Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Retool VS Chakra UI

Compare Retool VS Chakra UI and see what are their differences

This page does not exist

Retool logo Retool

Build custom internal tools in minutes.

Chakra UI logo Chakra UI

Simple, modular and accessible UI components for your React applications.
  • Retool Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-04
  • Chakra UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-08-13

Retool

Website
retool.com
$ Details
freemium $10.0 / Monthly (Startup)
Release Date
2017 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
David Hsu
Employees
10 - 19

Retool features and specs

  • Speed of Development
    Retool allows developers to rapidly build internal tools with a drag-and-drop interface, reducing the time it takes to get functional applications up and running.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Retool supports integration with a wide range of databases, APIs, and other services, making it easier to connect different data sources and systems.
  • Customizability
    While Retool provides prebuilt components, it also allows for custom code and scripting, enabling developers to tailor applications to specific requirements.
  • Collaboration Features
    Retool supports collaborative features, such as sharing applications with team members and version control, making it easier to work in teams.
  • Security
    Retool provides robust security features, including access control and data encryption, to help protect sensitive information.

Possible disadvantages of Retool

  • Cost
    Retool can be relatively expensive compared to building internal tools from scratch or using some other platforms, potentially making it less accessible for smaller teams or startups.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, there can be a learning curve for new users who need to become familiar with its specific functionalities and scripting capabilities.
  • Customization Limitations
    Though Retool offers customizability, there might be certain limitations compared to fully bespoke solutions, impacting highly specific or complex use cases.
  • Dependency on Retool
    Relying heavily on Retool may create a dependency that could be problematic if the company changes its pricing, features, or discontinues services.
  • Performance
    For very large datasets or highly complex operations, performance can become an issue, as it is with many platform-based solutions.

Chakra UI features and specs

  • Component Library
    Chakra UI provides a rich set of customizable and accessible components out of the box, which significantly speeds up the development process.
  • Theming
    Chakra UI offers a powerful theming and styling system. It allows developers to easily define and manage theme properties, leading to consistent design throughout the application.
  • Accessibility
    Components in Chakra UI are built with accessibility in mind. They come with built-in ARIA roles and keyboard navigation support, which makes it easier to build accessible applications.
  • Responsive Design
    Chakra UI facilitates responsive design through its style props and advanced responsive utilities, allowing for seamless adjustments across different screen sizes.
  • Ease of Use
    The API is intuitive and designed with simplicity in mind, making it user-friendly and easy to learn, even for developers who are new to UI frameworks.
  • Community and Documentation
    Chakra UI has an active community and comprehensive documentation, providing ample resources for troubleshooting and learning.

Possible disadvantages of Chakra UI

  • Bundle Size
    The library can add considerable size to your bundle, especially when using a large number of its components and utilities, which might affect performance.
  • Customization Limitations
    While Chakra UI is quite flexible, there might be some limitations when trying to implement highly specific or complex design requirements.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    Although basics are easy to grasp, mastering the more advanced features and customization options may require a deeper understanding and more time investment.
  • Dependency on Emotion
    Chakra UI relies on emotion.js for its styling engine, which means it brings in an additional dependency and could complicate using other styling solutions concurrently.
  • Potential Overhead
    Using a component library like Chakra UI could introduce overhead in projects where performance is highly critical or where only a small number of components is needed.

Retool videos

Retool - Logic Review

More videos:

  • Review - #Worth?! Ep.12 - Retool (Gameplay / Review)
  • Demo - February NY Enterprise Tech Meetup: Retool Demo

Chakra UI videos

React Forms Using Chakra UI - React Tutorial - Learn React in 2020 - React Component Library

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Retool and Chakra UI)
No Code
100 100%
0% 0
Design Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
48 48%
52% 52
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Retool and Chakra UI. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Retool and Chakra UI

Retool Reviews

Top 5 Dynobase alternatives you should know about - March 2025 Review
The choice ultimately depends on your environment and use case. Many teams use a combination of tools: for example, Dynomate for developers, and a Retool app for operations or support teams. By understanding the strengths of each alternative, you can select the tool (or combination of tools) that best integrates with your AWS workflow, making DynamoDB development smoother...
Source: www.dynomate.io
React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
Retool offers extensive documentation and support. Its support is available on its Discourse forum, Slack (if you are a Retool power user), Intercom for live chat, and dedicated support for enterprise customers.
Source: kinsta.com
ILLA Cloud vs. Retool vs. Bubble - Unveiling the Best Low-Code Platforms
In the quest for the best low-code platform, Retool, Bubble, and ILLA Cloud all offer unique features and capabilities. While Retool shines with its self-hosted option and Bubble contributes to the open-source community, ILLA Cloud stands out as a powerful and flexible low-code platform. With its comprehensive feature set, affordable pricing models, and self-hosted...
Top 9 Low-Code Tools for 2023 for low-code development
Retool is a powerful low-code platform that enables developers to build internal tools and apps with ease. It offers a drag-and-drop interface and a wide range of pre-built components for seamless development. Retool integrates with various data sources and external services, allowing users to fetch data, perform calculations, and display results in real-time. Its...
Superblock vs Retool: A Comprehensive Comparison for Low-code development Platforms
Retool caters to a diverse audience, including developers, product managers, and business professionals. Developers benefit from Retool's low-code capabilities, allowing them to build applications quickly without sacrificing customization. Product managers can leverage Retool to streamline internal workflows and enable teams to be more productive. Business professionals can...

