Hyperlambda
Per-seat billing
Two meters, not one
Business is $50 per builder per month plus $15 per internal user. Everyone who builds is a line item, and so is everyone who merely opens an app. The bill tracks headcount, not usage.
Self-hosted first · MIT everything · No per-seat billing
The Retool Alternative That Doesn’t Charge Per Person
Retool bills per builder and per internal user, and its self-hosted deployment is available on one plan only — switch the pricing page to Self-host and Free, Team and Business all read “Plan not available.” Magic Cloud is MIT-licensed end to end, self-hosts with one Docker command, and costs the same number whether two people use it or two thousand. This page is an honest comparison, with the arithmetic shown — and the rows Retool wins called plainly.
MIT-licensed, all of it — self-hosting is free, and is the primary deployment model
One price per cloudlet — builders, colleagues and end users are never counted
SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server — APIs generated over schemas you already have
Why people search for this
The six reasons teams look beyond Retool
Self-hosting
One plan, and you have to ask
Free, Team and Business are all marked unavailable on self-host. Enterprise is the only self-hostable plan, and it is priced on request. There is no published number at which you can run Retool on your own hardware.
Metering beyond seats
Runs, credits and agent hours
Workflows include 5,000 runs a month on both Team and Business, then $75 per additional 5,000. AI credits are capped monthly and do not roll over. Agents are billed separately, by the hour, at a rate that varies with the model.
Feature gating
Git is an Enterprise feature
Source control and SAML or OpenID SSO are Enterprise-only. Audit logs and role-based permissions start at Business. On Free and Team, reusable modules are capped at five.
The open-source claim
The repositories are the installer
Retool’s public repositories are deployment plumbing — install scripts, Helm charts, Terraform modules. The installer writes a license key and pulls a closed image. This one gets its own section below.
To be fair
Retool is a very good product
None of the above is a scandal. Retool is excellent at what it is: the most mature internal-tools builder on the market, with a data-bound component canvas nothing here matches. Magic now ships a WYSIWYG designer of its own, but it designs pages, not data-bound internal tools, and the distinction matters more than the headline does. The question this page answers is what to pick when the qualifiers — self-hosted, open, priced flat — matter to you.
The arithmetic
What it costs at three sizes
Retool figures are the Business plan, which is the first tier with role-based permissions and audit logs. Magic figures are the Professional cloudlet at $100 a month, or Enterprise at $300 where the extra machine helps. Retool prices verified 19 September 2026.
| Scenario | Retool Business | Magic Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| 5 developers, 20 colleagues using the apps | 5 × $50 + 20 × $15 = $550 / month | $100 / month |
| 10 developers, 100 colleagues | 10 × $50 + 100 × $15 = $2,000 / month | $100–300 / month |
| 1 developer, a customer-facing app with 500 external users | $50 + external-user tiers = roughly $3,050 / month | $100 / month |
| Running it on your own hardware | Enterprise contract, price on request | $0 — MIT, one Docker command |
One honest caveat on the third row. Retool lists external users as free to 50, then $8, $6 and $4 per month at rising volumes, without stating whether the rate is graduated or applied flat at your volume. Read both ways, 500 external users land between roughly $3,000 and $3,100 a month, before the builder seat. The range is theirs, not ours.
The row that matters most
Self-hosting is a sales call, not a checkbox
Retool’s pricing page has a Cloud/Self-host toggle. Switch it to Self-host and three of the four plans change to “Plan not available on Self-host.” What remains is Enterprise, priced on request. Their documentation is consistent with this: the self-hosted deployment pages are labelled Enterprise, production deployment is described as Kubernetes via Helm, and Docker is offered explicitly for testing purposes.
That is a legitimate commercial choice, and for a large regulated buyer with a procurement function it may not even register as friction. But it means self-hosting is not something you can evaluate on a Tuesday afternoon. You cannot price it, you cannot start it without a contract, and the smallest unit of commitment is an enterprise agreement.
Magic inverts this. Self-hosting is the primary deployment model and it costs nothing, because the runtime is MIT-licensed. One command brings up the whole stack — database layer, generated APIs, auth and RBAC, file handling, task scheduling and the MCP server — and the hosted cloudlets run exactly the same code, because there is nothing gated to gate.
Examined, from their own repositories
The open-source claim
Retool maintains public repositories, and several carry the MIT licence. It is worth being precise about what they contain: deployment scripts for running Retool on your own infrastructure, Helm charts for Kubernetes, Terraform modules for cloud provisioning, an RPC library and a React embedding component. Useful engineering, openly published.
None of it is the product. The on-premise repository carries no licence file of its own, and its documented flow is to run an install script that writes a license key into an environment file and then pull a versioned, closed container image from Retool’s registry. The open part is the thing that installs Retool. Retool itself is closed.
For comparison: Magic is MIT in full — the runtime, the plugins, the slots, the dashboard, the CRUD and SQL generators, the auth and RBAC layer, the AI features. Fork it, run it, sell it, never speak to us again. There is no key, no threshold, and no plan that unlocks a feature the self-hosted build is missing.
