript SDKs, and white-labeling so customers could build and ship customer-facing software, not just internal tools.

   techcrunch.com
2. Sep 7, 2023Launch

   Launched Retool AI

   Retool added AI features letting customers embed LLM-powered functionality, such as chatbots and content generation, directly into their internal business apps.

   techcrunch.com
3. Nov 15, 2022Launch

   Launched Retool Workflows

   Retool launched Workflows, a backend automation builder for cron jobs, alerts, and ETL tasks aimed at developers who had been building workarounds inside the core product.

   techcrunch.com
4. Jul 28, 2022Funding

   Series C2 -- $45M led by Sequoia Capital at $3.2B valuation

   Retool raised $45 million in a round it described as a Series C2, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, and Daniel Gross, valuing the company at $3.2 billion.

   techcrunch.com
5. December 2021Funding

   Series C -- $20M at $1.85B valuation

   Retool raised a $20 million Series C round in December 2021, valuing the company at $1.85 billion.

   techcrunch.com
6. 2017Founded

   Founded by David Hsu

   Retool was founded in 2017 by David Hsu and went through Y Combinator's Winter 2017 batch.

   ycombinator.com