Softr Review 2026
Softr is worth it if you want a client portal, a lightweight CRM or an internal tool on top of Airtable, Google Sheets or its own database, without a developer. Login and role-based access are set with dropdowns, and the Free plan never expires.
The catch is one word: users. Since the 2026 pricing change, each plan includes few logged-in accounts (60 on the $99 Pro plan), and every extra one is billed monthly. We compared Softr with Glide, Bubble, Retool and WeWeb on five criteria. Our score: 4.2/5.
Our Softr review in a nutshell
Softr lets you build business apps without code: a client portal where each customer sees their own invoices and files, a lightweight CRM, a member directory, an internal tracker. You connect a data source (Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Supabase, a SQL database or the built-in Softr Databases), drop in blocks (lists, tables, forms, charts) and decide who sees what. Since 2026, the AI Co-Builder drafts a first version of the app from a plain-English description.
The upside: a clean portal with login and role-based access in a day. The downside: your bill follows the number of people who log in, and the 2026 pricing includes few of them (5 in total on Free, 60 on Pro). Our score: 4.2/5. The best pick for a small business or agency that wants a portal on its own data, as long as you count your users before you pick a plan.
The numbers speak. Want to try Softr?
What Softr costs, plan by plan
Softr lists prices in US dollars, before tax, per workspace. Since the 2026 pricing change, every plan includes a set number of builders (the people who build) and app users (the people who log in), split into Team and Client. Annual billing works out to two months free.
The trap to know upfront: anyone on a Gmail or other free email address always counts as a Client, even if they're on your payroll.
Monthly price, USD, before tax
Free
To explore and prototype
No credit card
- Up to 3 builders
- 5 app users in total
- 5,000 records, 500 workflow actions a month
- 5 AI credits a month
- Unlimited apps, databases, workflows and agents
Basic
For a small internal tool
$25 month to month
- 1 builder ($5 per extra builder)
- 5 Team + 5 Client, no add-ons
- 50,000 records, 2,500 actions a month
- Custom domain, automated backups
- 10 AI credits a month
Pro
For a real client portal
$119 month to month
- 2 builders ($10 per extra builder)
- 10 Team (max 50, $3 each) and 50 Client (max 250, $1 each)
- Softr branding removed, Google sign-in and one-time codes
- Granular permissions, custom code and API connectors
- 500,000 records, 10,000 actions, 50 AI credits
Business
For several teams or large portals
$395 month to month
- 3 builders ($20 per extra builder)
- 30 Team (max 100, $5 each) and 100 Client (max 500, $2 each)
- 2FA, installable app (PWA), push notifications
- Priority support and onboarding
- 1M records, 25,000 actions, 100 AI credits
Enterprise
For governance and scale
Through the sales team
- SSO (SAML, OpenID) and SCIM
- Audit logs, SOC 2 report access
- Snowflake and BigQuery data sources
- Invoice or purchase order billing
- More than 500 client users
120-client portal
Our math on the official price list
$99 + 70 clients at $1
- Pro includes 50 clients, you need 70 more
- Past 250 clients, Pro stops working
- 251 clients on Business: $329 + 151 × $2 = $631
- Extra users billed monthly
- 7-day grace period before billing
Prices read on Softr's official pricing page and billing docs, in US dollars before tax, in 2026. An extra custom domain costs $13 a month billed yearly, $15 month to month.
What users say about Softr
- 5★1
- 4★13
- 3★1
- 2★0
- 1★0
Across these 15 reviews, Softr averages 4.0/5 and 14 of 15 reviewers would recommend it. The recurring praise is consistency around ease of use: people describe a clean, intuitive interface, helpful video tutorials, and a fast initial setup that lets non-technical users ship a working app quickly. The native Airtable connection and built-in databases come up repeatedly as a reason to choose it, saving the cost of outside data sources, and several reviewers single out the AI vibe-coding and the responsive support team. The reservations are honest and specific: UI customization can feel rudimentary (no horizontal padding control, restrictive blocks), the database and formulas can get buggy, AI tokens sometimes run out, and one reviewer found support slow to respond. The lone 3-star comes from a software engineer who values the foundations but wants finer design control, while a maker comparing it to Noloco and Glide calls Softr the more polished of the three.