Chakra UI Reviews

10 Best Free React UI Libraries in 2023
Chakra UI is another popular UI component library often used by React developers to design components. Similar to the previous two libraries, it is also an open-source project.
11 Best Material UI Alternatives
Chakra UI provides pre-designed components and utility functions, allowing developers to create visually appealing and responsive websites. Developers can leverage Chakra UI’s customizable and reusable components, such as buttons, forms, cards, and navigation elements, to design intuitive and accessible user interfaces.
Source: www.uxpin.com
React UI Components Libraries: Our Top Picks for 2023
Faster development: Instead of creating the code for every component, you can use a React UI component library such as MUI, Chakra UI, React Bootstrap, etc. They will expose you to multiple, ready to use components suitable for your design. This way, you can save time and develop software faster.
Source: kinsta.com
Top React component libraries (2021 edition)
Theming — At the core of Chakra UI is a default theme to define color palette, type scale, font stacks, breakpoints, border-radius values for an application. Customized themes can then be layered on top of the default theme. Chakra UI also offers a framework to customize components using modifier styles that alter components based on specified properties or state.
Source: retool.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Chakra UI should be more popular than Retool. It has been mentiond 201 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Retool mentions (98)

  • Code or No Code? The AI Revolution in Web Development
    Retool – Low-code platform for business applications. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • I keep turning my Google Sheets into phone-friendly webapps, and I can't stop
    As mentioned by another poster, check out "Partner portals" section on https://retool.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • How to Build Internal Tools 100x Faster
    It is possible to speed up the development and delivery process for many internal applications by using no-code or low code tools. These vary in offerings from open source to SaaS, including popular ones like AirTable, BudiBase, Retool, NocoDB and others. These can all greatly help speed up delivery times. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Do you need a No Code tool for Firebase?
    There are some No Code tools for Firebase. Some of them are fully integrated, some of them use some limited functions of Firebase through their API. If a tool allows you to integrate with a REST API, you probably can use it. Some of them are: FlutterFlow, JetAdmin, Retool, Bubble, etc. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Visual Basic 6 rebuilt in C# – complete with form designer and IDE in browser
    >The No-Code world is fascinating, and the best I've seen in this space is https://retool.com/, but it's expensive and locks you into their ecosystem. >Even today, small businesses need to build out simple apps that were simple to do back in the Visual Basic days—a stock control system, a basic support system, sales tools, etc. Today, it's a minefield of options that can quickly get expensive. A RAD tool like... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
View more

Chakra UI mentions (201)

  • How to Create a Blog with React and ButterCMS
    One of the key concepts of React is components. Components enable us to break down a user interface (UI) into independent pieces that can be used in different parts of an application. Utilizing components for a blog, the blog postcard, header, footer, custom button, etc., can be created separately and used through the blog application. This can improve productivity by enabling the reuse of said components.... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How I Built JMServices: Challenges, Strengths, and Lessons from My SaaS Journey
    Now, let’s dive back into some technical details. After reaching version 3, we made a significant decision to transition our entire codebase from TailwindCSS to a new design system called Chakra UI. This shift not only enhanced our design consistency but also improved the overall user experience with its modular and accessible components. Chakra UI allowed us to create a more cohesive and visually appealing... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 30+ CSS libraries and frameworks help you style your applications efficiently.
    Chakra UI Chakra UI is a modular and accessible component library for React. It offers a range of customizable and composable components, designed to make it easy to build accessible web applications. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Ant Design – the second most popular React UI framework
    I've always been afraid to use Ant because it's Chinese: https://github.com/ant-design), and Chakra is Nigerian (https://v2.chakra-ui.com/) It saddens me that this matters in this an age, but if you're adopting a UI kit for long-term corporate usage, it is worth considering... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • How I built a Markdown Rendered Blog using Supabase and Chakra UI
    Supabase will be used for storing article data in the database and the cover image of the article in storage. Chakra UI will be used to provide style to the elements. By using both, we can build the blog with ease. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Retool and Chakra UI, you can also consider the following products

Appsmith - Appsmith is an open source web framework for building internal tools, admin panels, dashboards, and workflows.

Ant Design - An enterprise-class UI design language and React implementation with a set of high-quality React components, one of best React UI library for enterprises

Airtable - Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.

Material UI - A CSS Framework and a Set of React Components that Implement Google's Material Design

Bubble.io - Building tech is slow and expensive. Bubble is the most powerful no-code platform for creating digital products.

Tailwind CSS - A utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces.