Retool vs Windsurf comparison

Retool and Windsurf are both solutions in the AI Software Development category. Retool is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.1, while Windsurf is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.7. Retool holds a 0.6% mindshare in ASD, compared to Windsurf’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Retool users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Windsurf users who would recommend it.

Retool

Read 11 Retool reviews

1,139 Views
410 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Windsurf

Read 19 Windsurf reviews

3,634 Views
1,890 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Retool

Windsurf

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Retool and Windsurf based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two AI Software Development solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Retool vs. Windsurf Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Retool vs. Windsurf

February 2026

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Helped 885,311 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score

6.0

Reducing developer needs and using affordable tools led to significant cost savings and justified user fees.

Sentiment score

5.4

Organizations achieve high ROI with Windsurf, enhancing efficiency, productivity, and code quality, reducing costs and time significantly.

We had fewer front-end resources, and while developing with Retool, we did not need many front-end team members, which saved on salaries.

Kozykorpesh Tolep

software engineer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think we can see time saved to start the proof of concept and maybe money saved because I was able to develop the mobile app alone without needing additional resources.

Yannick LE GAL

IT consultant for healthcare sector at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

My clients save time and money, and we are generally about twice as fast with AI-enabled software development.

Tommy Hinrichs

Principal Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1-10 employees

The scope of work has increased a lot, but we managed to keep up without hiring due to the power of these AI-powered coding agents like Windsurf and Cursor.

Rusira Sathnindu

Automation Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

It has saved a substantial amount of time compared to previous methods, with a 25% time reduction in code generation and completion of projects.

reviewer2809662

Software Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.0

Retool's support is responsive and helpful, with users suggesting chat for improvement amid varied experiences with assistance resources.

Sentiment score

6.7

Windsurf customer service is generally seen as effective, though some experience difficulties with contact and response times.

The customer support is amazing; overall, AWS customer support is very professional and fast.

Kozykorpesh Tolep

software engineer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Technical support team is available, but I haven't needed to contact them.

Anees Shoukat

Full Stack PHP/Python AWS Developer at Binary Port

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

Technical issues are handled very well when they arise.

reviewer2809662

Software Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

The release notes are really helpful.

Tommy Hinrichs

Principal Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1-10 employees

It is mentioned on their website that you need to mail customer support to contact them.

Husain Barwala

AI Engineer at Walkover Web Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.6

Retool is scalable and efficient, supporting large user bases and datasets with customizable security and effective performance management.

Sentiment score

5.6

Windsurf effectively manages growth and larger projects but may struggle with very complex repositories; scalability could be improved.

It's scalable and doesn't experience any slowdown when handling increasing data volumes.

Anees Shoukat

Full Stack PHP/Python AWS Developer at Binary Port

Retool is more suited for startups, but it can get messy at scale.

Kozykorpesh Tolep

software engineer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

Windsurf can ensure that multiple users can work simultaneously on a single product.

Husain Barwala

AI Engineer at Walkover Web Solutions

I believe it can handle growth effectively as our team expands or projects get bigger because it keeps the context of the codebase in a specialized, cached way.

Rusira Sathnindu

Automation Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Windsurf's scalability is good, as it can handle larger projects or more users if needed.

reviewer2805456

Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.3

Retool is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues, garnering mostly positive ratings from users.

Sentiment score

7.6

Windsurf is widely stable and reliable, with minor latency issues and past problems resolved, enhancing user experience.

Retool is stable in my experience.

Yannick LE GAL

IT consultant for healthcare sector at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

Windsurf is currently stable for me; I have not experienced any crashes or issues.

Sufyan Ahmed

Angular Developer at a computer retailer with 51-200 employees

I have not encountered any crashes or reliability issues.

reviewer2805456

Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees

It is highly reliable.

reviewer2748786

Founding BackEnd Engineer

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Room For Improvement

Retool struggles with customization, integration, support, and documentation, requiring better tools, language support, and user resources.

Users suggest enhancing Windsurf's trial performance, command-line integration, and improving AI accuracy, feature handling, and platform integration.

Retool needs more customization options, as it should not be limited to a few customization features; it should be broader, with more features available for users to utilize.

Kozykorpesh Tolep

software engineer at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

AI tools, features, and machine learning capabilities should be added as they would be helpful in the future.

Anees Shoukat

Full Stack PHP/Python AWS Developer at Binary Port

There should be better documentation or support for non-technical users, providing a platform to learn and implement Retool effectively.

reviewer2775993

Construction Data Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

Enhancing the reliability of the cascade agent for large and complex codebases, ensuring it understands projects thoroughly, and providing safer multi-file edits would make Windsurf a significantly stronger tool.

Sufyan Ahmed

Angular Developer at a computer retailer with 51-200 employees

I would rather look for the inclusion of pull request reviews or a kind of a TRD or technical requirement general documentation generation, or system diagram generation directly from the codebase in Windsurf itself.

reviewer2748786

Founding BackEnd Engineer

There needs to be a better way to find new models instead of going to the release notes; the model picker should highlight the newer beta or free models more prominently.

Tommy Hinrichs

Principal Consultant at a outsourcing company with 1-10 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Setup Cost

Retool offers competitive pricing, appealing to small teams with free plans and larger deployments facing affordable user costs.

Windsurf offers affordable pricing and seamless licensing, providing good value, especially to enterprises, though startups desire slightly lower costs.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing experience were good as the free plan was enough for us.