Most loved
- +Clean, intuitive interface with helpful video tutorials
- +Fast initial setup, friendly to non-technical users
- +Native Airtable connection and built-in databases
- +AI vibe-coding that helps build and gives ideas
- +Responsive, helpful customer support team
Watch-outs
- !UI customization can feel rudimentary (limited padding control)
- !Database and formulas can occasionally get buggy
- !AI tokens sometimes run out mid-build
- !Some blocks and list designs feel restrictive
- !Support response times can be inconsistent
- Matthew S. via G2
User Friendly and Video Tutorials making it simple. Email configuration needing to change DNS settings
- Iain B. via G2
I liked the AI feature in Softr as it helped in parts and gave me ideas. It also taught me about layout and how to set it up. The initial setup was relatively easy enough. It took me a while to learn the dialect, and I'm still unsure whether I will need to pay for the service but time will tell. It would have been a much more professional job if the AI could have been linked to the player's data.
- Verified User in Retail via G2
Its simple, intuititve, and the best free scalable alternative for a crm. Sometimes the database doesnt work as expected. Formulas and formatting can get buggy
- Béatrice Z. via G2
easy to use, a lot of possibilities to create an app very fast, the AI vibe-coding is quite good but not enough tokens sometime. The support team is quick to respond and helpful. Sometimes it is limited on development choices (when I tried to use an image behind text, I couldn't choose the size or it isn't responsive) but can be covered by AI vibe coding. I haven't yet used or tried all the possibilities of SoftR.
- Liam T. via G2
I really appreciate Softr's easy, clean interface, which makes building an app a smooth process. The initial setup was very easy, and I find the customer service to be great, which adds to the overall user experience. Some of the components are quite restrictive and the list block designs aren't always great. I also miss having a simple text box inserter.
- Andy G. via G2
Fantastic range of use cases and customisation that allows us to tailor the platform to exactly our needs. The road map is very good with it being constantly evolved. The comments/inbox section and notification need work after the upgrade to new blocks although i'm sure this will be sorted.
We compared Softr on five criteria.
A score per criterion, against Glide, Bubble, Retool and WeWeb, with what works and what doesn't.
Is Softr easy to pick up?
Yes, and it's the main reason people pick it. You don't start from a blank canvas: you pick a template (client portal, CRM, directory, inventory) or describe what you need to the AI Co-Builder, which drafts the database, the roles and the pages. From there, everything lives in side panels: which table feeds this list, which fields show, which user group can open the page.
Permissions are where you save the most time. You create user groups from a field in your data (say, "clients" and "managers"), then hide a page, a block or a button by group. Getting the same result in Bubble means writing privacy rules by hand.
Where it pinches: layout. Blocks look clean but give you little control over spacing and alignment, a common G2 complaint. To go further you need the AI-generated vibe coding block, or custom code on Pro.
The fastest way to ship a portal with login and permissions. Design stays inside the block system.
Is Softr worth the money?
For an internal tool or a small portal, yes. For a large client portal, less so. The 2026 pricing cut entry prices (Basic at $19, Pro at $99 on annual billing) but also cut included users. One customer on the Softr forum put it bluntly: "cheaper, but we get less."
Run the numbers first. A 120-client portal on Pro costs $99 + 70 × $1 = $169 a month billed yearly. At 251 clients you outgrow Pro's 250 cap, and Business comes to $329 + 151 × $2 = $631. Clients on Gmail always count as Clients.
What's still generous: unlimited apps, databases and workflows from Free up, one email counted once across all your apps, and builders added as app users at no cost.
A low entry price and a bill that grows with every client who logs in. Count users before you pick a plan.
What can Softr actually do?
A lot more than in 2024. Softr Databases, the built-in database, goes up to 512 tables per database and 512 fields per table, with no API rate limits, which sidesteps Airtable slowdowns. Workflows run actions (send an email, update a record, call OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini), and only actions count toward your quota, not triggers.
On the AI side you get the AI Co-Builder to generate the app, database AI agents to fill or classify fields, Ask AI so your users can query their data, and a vibe coding block that builds a custom interface from a prompt. Softr also ships a public API, an MCP server and a CLI.
The gaps: no native App Store or Google Play publishing (a PWA on Business), Inbox and Kanban blocks that don't read Softr Databases, and one table per block.
Complete enough to run a portal, CRM or internal tool end to end, minus native mobile apps.
Sold on the details? Start a Softr trial.
How good is Softr's support?
Good overall. Support scores 4.8/5 on Capterra, and G2 reviewers often mention a responsive team. The docs cover every block, data source and workflow action, and Softr's YouTube channel posts tutorials and community calls on a steady schedule.
The community forum is the other key resource: it's where Softr staff answer on incidents (like the late 2025 Airtable slowdowns) and where users trade workarounds. The same forum also has complaints about slow follow-up when a bug is hard to reproduce.
