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OutSystems vs Retool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

OutSystems
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (1st), Low-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (6th)
Retool
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of OutSystems is 4.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retool is 1.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OutSystems4.9%
Retool1.3%
Other93.8%
Rapid Application Development Software
 

Featured Reviews

Aditya Bhatt - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Lead at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Rapid delivery has transformed complex enterprise apps and supports faster cross-domain projects
Every platform or low-code platform tool is quite good in its own area, but there is always space to groom or enhance or improve. The same is with OutSystems as well. A couple of things from the integration point of view can be enhanced. If your application or the enterprise organization is tackling a huge data application where you have bulk amounts of data, it becomes a challenge for all the technologies and the same with OutSystems. You have to design your architecture in a very magnificent and decent way so that how you process your data so that load can be easily balanced. Data handling and huge data handling is a kind of challenge you may need to face. Then we have some vendor lock-in. If you are trying to migrate your application from OutSystems, then you probably get into this vendor lock-in system. Some organization may face challenges if some organization is on a small scale size. The small scale businesses may find OutSystems costly because of its high cost and pricing due to the licensing cost. Apart from that, OutSystems really plays well, and it needs a learning curve. If a traditional application or programming is there which your developers are skilled into and they are directly deployed into OutSystems, it may take some significant amount of time for them to get comfortable with OutSystems. There is a learning curve. OutSystems community is already in place, but it can more be enhanced regarding some aspects. They did organize lots of bootcamps and other user groups as well, but those can also be improved from the documentation point of view and having some integration guidebook as well. A couple of things which can be improved into OutSystems include the licensing cost, the vendor lock-in side, the learning curve, couple of integration aspects and customizations.
YL
IT consultant for healthcare sector at Freelancer
Has provided a quick way to build mobile apps and could improve usability for non-technical users
The best features Retool offers include the ability to quickly create a mobile app and use this mobile app in a native mobile app for Android. I found the process of creating and deploying those mobile apps for Android with Retool to be smooth as the documentation is very good, and I found answers and examples to create a mobile app. I can access a debug mode in the mobile app which was really convenient to make tests and find what can be improved, where I have a problem, and how to correct it. Retool positively impacted my organization as the proof of concept we built gave us a way to convince power users and key users before developing the real software. It was a way to maintain the launch date of the project, which helped speed up the project timeline and save resources.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One thing I like about OutSystems is that there's no lock-in. You can keep running your applications because it's on .NET and hosted centrally. That's one of the advantages I see there in terms of not having an IT strategy that has a dependency on a particular platform."
"The most valuable feature of OutSystems with discipline and the development processes. Instead of each developer doing tasks on their own with their own approach, et cetera, the solution would help bring some organization to the development process."
"OutSystems has no issues so far, the drag and drop environment is quite dynamic, and we can create our own UI on top of it."
"I really like the one-click publish feature in OutSystems. In other development tools/languages, it's not as easy. I also like how easily I can manage all my projects in one place."
"OutSystems is a robust and rapid application development platform with a less steep learning curve."
"It is a stable solution."
"OutSystems is easy to use."
"OutSystems' best feature is that you can build tests with the flow, so even the tests are made in the PDD framework in a low-code way."
"The stability is okay."
"Retool provides us with the opportunity to save time and be more efficient."
"We can create the dashboards quickly."
"Retool provides built-in features with all processing happening within the platform, which is a significant advantage."
"Retool positively impacts our organization by saving costs compared to using other data repositories, and teams prefer Retool for daily tasks that perform customizations to showcase web pages or link their data backend, making it more efficient and cost-effective than other software available in the market."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is connectivity with APIs and other databases."
"Retool's most valuable features are its drag-and-drop components and the ability to customize them extensively."
"There are several key aspects to Retool that make it stand out. Firstly, its extensive range of components makes integration straightforward. Secondly, its support for SQL and JavaScript allows for the implementation of complex logic, which is particularly beneficial for developers like yourself with experience in .NET development."
 

Cons

"The solution's testing framework needs to be improved, and the workflow should be slightly more mature."
"The prices should be lower. It is a little bit too high for a small market."
"The solution is costly."
"The asynchronous processing and multithreading tasks for which the current resources of the platform are very generic and not built for the end-user. Any asynchronous jobs have to be constructed with an end-user dashboard to allow inspection of the status of the activities."
"The tool's weakness is its focus on the solution only. Other than that, it's pretty easy to use for both technical and non-technical people. However, the tool lags in automation. For instance, we've used Python for scraping and other automated tasks. So, I believe automation is an area where it could improve."
"Writing custom code still needs to be done via Integration Studio. This might have been added to the IDE."
"Mobile apps should have been fully native."
"The dashboards in OutSystems could improve. There are a lot of tabs in the service center that can be confusing."
"The components are changed frequently, which is very irritating."
"Retool could enhance support, including efforts to establish support centers in Europe, which was lacking previously. However, the community is still in the growth phase, leading to potential delays in receiving responses to queries."
"In the mobile app development, you have to use JavaScript to interact with components, and for non-technical users, it's already too technical, so Retool has to add some integrated solutions."
"There are restrictions on the front-end side."
"AI tools, features, and machine learning capabilities should be added as they would be helpful in the future."
"The solution lacks inbuilt customization to customize bar charts."
"The part where we can add some custom logic or custom plugins could be better."
"Retool should add more resource integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe they have two pricing options. One is approximately $4000 USD a year and the other is approximately $10,000 USD a year."
"OutSystems is a good solution, but it's not cheap."
"It's not cheap. It's pretty expensive."
"The product is expensive and I would rate its pricing a seven out of ten. You need to pay a yearly subscription to use the product."
"For one developer to use, the cost is around $5,000."
"The price is okay. OutSystems isn't expensive. It's a mid-range solution."
"It is not an expensive product, especially if you have access to more features and deal with more projects."
"For a single application, it's too expensive."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"The pricing is very expensive. It costs for each user, for automated users, open-end users, et cetera."
"For new users, evaluate the scale of their administrative needs as Retool provides excellent free services for smaller setups, but larger deployments might require transitioning to a paid plan."
"I don't know Retool's current pricing, but it cost around $12 per month earlier."
"For me, I'm in India right now, and we have Retool's subscription for one team member for $10 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
14%
University
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
What industries do you think OutSystems is most useful for?
I cannot really name an industry in which OutSystems cannot be beneficial. Who does not want to make top-notch applications that work in no time? And OutsyStems does exactly that. The low-code plat...
How did you decide which OutSystems edition was the best one for you?
We started using OutSystems fairly recently, so we are still on the free version of it. My company is still testing how we like the platform, but so far, we have been satisfied with it and will li...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Retool?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing experience were good as the free plan was enough for us.
What needs improvement with Retool?
Retool, being a low-code/no-code platform, could improve by allowing users, particularly non-technical users, to use it more easily. In the mobile app development, you have to use JavaScript to int...
What is your primary use case for Retool?
My main use case for Retool involves an inventory app project. I built a mobile app to make an inventory of chemistry products. Retool helped me with that project as it was a good way to show a qui...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Randstad, Warner Brothers, HP, Intel, ING, Banco Popular, Thrivent Financial, Bacardi, Kent State University, Bacardi, FICO, ING, Vodafone, AbbVie, Estafeta, Siemens, Vopak
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about OutSystems vs. Retool and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.