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Cursor vs Retool comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cursor
Ranking in AI Software Development
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
AI Code Assistants (4th)
Retool
Ranking in AI Software Development
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Rapid Application Development Software (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the AI Software Development category, the mindshare of Cursor is 1.2%, down from 36.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retool is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Software Development Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cursor1.2%
Retool0.5%
Other98.3%
AI Software Development
 

Featured Reviews

Rusira Sathnindu - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
AI coding has accelerated our feature delivery and has transformed how our team builds services
I have been noticing recently that Cursor introduced their own model, which is pretty limited; it is very fast, but it is not smart. They might have to improve that, along with the agent selection methodology. When you select auto, you expect it to use the best agent possible and think of the money savings, but it does not always work as expected, sometimes providing bad code or code that has bugs. I think the auto mode selection can improve. Another concern is the pricing; we have been paying a lot for Cursor recently, which I feel has increased within the last few months, possibly due to our usage going up. We are paying an amount similar to a developer's salary for Cursor now. I believe all the needed improvements are primarily around the auto agent selection mode and pricing. If they could be more transparent about it, that would be appreciated. We only see the bill at the end of the month, and it is often a high amount, so transparency in the pricing would be very helpful for us as developers.
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

"Cursor positively impacts my organization by providing great feasibility and better reliability, enabling faster development processes."
"Previously, tasks that would take weeks or months can now be completed within days because of these AI tools."
"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."
"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."
"Retool can be used with many applications as it is language independent; anyone can use it easily and create various visualizations regardless of their programming knowledge—this is the main reason I recommend it."
"Retool provides built-in features with all processing happening within the platform, which is a significant advantage."
"The stability is okay."
"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."
"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."
"With the help of Retool, we saved a lot of time; for instance, we made a similar project before that took two to three weeks to implement the same features, but with Retool, we could check our API right away very quickly, saving around twenty percent of our time and allowing us to visualize how our API works, see the drawbacks, and make changes to our FastAPI backend."
 

Cons

"Another concern is the pricing; we have been paying a lot for Cursor recently, which I feel has increased within the last few months, possibly due to our usage going up."
"Sometimes Cursor does get stuck, which should be addressed, though the UI remains very good."
"The UI of Retool could be improved, as I am not fond of the current design, and there should be a platform for learning how to use Retool efficiently, especially since our software team customizes it for their needs, leaving the operational team with limited knowledge on how to customize it."
"Retool should add more resource integration."
"AI tools, features, and machine learning capabilities should be added as they would be helpful in the future."
"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."
"Retool, being a low-code/no-code platform, could improve by allowing users, particularly non-technical users, to use it more easily."
"The solution lacks inbuilt customization to customize bar charts."
"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."
"One area for improvement in Retool is expanding its library support to include a broader range of third-party JavaScript libraries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I don't know Retool's current pricing, but it cost around $12 per month earlier."
"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."
"For me, I'm in India right now, and we have Retool's subscription for one team member for $10 per month."
"The pricing is very expensive. It costs for each user, for automated users, open-end users, et cetera."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cursor?
Sometimes Cursor does get stuck, which should be addressed, though the UI remains very good. The terminal can get stuck when there are many backend Docker processes running or when I need to check ...
What is your primary use case for Cursor?
I primarily use Cursor primarily to build applications, including front end and back end, as well as React Native apps. When using Cursor for front end and back end systems, I utilize technologies ...
What advice do you have for others considering Cursor?
My advice to others considering Cursor is that it is very good to use. I would recommend a context strategy to help them work effectively with the IDE.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Retool?
I found it affordable regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Retool?
Retool has some drawbacks, including limited customization; of course, it has limitations compared to React, where you can customize it as you want, but with Retool, there is limited customization....
What is your primary use case for Retool?
I used Retool in one of my projects a few months ago. The project involved making a monitoring real-time IoT system for IoT devices, and we used Retool as an internal dashboard. We had a stack of a...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cursor vs. Retool and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.