Priority support and onboarding come only with Business, and a dedicated customer success manager only with Enterprise.
Solid reputation, strong docs and videos. Priority support is a Business feature.
Does Softr connect to your stack?
On the data side, yes. Softr reads and writes to 15 sources: Airtable, Google Sheets, Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce, monday.com, ClickUp, Coda, SmartSuite, Xano, Supabase, SQL databases and any REST API, plus BigQuery and Snowflake on Enterprise. Workflow integrations go from 38 on Free and Basic to 40 on Pro and 47 on Business.
The known weak spot is Airtable performance: its API allows 5 requests per second, and some apps showed 10 to 30 second loads in late 2025. The fix that works: connect with a personal access token (PAT) instead of OAuth, and give each block a filtered Airtable view.
For heavier automation, Make, Zapier and n8n plug in through webhooks and the API.
A wide choice of data sources. With Airtable, tune the connection and views to keep the app fast.
Softr without the surprises
Most Softr regrets come down to a user bill that's higher than planned or a slow app on Airtable. Six things to set up before you launch your portal.
Count Team and Client users before you pick a plan
Big winList everyone who will log in, with their email. People on a builder's business domain are Team, everyone else is Client, Gmail included. That number, not your app count, decides your plan.
- Team
- Same domain as a builder
- Client
- Everyone else
- Duplicates
- Counted once
Put staff on business email addresses
SavingsOn Pro, an extra Team user costs $3 and an extra Client $1, but the included Team quota (10) is smaller than the Client quota (50). What matters is sorting people right: an employee on Gmail takes a Client seat and muddles your permission groups.
- Extra Team (Pro)
- $3
- Extra Client (Pro)
- $1
- Included (Pro)
- 10 Team, 50 Client
Deactivate users who no longer log in
SavingsExtra users are billed monthly after a 7-day grace period. A former client who keeps access costs you every month. Clean up the app's user list once a quarter.
- Billing
- Monthly
- Grace
- 7 days
Connect Airtable with a PAT, not OAuth
SpeedOn the Softr forum, apps that took 10 to 30 seconds to load got fast again after switching to a personal access token. Add a filtered Airtable view for each block so Softr only loads the records it needs.
- Airtable limit
- 5 requests per second
- Rule
- One view per block
Run the trial at Business level with your real data
FreeThe trial gives you 7 days of Business features, 14 if you add a card. Plug in your real data source and real roles: that's where you'll see whether speed and permissions hold up, before you pay.
- No card
- 7 days
- With card
- 14 days
Switch to annual once the app is validated
SavingsAnnual billing works out to two months free ($99 instead of $119 on Pro). The first annual payment stays refundable for 30 days. Nonprofits and schools can apply for 50% off.
- Saving
- 2 months
- Refund
- 30 days on annual
- Nonprofits
- 50% off
Four tools worth a look
Softr isn't the right call for everyone. These four tools beat it on one specific point, and each card also states its limit. The ranking is editorial: a sponsored placement is always flagged on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
Glide: the easiest mobile app for a field team
MobileGlide turns a Google Sheet or a Glide table into an app designed phone-first. For field teams (inventory, site visits, checklists), it looks better on mobile than Softr. Basic starts at $25 a month, Plus at $50 and Pro at $125, with no annual billing yet.
The limit: each plan has a monthly allowance of AI credits (100 on Basic), and you buy more once it runs out, and design is even more locked down than Softr's. Our score: 4.1/5.
- Price
- From $25 a month
- Our score
- 4.1/5
- Limit
- Capped AI credits
Bubble: for a real SaaS with its own logic
PowerBubble lets you define every rule, workflow and screen, with its own database and a mobile plan. It's the one to pick if you sell your app to customers. Starter for web begins at $32 a month billed yearly.
The limit: weeks of learning, and a bill tied to compute usage. Our score: 4.2/5. See Bubble vs Softr.
- Price
- From $32 a month
- Our score
- 4.2/5
- Limit
- Learning curve
Retool: internal tools on top of SQL
InternalRetool targets teams that already run PostgreSQL or an API and want admin screens fast. The free plan covers 5 users; Team charges $10 per builder and $5 per user.
The limit: it assumes someone comfortable with SQL and JavaScript, and it isn't built for a portal open to clients. Our score: 4.3/5. See Softr vs Retool.
