Low-Code / No-Code Comparison

Oracle APEX vs. Retool

At a glance

Oracle APEX

Best for

Best for organisations with data in Oracle that want internal and public web apps without per-user licensing.

Enterprise

Retool

Best for

Best for engineering and operations teams building internal tools on top of existing databases and APIs.

Small and mid-sized
Enterprise

Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.

Full Comparison

Criterion	Oracle APEX	Retool
Starting price	lower value Free; managed service from $0.0807 / ECPU / hour APEX is included at no cost with every Oracle database, and the Always Free tier of Oracle Cloud includes it. The managed APEX Service is billed at $0.0807 per ECPU per hour on pay-as-you-go, with no per-user or per-app fees.	Free; paid plans from $10 / builder / month Annual billing: Team $10 per builder and $5 per internal user per month, Business $50 per builder and $15 per internal user. On monthly billing that becomes $12 / $7 and $65 / $18. Enterprise on request.
Free trial	Always Free tier on Oracle Cloud, plus trial credits for paid services	Free plan for up to 5 users
Output	Data-driven web applications and REST APIs	Internal web and mobile apps, workflows and AI agents
API	Yes, custom REST APIs through Oracle REST Data Services	Yes, the Retool API manages the organisation, its users and Spaces
Hosting	Managed APEX Service or Autonomous AI Database on Oracle Cloud, or self-managed in any Oracle database	Retool cloud or self-hosted
What you build	Data-driven web applications, from spreadsheet replacements and operational dashboards to mission-critical data management systems, responsive on desktop and mobile and installable as progressive web apps	Internal tools: web and mobile apps, scheduled and event-driven workflows, and AI agents; an AI app builder starts an app from a prompt next to the classic drag-and-drop editor
Stack and frameworks	Declarative, metadata-driven App Builder running inside the Oracle database; logic is written in SQL and PL/SQL, and apps can optionally be described in APEXlang, an open, human-readable application specification	Drag-and-drop component library with JavaScript in queries, bindings and transformers; custom components are written in React and TypeScript and published to the organisation's component library
Auth and database	The Oracle database is the data layer, and the managed service includes an optimised Autonomous AI Transaction Processing database. Authentication schemes cover Oracle APEX accounts, LDAP, SAML, social sign-in through OpenID Connect or OAuth2 with Google, Facebook and enterprise identity providers, HTTP header variables and custom schemes	Connects to any database, API or LLM provider, with a hosted Retool Database included; permissions and audit logging from the Business tier, SSO and SCIM on Enterprise
Connectors	REST Data Sources for simple HTTP feeds, Oracle REST Data Services, OData v4, Oracle Cloud Applications and OCI REST services, plus REST Enabled SQL references to remote Oracle and MySQL databases	Listed integrations for databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Snowflake and BigQuery, for AI providers, CRMs such as Salesforce and HubSpot, messaging and Stripe, plus generic REST, GraphQL, gRPC, SOAP, OpenAPI and JDBC connectors for anything else
Hosting and deploy	Oracle-managed APEX Service or Autonomous AI Database on Oracle Cloud, co-managed on OCI Base Database Service, Exadata Database Service or a compute VM, or self-managed in a local Oracle database	Retool cloud or self-hosted; the free, Team and Business tiers can both be self-hosted, Enterprise adds unlimited end users and white-labelling
Governance and admin	Instance administrators manage workspaces, user accounts, activity monitoring and logs in Administration Services, and can enable or restrict AI services per workspace or instance; apps use authorization schemes, and working copies let developers merge, refresh and compare changes against the main app	Rich permission controls, audit logs and resource environment permissions from Business; Team gets staging and production environments, Business unlimited ones. SSO over SAML or OIDC, SCIM, enforced 2FA, Git source control, independent Spaces and usage analytics are Enterprise-only, and the platform APIs are limited on Business and fully open on Enterprise
Payments	Not stated	No built-in billing or checkout; a payment provider is connected as an API resource like any other
Access to the code	Apps export and import as files, and APEXlang represents an app as human-readable files that can be reviewed, versioned, diffed, scanned and validated, by developers or by AI agents	Apps live in Retool rather than as an exportable codebase; JavaScript and custom React components extend them, and Git-backed source control is an Enterprise feature
AI assistant	APEX Assistant creates apps and pages from natural language, adds natural-language querying to interactive reports and assists in every code editor. It runs on a generative AI service configured in the workspace, such as OCI Generative AI, OpenAI, Cohere or Google Gemini, and apps can embed the assistant through a dynamic action	An AI agent in the app builder's Chat tab plans and builds React apps from natural-language prompts, with uploaded files as context and a choice of model per thread; functions that change data need approval while previewing and before publishing. Metered as AI credits, from 250 a month on Free to 3,000 on Business, and Enterprise can bring its own API keys
Pricing model	No licence fee: APEX is a free feature of every Oracle database. The managed APEX Service is pay-per-use by compute, at $0.0807 per ECPU hour on pay-as-you-go, with no charge per user, developer or app	Per seat, split by role: builders and internal users are billed separately, and external users on Business are free up to 50 and then priced in volume bands. Annual billing saves 20 percent against monthly, a free plan covers up to 5 users and Enterprise is quoted. Self-hosting uses the same seat prices, capped at 100 users on Team and Business
AI features	Yes	Yes
Deployment	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise	Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based, On-premise
Support	Community forum	Community forum
Onboarding	more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Video tutorials, Live online demos and webinars	Documentation and knowledge base
Company size	Enterprise	more entries Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Integrations	more entries OCI Generative AI, OpenAI, Cohere, Google Gemini, Oracle Cloud Applications, MySQL	OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI

