Appsmith

Appsmith lets you drag-and-drop admin panels and internal tools that connect to any database or API. Write JavaScript for logic, use pre-built widgets for UI, and ship in hours what would take your frontend team a week. Open source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable — your data stays on your infrastructure.

Retool is the commercial leader with more components and integrations but costs $10-50/user/month. Budibase auto-generates CRUD apps from your schema with less code. ToolJet (AGPL) is the most AI-forward with natural language app generation.

Use Appsmith if you're building admin dashboards, CRUD interfaces, or internal tools and want an open-source, self-hosted option with the permissive Apache 2.0 license.

The catch: it's developer-oriented — your non-technical team won't build apps in Appsmith without JavaScript knowledge. The drag-and-drop builder is functional but not as polished as Retool's. Self-hosted performance can be sluggish with large datasets. And while Apache 2.0 is the most permissive license in this space, the cloud pricing ($10-25/user/month) adds up fast for larger teams.