- Price
- $10 per builder
- Our score
- 4.3/5
- Limit
- Technical profile
WeWeb: full design control on your own backend
DesignWeWeb is a front-end builder that plugs into Supabase, Xano or any API, with far finer design control than Softr. Essential starts at $20 a month, plus hosting from $13 per app.
The limit: you run the backend and server logic yourself, so it needs a more technical builder. Our score: 4.0/5. See Softr vs WeWeb.
- Price
- From $20 + hosting
- Our score
- 4.0/5
- Limit
- Backend is on you
Do you make a tool in this category? Email us: hello@hackceleration.com
Is Softr right for you?
Three profiles, three answers. Then the checklist before you commit.
Yes, if you want a portal or internal tool on your data
A small business, firm or agency with data in Airtable, Google Sheets or HubSpot that wants each client or employee to see only what concerns them. Softr gets you there in days, with no developer, from $99 a month on Pro.
Careful if you expect hundreds of logged-in clients
Past 250 clients, Pro is out, and past 500 you need Enterprise. Do the per-user math, and compare with Supabase plus WeWeb if your portal needs to scale fast.
No, if you're building a SaaS or a native mobile app
For complex logic sold to customers, Bubble fits better. For an app listed on the App Store and Google Play, look at Glide or FlutterFlow.
- You listed your Team and Client users
- You checked your plan's cap (250 clients on Pro)
- You picked a data source and checked its speed
- You connected Airtable with a PAT
- You checked where your data is hosted
- You noted the refund windows (14 or 30 days)
What are you actually here for?
The tools we rank above and below Softr, and who each one suits.
You just want to know what it costsSoftr pricingEvery plan, what the bill actually looks like and where the extras hide.
You would rather have it set up for youSoftr AgencyWhat we build on Softr, how long it takes, and where the budget starts.
You would rather learn to run it yourselfSoftr TrainingAn expert opens Softr with you and works on your real case, not a demo.
Softr FAQ
Is Softr really free?
Yes. The Free plan has no time limit: up to 3 builders, unlimited apps and databases, 5,000 records and 500 workflow actions a month. The catch is the user cap: 5 logged-in app users in total across all your apps. That's enough to prototype, not to open a portal to your clients.
How much does Softr cost in 2026?
$19 a month for Basic, $99 for Pro and $329 for Business on annual billing, or $25, $119 and $395 month to month. Prices are in US dollars before tax. On top of that you pay for users above your quota ($1 per extra client on Pro, $2 on Business) and for extra builders.
Why do some reviews still quote $49 or $139?
That's the legacy pricing. Softr replaced it in 2026 with Basic, Pro and Business at $19, $99 and $329. Customers who were already paying kept their old plan, which is why both price lists still show up on review sites.
What's the difference between Team users and Client users?
A Team user shares the business email domain of one of your builders (you@yourco.com and teammate@yourco.com). Everyone else is a Client, including coworkers on Gmail. The same email across several apps counts once, and builders can be added as app users for free.
Can Softr replace Airtable?
For a lot of projects, yes. Softr Databases is included on every plan, with no API rate limits and CSV or Airtable import. Two caveats: the Inbox and Kanban blocks don't read Softr Databases yet, and each table connects to only one block. If your Airtable base already runs heavy automations, keep it and build Softr on top.
My Softr app on Airtable is slow. What should I fix first?
The connection. Switching from OAuth to an Airtable personal access token (PAT) fixed 10 to 30 second load times for several users on the Softr forum. Then point each block at a filtered Airtable view that holds only the records it needs. If that's not enough, move your most-read table to Softr Databases.
Is Softr secure enough for client data?
Softr states it is SOC 2 Type II compliant and GDPR-ready, with data hosted in the EU (Germany) or the US and TLS encryption in transit. Pro adds one-time codes and Google sign-in, Business adds 2FA and domain-restricted signup, and SSO with SCIM is Enterprise only.
Can I publish a Softr app to the App Store?
Not natively. Softr builds web apps. The Business plan adds an installable app (PWA) with push notifications, which users add to their home screen from the browser. For a real App Store or Google Play listing, look at Glide, FlutterFlow or Bubble's mobile plan.
Softr or Bubble for a SaaS product?
Bubble. Softr is built for internal tools, portals and directories on top of your data, with role-based permissions. Bubble lets you write the logic behind every page and button, at the cost of weeks of learning. Our full breakdown is on the Bubble vs Softr page.
Can I get a refund on a Softr subscription?
Yes: a full refund within 14 days of your first monthly payment, or within 30 days of your first annual payment, by emailing support@softr.io. Nonprofits and education get 50% off through an application form.
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