The comparison
Magic Cloud vs Retool, honestly
Thirteen rows: nine to Magic, four to Retool, each marked. The visual builder row is the one most people should weigh hardest.
| Feature | Retool | Magic Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary; public repos are deployment tooling only | Magic wins — MIT, everything included; self-hosted runs the same code as hosted |
| Self-hosting | Enterprise plan only, priced on request; production via Kubernetes and Helm | Magic wins — first-class and free, one Docker command, any plan, no contract |
| Pricing model | Per builder and per internal user, plus external-user tiers | Magic wins — per cloudlet. Users of every kind are never counted |
| Usage metering | Workflow runs, AI credits that do not roll over, agent hours billed separately | Magic wins — none. The cloudlet is the unit, and the invoice does not move |
| Visual app builder | Retool wins for internal tools — a mature drag-and-drop canvas whose components bind to queries, usable by non-developers | Split. Web Designer is a real WYSIWYG editor — select, drag, restyle, edit text — and it edits the served file itself rather than a project format. It designs pages, though, not data-bound tool screens |
| Native mobile apps | Retool wins — iOS, Android and PWA, with offline mode, push notifications and biometric auth | Web frontends served from the cloudlet; no native mobile story |
| Integration catalogue | Retool wins — a large library of database and SaaS connectors | Four database engines, plus HTTP and OpenAPI import for everything else |
| Its own database | A hosted PostgreSQL store with a 5 GB allowance | Magic wins — SQLite built in; PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server connected and treated as local |
| API generation | Queries and workflows authored per app | Magic wins — endpoints generated per table, readable files, editable after generation |
| Access control | RBAC from the Business plan; SSO on Enterprise | Magic wins — runtime-enforced RBAC from the first minute, with full OIDC and OAuth |
| Source control | Enterprise plan only | Magic wins — Git and GitHub built into the dashboard, publish a module as a repository in one click |
| AI and agents | AI app builder and agents, metered by credits and hours | Magic wins — native MCP server, unmetered; agents generate their own tools inside runtime-enforced permissions |
| Maturity and ecosystem | Retool wins — Fortune 500 deployments, large community, professional services | Smaller — one team, one architecture, and the authors answer the support channel |
The honest section
When you should stay on Retool
You need non-developers building interfaces. This is the big one. Retool’s canvas lets an analyst or an ops lead assemble a working, decent-looking tool — tables, forms and charts wired straight to queries — without writing a frontend. Magic’s Web Designer is a genuine WYSIWYG editor, but it edits pages: there is no component bound to a query, so an analyst building an internal tool is still better served by Retool, and it is not close.
You need native mobile. Offline mode, push notifications, biometric authentication and a white-labelled app in the stores are real product surface, and we do not have them.
Your integration list is long and exotic. Retool’s connector catalogue is far broader. If your tool has to speak to fifteen SaaS products on day one, count the connectors before you count the dollars.
Your seat count is small and staying small. Three developers on Team is $30 a month. The per-seat model is genuinely cheap at the bottom; it is growth that makes it expensive. If you are not growing, the arithmetic above never fires.
The decision rule
One sentence, if you want it
If the thing you need is a polished internal interface, bound to queries and assembled by people who do not write code, buy Retool. If the thing you need is a backend — generated APIs over databases you already have, auth and RBAC enforced by the runtime, and tools an AI agent can safely operate — on hardware you choose, at a price that does not move when you hire, that is this column. Plenty of teams run both, and the same logic drives our n8n, Lovable and Supabase comparisons.
Frequently asked questions
Can you self-host Retool?
Only on an Enterprise contract. Switching Retool’s pricing page to the Self-host view marks Free, Team and Business as not available, leaving Enterprise with custom pricing. Their documentation lists production self-hosting as a Kubernetes deployment via Helm, with Docker offered for testing purposes.
Is Retool open source?
The platform is not. Retool’s public repositories are deployment tooling — install scripts, Helm charts, Terraform modules and an embedding SDK. The installer writes a license key into an environment file and pulls a closed container image. Magic Cloud is MIT-licensed in full, including the runtime, the dashboard and the code generators.
How much does Retool cost per user?
At the time of writing, Team is $10 per builder per month plus $5 per internal user, and Business is $50 per builder plus $15 per internal user. External users on Business are free to 50, then $8, $6 and $4 per month at rising volumes. Magic Cloud charges per cloudlet and never counts users.
Does Magic Cloud have a drag-and-drop UI builder like Retool?
Magic ships Web Designer, a WYSIWYG editor for the pages a cloudlet serves — point at an element, drag it, restyle it, rewrite its text, and it saves to the real file with no build step. What it does not have is Retool’s data binding: a Retool table is a component wired to a query, and nothing here is. For an internal tool assembled by non-developers, Retool still wins this row; for designing the pages and sites a cloudlet serves, Magic now has a real answer.
What happens to costs as a team grows?
On Retool the bill grows with headcount, because builders and internal users are separate per-seat meters. On Magic the bill is attached to the cloudlet, so hiring developers, onboarding colleagues or launching to end users does not change the invoice.
Can Magic Cloud connect to the databases Retool connects to?
Magic ships SQLite and connects to PostgreSQL, MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server, generating secured endpoints over schemas that already exist — see AI agents over your existing SQL database. Retool connects to a considerably broader catalogue, which is a genuine advantage if your integration list is long.
Try the alternative
Five minutes to a running cloudlet
The whole platform — database, generated APIs, auth, frontend hosting and the MCP server — on your own hardware, MIT-licensed, with no seat to buy and no contract to sign. Still evaluating? The Supabase, n8n and Lovable comparisons are written the same honest way as this page.
# When it’s up: log in at http://localhost:5555 with root/root.
$ curl -fsSL https://hyperlambda.dev/docker-compose.yaml | docker compose -f - up