No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Knack vs Retool comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

Knack
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
35th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No-Code Development Platforms (8th)
Retool
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Knack is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Retool is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Retool1.3%
Knack0.9%
Other97.8%
Rapid Application Development Software
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1460940 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at ITdirector.ie
Flexible and granular security options, good filtering, and the pricing model is cost-effective
The vendor does a really poor job of marketing this software because it should be more popular. This is something that I have pointed out to them. It's a super piece of software, but very few people are aware of it. I am an EX-IT director and I've worked in big systems, and I'm amazed this solution isn't more popular. The "native" integration with other products could be improved. The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you may have to use HTML and CSS to make it look more modern or to match a clients existing look. The documentation is amazing, although they don't do videos and their YouTube channel is very poor. They could create some training videos.
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

"Overall, I am a big fan of Knack."
"The security is the most valuable feature, in particular, the way I can give different access to different areas to different people, so you can really fine-tune access for different users."
"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."
"We can create the dashboards quickly."
"Retool provides us with the opportunity to save time and be more efficient."
"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."
"Retool's most valuable features are its drag-and-drop components and the ability to customize them extensively."
"The most valuable feature of Retool is the workflow because I can integrate multiple features, such as RESTful API, JavaScript API, or different databases on the same dashboard."
"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."
 

Cons

"The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you have to do a lot of HTML and CSS to make it look modern."
"There are restrictions on the front-end side."
"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."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Retool is that it is straightforward but somewhat pricey compared to other industry leaders such as Sentry and others."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product has really good value, as it doesn't have a per-user cost, there's a flat fee."
"I don't know Retool's current pricing, but it cost around $12 per month earlier."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Rapid Application Development Software solutions are best for your needs.
912,801 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
11%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Retool?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Retool is that it is straightforward but somewhat pricey compared to other industry leaders such as Sentry and others. I feel it is an eigh...
What needs improvement with Retool?
I do not have specifics on how Retool can be improved because we are using it for internal tool building only. Regarding needed improvements, perhaps Retool can focus on not building customer-facin...
What is your primary use case for Retool?
We started using Retool last September, so it has been more than nine months now. Our main use case for Retool is an internal operations dashboard built in Retool for our AI agents. Whenever we shi...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Siemens Kaiser Permanente VMware SunChemical C.R. England Philips The Salvation Army United Way U.S. Green Building Council Cambridge University Press
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, ServiceNow, Oracle and others in Rapid Application Development Software. Updated: September 2026.
912,801 professionals have used our research since 2012.