Retool vs Bubble: Which Low-Code Platform Is Right for You?
A developer-honest breakdown of two popular low-code platforms — and when neither is the right answer.
Retool and Bubble are both marketed as low-code platforms, but they solve fundamentally different problems. Retool is purpose-built for internal tools — admin panels, dashboards, and data management interfaces that connect to your existing databases. Bubble targets customer-facing web applications with visual design flexibility and built-in user authentication. Choosing between them requires understanding what you are actually building and who will use it.
We have shipped production applications on both platforms and hit the walls on each. This comparison is based on real project experience — not feature-list comparisons from marketing pages. If you are evaluating these two platforms, here is what actually matters for your decision.
Target Use Cases and Core Strengths
Retool shines when your team needs to query databases, trigger workflows, and manage operational data through internal dashboards. It connects natively to PostgreSQL, MongoDB, REST APIs, GraphQL, and dozens of other data sources. If you need an admin panel built in a day, Retool delivers. The drag-and-drop builder handles tables, forms, and charts well, and writing custom JavaScript within the platform is straightforward for developers.
Bubble is designed for customer-facing products — marketplaces, SaaS applications, directories, and member portals. Its visual editor handles complex UI layouts, responsive design, user authentication, role-based access, and payment integrations through Stripe. Non-developers can build functional web apps without writing code. But once your business logic gets complex — conditional workflows, multi-step processes, or real-time features — Bubble starts to feel constraining and performance degrades noticeably.
Scalability, Ownership, and Long-Term Risk
Neither platform gives you full code ownership, and this is the risk that matters most long-term. Retool hosts your apps on their infrastructure (self-hosted enterprise plans exist but are expensive). Bubble locks your entire application — logic, data structure, UI — into their proprietary engine with no export path whatsoever. If Bubble changes pricing, deprecates features, or shuts down, you are rebuilding from zero.
For early-stage products and internal prototypes, this lock-in is an acceptable trade-off for speed. But as you scale past a few hundred users, need advanced performance tuning, or face compliance requirements around data residency, both platforms show cracks that custom development handles naturally. The question is not whether you will hit the ceiling — it is when, and whether you have planned for it.
Retool vs Bubble vs Custom Software
| Feature | Retool | Bubble | Custom Software |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best For | Internal tools and admin panels | Customer-facing web apps | Any use case, any scale, full ownership |
| Learning Curve | Moderate — SQL and JS knowledge helps | Low — visual drag-and-drop builder | High upfront, unlimited ceiling |
| Data Ownership | Your DB, their UI layer | Fully locked into Bubble | Complete ownership of code and data |
| Pricing at Scale | Expensive per-user pricing ($10-50/user) | Workload-based, can spike unpredictably | Predictable infrastructure costs |
| UI Customization | Good within component library | Flexible visual design, limited logic | Pixel-perfect, unlimited control |
| Time to MVP | 1-2 weeks for internal tools | 2-4 weeks for web apps | 4-8 weeks, production-ready from day one |
| Performance at Scale | Degrades with complex queries | Noticeably slow past 1K+ users | Optimized for your specific workload |
| Code Export | No — proprietary format | No — completely locked in | You own every line of source code |
The Verdict
Pick Retool if you need internal tools that talk to your existing databases and your team includes developers comfortable with SQL and JavaScript. Pick Bubble if you are prototyping a customer-facing product and want visual design control without hiring a developer. Both are legitimate tools for their intended use cases and can save weeks of development time for straightforward projects.
If you are building something that needs to scale beyond a prototype, handle complex business logic, or integrate deeply with proprietary systems, custom development gives you the flexibility and ownership that neither platform can match. The upfront investment is higher, but you avoid the compounding costs of platform lock-in, per-user pricing, and performance workarounds. Scale Labs helps Seattle businesses make this transition when the time is right.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I migrate from Bubble to custom code later?
Is Retool good for customer-facing apps?
Which is cheaper for a small team?
Not Sure Which Platform Fits?
Book a free consultation with Scale Labs. We will assess your requirements and recommend the most cost-effective approach — whether that is a low-code tool or custom development built to your exact specifications.