Softr

What it is

Softr is a Berlin-based no-code platform for business apps that people log into: client portals, partner portals, intranets, lightweight CRMs and approval tools. You build from pre-made blocks — lists, tables, Kanban boards, forms, charts — on top of Softr’s own database or an existing source such as Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce, Notion or a SQL database. Authentication, user groups, page visibility and row-level data restrictions are built in, which is the part that separates a portal from a prototype.

On March 31, 2026 Softr relaunched as an AI-native platform with the AI Co-Builder: you describe the app, and it generates the database schema, pages, permissions and workflow logic together, then hands you the same visual editor to keep adjusting it (SiliconANGLE, VentureBeat). Softr reports more than 1 million builders and 7,000 organizations, including Netflix, Google, Stripe and UPS. VentureBeat described a roughly 50-person team, profitable for the past year, with eight-digit annual revenue and no sales team until now; the company is adding a sales-led motion for enterprise accounts. Its last disclosed round was a $13.5M Series A led by FirstMark in January 2022.

The question the page answers: when ops needs a portal with real logins and permissions, is Softr enough, or do you need Retool or an AI code generator like Lovable?

Why it shows up in ops stacks

• Portals are the scoped use case. A legal-ops team gives outside counsel a login to see only their own matters and upload invoices; a RevOps team gives channel partners a deal-registration portal that writes to HubSpot; a recruiting team gives agencies a page that lists only their submitted candidates. In each case the hard part is “this external user sees these rows and nothing else”, and Softr configures that without code.
• The AI builds on constrained blocks, not raw code. The Co-Builder assembles Softr components rather than writing a codebase, so a non-technical owner can keep editing the result in the visual editor, and one prompt does not rewrite pages you already finished. The trade is less design freedom than a code generator.
• MCP works in both directions. A workspace MCP server lets Claude or Cursor create databases, pages and workflows in your Softr account. Separately, any published app can act as its own MCP server for its users: each request runs as that user, so their groups and data restrictions still apply (Softr help docs).
• Workflows and “Ask AI” agents live in the same product, so an approval button can update a record and email a manager without a separate Zapier or Make account for simple cases.

Pricing reality

The published prices are per month on annual billing: Free ($0), Basic ($19), Pro ($99), Business ($329) and quote-only Enterprise. Month-to-month billing runs 20-32% higher: Softr’s own price markup lists $25, $119 and $395. Non-profits and education get 50% off.

The meters that decide your plan are app users, not builders:

A “team” user shares an email domain with one of your builders; everyone else, including anyone on Gmail, is a “client” user. Extra app users are billed on top from Pro upward; the pricing page lists them as starting at $1 a month on Pro and $2 on Business and points to a calculator for the rest. Extra custom domains are $13 a month on annual billing.

Real-world band: a single client or partner portal under 50 external users with custom branding and granular permissions lands on Pro at $1,188 a year. Once you need two-factor authentication, domain-restricted signup, a PWA or more than 100 external users, you are on Business at $3,948 a year plus user overages. SSO, SCIM and audit logs are Enterprise-only, so any company whose security review requires them should budget a quote, not a list price.

Best for

Ops leads — legal ops, RevOps, recruiting ops, CS ops — who need an external-facing portal or a permissioned internal tool on data that already lives in Airtable, HubSpot, Google Sheets or a SQL database, and who have no engineer to assign. Pick it when the requirement is “the right people see the right rows” rather than custom UI.

Do not buy it for a public product with thousands of free sign-ups — per-user pricing punishes that shape — or for a tool whose logic needs heavy branching, custom code in every screen or pixel-level design.

Versus the alternatives

Retool is the segment leader for engineer-built internal tools. Pick Retool when the builders write SQL and JavaScript and the app sits on production databases. Its external-user pricing is heavier for portals: on Business, external users are free to 50, then $8 each to 250, on top of $50 per builder.

Glide is the closest like-for-like no-code builder, with a mobile-first heritage; its paid plans start at $25 a month and Pro is $125. Pick Glide when the app is mainly used on phones by field or frontline staff. Pick Softr when the users are external clients and partners on the web.

Lovable is the fastest-growing entrant in the segment, reporting more than $600M in annualized revenue in September 2026. It generates a React codebase from prompts, credit-metered from $25 a month. Pick Lovable when someone can own and review generated code and the design has to be custom. Pick Softr when a non-technical owner must maintain the app in two years.

If every user already holds a paid Airtable seat and nobody external needs a login, Airtable Interfaces may be enough and you skip a second vendor.

Watch-outs

• User classification can move you up a plan. Contractors and clients on Gmail count as client users, and one app user is counted once across all your apps. Guard: export the list of emails that will log in, split them by domain, and size the plan on that count plus 12 months of growth before you build.
• Workflows stop when you hit the action cap. Softr pauses workflows until the monthly limit resets or you upgrade. Guard: put anything business-critical — invoice routing, deal-registration notifications — on Business or in an external automation tool, and check workflow-action usage weekly for the first month.
• Enterprise security features sit behind a quote. SSO (SAML, OpenID), SCIM and audit logs are Enterprise-only. Guard: send your security questionnaire before the build, request the SOC 2 Type II report, and confirm that SSO is in the quote before you commit a portal to external clients.
• Airtable-backed apps inherit Airtable’s limits. Record caps and API rate limits on the source base show up as slow pages in the portal. Guard: for high-volume portals, move the portal-facing tables into Softr Databases or a SQL source and keep Airtable for back-office editing.
• There is no generated codebase to take with you. The blocks model is what keeps the app maintainable, and it is also the lock-in. Guard: keep the system of record in a source you control (Airtable, HubSpot, SQL) and treat Softr as the interface layer, so replacing it means rebuilding screens, not migrating data.