// the find
openblocks-dev/openblocks
🔥 🔥 🔥 The Open Source Retool Alternative
Openblocks is a self-hostable low-code platform for building internal tools — think Retool but open source. You connect data sources, drag components onto a canvas, write JavaScript to wire things together, and deploy dashboards or CRUD apps without building a frontend from scratch. Target audience is small engineering teams that need internal tooling fast and don't want to pay Retool prices.
The custom React component SDK is the standout feature — you get native integration (not iFrame) so components share state properly with the rest of the app. The module and query library system means you can actually build reusable pieces instead of copy-pasting the same table config across 20 apps. JavaScript is available everywhere in the UI, not just in query fields, which avoids the usual 'you can almost do this but not quite' frustration of no-code tools. The data source list is solid: Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, REST, SMTP all covered natively.
Dead project — last commit was October 2023, over two and a half years ago. The cloud instance and Discord are likely inactive, so you're on your own for bugs and security patches. The codebase is a Yarn 3 monorepo with a massive client package that will take real time to understand if you need to fork and maintain it. No mention of how upgrades work when self-hosting, which matters a lot for a tool you'll build business processes on top of. The Java Spring Boot backend (visible from the repo structure) adds operational complexity that teams expecting a lightweight Docker-and-done experience won't anticipate.