Developer tools · Updated October 2026
Retool is a low-code builder for internal tools and admin panels. If you would rather own your tools, here are 5 open source alternatives to Retool, ranked by GitHub stars. Each one is free to use under its license, and you can read, change, and often self-host the code.
The most popular is ToolJet with 41.1k stars, and the most recently updated is NocoBase, with a commit on Oct 21, 2026.
by ToolJet
Open-source foundation of ToolJet AI - the enterprise app generation platform for internal tools, dashboards, business applications, workflows and AI agents. Build visually, from a prompt, or from …
by appsmithorg
Platform to build admin panels, internal tools, and dashboards. Integrates with 25+ databases and any API.
by refinedev
A React Framework for building internal tools, admin panels, dashboards & B2B apps with unmatched flexibility.
by Budibase
AI agents, automations and apps that run your operations. Model agnostic.
by nocobase
NocoBase is an open-source AI + no-code platform for building business systems fast. Instead of generating everything from scratch, AI works on top of production-proven infrastructure and a WYSIWYG…
By GitHub stars, ToolJet is the most popular open source alternative to Retool right now, with 41.1k stars, followed by Appsmith and Refine. The best fit depends on your setup, so compare their licenses, languages, and recent activity in the table above.
Yes. All 5 projects on this page are open source, so the software itself is free to use, study, and change. Some of them also sell a hosted version or paid support.
NocoBase (last commit Oct 21, 2026), ToolJet (last commit Oct 21, 2026), and Budibase (last commit Oct 21, 2026) have the most recent commits. Licenses on this list include AGPL-3.0, Apache-2.0, and MIT.
ToolJet
Appsmith
Refine
Budibase
NocoBase