Compare more tools

Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.

The short version

Key Differences

Starting price Oracle APEX Free; managed service from $0.0807 / ECPU / hour Retool Free; paid plans from $10 / builder / month
Free trial Oracle APEX Always Free tier on Oracle Cloud, plus trial credits for paid services Retool Free plan for up to 5 users
Company size Oracle APEX Enterprise Retool Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
Hosting Oracle APEX Managed APEX Service or Autonomous AI Database on Oracle Cloud, or self-managed in any Oracle database Retool Retool cloud or self-hosted
Output Oracle APEX Data-driven web applications and REST APIs Retool Internal web and mobile apps, workflows and AI agents

Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.

The trade-offs

Strengths and Limitations

Oracle APEX

Strengths

No cost as part of any Oracle database, with no per-user, per-developer or per-app fees
Any logic expressible in SQL goes straight into an app
Runs fully managed on Oracle Cloud, co-managed on OCI or self-managed on premises

Limitations

Data has to live in an Oracle database; other sources come in over REST
The AI assistant appears only after an AI service is configured in the workspace
Getting the most from it assumes SQL and PL/SQL skills

Retool

Strengths

Connects to any database, API or LLM provider instead of starting from its own data
Self-hosting is available on every tier, the free one included
Extensible with JavaScript everywhere and custom React and TypeScript components

Limitations

Priced per builder and per internal user, so cost tracks headcount rather than apps
Apps are not an exportable codebase, so leaving the platform means rebuilding
Git source control, SSO and SCIM are Enterprise-only

Plans

Pricing

Oracle APEX

Always Free $0 APEX on the Always Free tier of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
APEX Application Development Service $0.0807 Per ECPU per hour, pay-as-you-go. No charge per user, developer or app.
Included with Oracle Database $0 APEX is a no-cost feature of Oracle Autonomous AI Database and every other Oracle database distribution; the database itself is licensed separately.

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Retool

Free $0 Up to 5 users, unlimited apps, 500 workflow runs a month, 5 GB database and 5 GB file storage, 250 AI credits a month.
Team $10 Per builder per month on annual billing ($12 monthly); internal users $5 ($7 monthly). 5,000 workflow runs a month, staging environment, release versions.
Business $50 Per builder per month on annual billing ($65 monthly); internal users $15 ($18 monthly). Adds audit logging, rich permissions, portals and external user access.
Enterprise Custom Quoted by the vendor. Adds SSO and SCIM, Git source control, unlimited end users and white-labelling.

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What users say

Review Scores · opens after launch

Oracle APEX

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

Retool

Ease of use: Not rated yet
User interface: Not rated yet
Onboarding: Not rated yet
Support and service: Not rated yet
Value for money: Not rated yet
Features: Not rated yet

No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.

How we check reviews

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Where this comes from

Oracle APEX https://apex.oracle.com · no check date recorded yet

Retool https://retool.com · no check date recorded yet

This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.