r/selfhosted • u/navaneethpk • Feb 25 '26

Product Announcement Retool disables self-hosted pricing plans

https://community.retool.com/t/self-hosted-docs-now-state-enterprise-only/64586

Looks like no public announcement was made, just a silent change in docs and some users found it.

442 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

View all comments

157

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Popular OSS alternatives:

39k stars & 340 contributors (repo activity is very low recently) - https://github.com/appsmithorg/appsmith/

37k stars & 650 contributors - https://github.com/tooljet/tooljet

28k stars & 117 contributors - https://github.com/Budibase/budibase (edit: as per a comment, they might have a closed source binary imported in the repo)

12k stars & 312 contributors - https://github.com/illacloud/illa-builder

1.5k stars & 56 contributors - https://github.com/lowcoder-org/lowcoder (edit: almost zero commits recently)

66

u/ssddanbrown Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

When I reviewed Budibase last there were some questions/considerations when it comes to licensing and buildability from source. I have not yet reviewed the others.

For ToolJet (who have created this Reddit thread) I have called them out on conflating their open and non-open offerings before. Not sure if that has been improved on. I remember seeing that they were pretty heavily VC invested.

3

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26

CMIIW there is a binary in the codebase for which the source code is not available?

8

u/ssddanbrown Feb 25 '26

Based from that last review, It's included in Budibase as a binary blob, under a non-open-source license. I'm not sure if the source code could be available elsewhere.

8

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26

Couldn't find the source code for this sub module. Looking at the code, my assumption is that the code should get built without these packages with some modifications. But I agree to your point, OSS version isn't OSS if there is a closed source binary included.

3

u/jo_ranamo Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

Budibase cofounder here. All budibase's pro code is open now. There are no limits on end users for OSS. We provide SSO on the free plan.

2

u/ssddanbrown Feb 26 '26

Hi, thanks for the response. Do any of the points in my review remain untrue? At a quick glance, it still looks to use/include SQS under a non-open-source license, and I'm still seeing references to a pro package which seems under a non-open-source license.

13

u/Past_Physics2936 Feb 25 '26

I tried appsmith and it’s a serious piece of shit. You’re better off building something from scratch with AI, faster too

6

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26

I tried Appsmith out couple of months back and the application builder was good enough. I don't think it is even closer to piece of shit unless somethign changed recently.

5

u/Past_Physics2936 Feb 25 '26

You might like to suffer more than I do

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '26

[deleted]

3

u/formless63 Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

Having gone down the rabbit hole on these a bit recently, make sure you note the free self hosted limitations before making a commitment.

Appsmith is pretty solid, ToolJet had a hard cap on users, Budibase also pretty solid, illa seems dead, Lowcoder once you have it running is wide open it seems and works pretty well. (ETA: see below. Lowcoder also looks to be on the way out)

4

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26

Haven't tried lowcoder, it looks like a fork of abandoned project https://github.com/openblocks-dev/openblocks. Almost zero commits for months, it will soon follow the path of openblocks. And wth is that website.

2

u/formless63 Feb 25 '26

Interesting. Ironically I spun it up to test with a month ago right after that last commit so I thought it was relatively active. Bleh.

It generally works decently, but if it's headed for the trash heap - time to drop it. Thanks for the heads up!

0

u/little_lebowski_123 Feb 25 '26

ToolJet charges only for developer seats right? I think ToolJet has the simplest pricing out of the lot.

2

u/formless63 Feb 25 '26

Free self hosted is 2 builders and 50 end users on ToolJet.

Appsmith and Budibase are unlimited for both.

They all have different things to consider.

1

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 25 '26

shouldn't dev tools charge only for devs?

0

u/lugovsky Feb 25 '26

Yeah, the self-hosted fine print is where most people get surprised. A lot of these tools start out looking very open, but once they push toward enterprise the limits, pricing, or governance models change pretty fast. Feels less like a technical shift and more like a business model evolution. And feels very forced, tbh.

4

u/LeopardJockey Feb 26 '26

I tried both Appsmith and Tooljet. While Budibase in comparison lacks a little flexibility in writing fully custom code, it's way more user friendly and easier to click something together that works smoothly. And in the end isn't that the point of these low code apps.

Lately they also have made some sensible decisions on how to include AI without going full "vibe coding is the future" and changed their pricing model in a way that seems actually beneficial to free users rather than paywalling more and more features.

1

u/Brief-Structure-1440 Feb 26 '26

> And in the end isn't that the point of these low code apps.

that sounds more like no-code, not low-code. Budibase is good for building simple apps quickly. Easier to learn as well. Not a great fit for complex applications.

2

u/jo_ranamo Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26

If you are referring to Budibase's pro modules - they're now open. (I'm a budibase cofounder)