Yannick LE GAL

IT consultant for healthcare sector at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

It is very cheap compared to other tools in the market because 80% of the time, we are happy with their free model capabilities.

reviewer2748786

Founding BackEnd Engineer

If it were a bit less, it would be more useful for us to save money since we are a startup.

Ahmad Rilwan Haq

Software Engineer at Collecto Fintech Solutions Pvt Ltd

I did not incur setup costs.

reviewer2805456

Student at a university with 501-1,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Valuable Features

Retool simplifies UI dashboard creation with easy API integration, supports complex logic, and enhances efficiency for teams and startups.

Windsurf boosts developer productivity with AI code generation, real-time suggestions, and seamless integration across languages and frameworks.

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.

reviewer2775993

Construction Data Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Retool provides built-in features with all processing happening within the platform, which is a significant advantage.

Anees Shoukat

Full Stack PHP/Python AWS Developer at Binary Port

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.

Yannick LE GAL

IT consultant for healthcare sector at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Retool report

We were able to build a product from scratch, which would have taken at least two to three weeks. With Windsurf helping me build it in a week, the time savings are substantial.

reviewer2783511

Lead Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Windsurf's understanding of my Angular project context is better than basic auto-complete and less IntelliSense options because it understands what version of Angular I am using and what features I require.

Sufyan Ahmed

Angular Developer at a computer retailer with 51-200 employees

If there are any exceptions, it automatically finds out what the exact issue is and provides the solution and fixes it.

Ahmad Rilwan Haq

Software Engineer at Collecto Fintech Solutions Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Windsurf report

Categories and Ranking

Retool

Ranking in AI Software Development

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rapid Application Development Software (15th)

Windsurf

Ranking in AI Software Development

5th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IDE (2nd), AI Code Assistants (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the AI Software Development category, the mindshare of Retool is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windsurf is 1.8%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

AI Software Development Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Windsurf	1.8%
Retool	0.6%
Other	97.6%

AI Software Development

Featured Reviews

Yannick LE GAL

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.

Read full review

Rusira Sathnindu

Automation Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

AI coding agent has boosted daily commits and now speeds up complex feature delivery

Even though Windsurf has a good understanding of the codebase, sometimes when you ask it to do a complex task, it may complete it in the first try but may need improvements. When you prompt it again repeatedly, after the sixth or seventh prompt, it may start performing poorly. That is one of the key things I have noticed—its performance is not very consistent with continued prompts. Additionally, it sometimes hallucinates things. Although this previously happened a lot, it has improved, and now these checkers and linter functions ensure the code it writes is correct, reducing those hallucinations, but the performance inconsistency is still something I have noticed. The UI is good as it is basically a Visual Studio fork, so it has a good user interface. Moreover, every Visual Studio integration works here, so all of those are good. One of the main issues is the agent hallucinating and the generations not being good; those are two main points.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windsurf?

I did not have to give any money for it, so it is fully free, which is the best. I did not incur setup costs.

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What needs improvement with Windsurf?

Windsurf can be improved in several ways, such as enhancing response times and better handling of massive codebases when dealing with over 100K plus files, along with improved security controls. AI...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Windsurf?

My main use case for Windsurf is writing code with AI solutions and refactoring existing code. A quick specific example of a task or project where I have used Windsurf for writing or refactoring co...

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

Claude for Enterprise vs Windsurf

Compared 11% of the time

Tabnine vs Windsurf

Compared 6% of the time

ChatGPT Team - Enterprise vs Windsurf

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Retool

March 2026

Download Retool product report

Buyer's Guide

Windsurf

March 2026

Download Windsurf product report

Overview

Retool enables rapid construction of internal tools with minimal coding, streamlining workflows across HR, customer support, and compliance. Praised for its drag-and-drop interface, extensive component library, and SQL support, it boosts organizational efficiency by automating tasks and enhancing data management.

Retool

Windsurf offers a strategic approach to digital transformation, providing tools for optimizing processes. It's aimed at businesses looking to enhance efficiency and adapt to changing market demands through technology-driven solutions.

Targeted at enterprises, Windsurf integrates seamlessly with existing systems to improve workflow and data management. By offering customizable options, it meets diverse business requirements, enabling companies to stay competitive in a fast-paced environment. Its user-focused design ensures accessibility and ease of use, helping teams achieve their goals swiftly.

What are the key features of Windsurf?

Integration Capability: Connects with numerous software platforms, ensuring smooth data flow.
Customizable Options: Offers flexibility to tailor functionalities to specific business needs.
User-Friendly Interface: Designed for ease of adoption with minimal training requirements.
Real-Time Data Analysis: Provides immediate insights to support decision-making.

What benefits and ROI does Windsurf offer?

Increased Productivity: Streamlines operations leading to time and resource savings.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces overhead by optimizing processes and systems.
Improved Decision-Making: Real-time insights aid in strategic planning.
Scalability: Easily adapts as business grows without significant additional investment.

In areas like manufacturing and retail, Windsurf improves supply chain management and customer engagement. In healthcare, it optimizes patient data management, while in finance, it enhances compliance and reporting processes, each tailored to meet industry-specific challenges.

Windsurf

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Dell, Anduril, MongoDB, Zillow, Atlassian

Buyer's Guide

Retool vs. Windsurf

February 2026

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