Comparison · App and agent builders
Curiosity and Retool
An interface on your APIs, or a tool on your context
Curiosity builds tools on a context graph; Retool builds interfaces on the databases and APIs you point it at.
Your data · your environment
Who each tool is for
Different problems, honestly stated
Curiosity
For industrial and regulated teams whose knowledge sits in engineering systems and structured records, where the answer depends on how those records connect, and where the deployment has to run on their own infrastructure.
Retool
A platform for building internal tools, workflows and agents on top of databases and APIs, with AI to generate apps from a prompt. It is popular with engineering teams, and it can be self-hosted.
How Curiosity compares
Where the boundary falls
Retool is a strong way to put an interface on data you have already joined and secured. Studio does the joining and the securing too: the records come connected, typed and permission-aware, so a generated tool can trace its answers.
Grounded, not guessed
A tool Studio builds runs on the graph, so every figure it shows traces back to a record in a source system.
Your permissions, inherited
A generated tool cannot show a user anything the source system would not already show them, down to the individual record.
From prompt to production
The tool ships to real users with an audit trail, not as a prototype someone has to rebuild before it goes live.
Runs on your infrastructure
On premises or in your private cloud, with the language model you choose.
Side by side
Feature comparison
The same five questions, answered for both.
Deployment
Cloud or self-hosted, ready to use
Cloud or self-hosted
Data model
Managed context layer and knowledge graph
Apps on databases and APIs
Industrial fit
Built for industrial and enterprise teams
Internal tools, led by engineering
Data reach
70+ systems connected, and yours through a connector you write
Databases and APIs you connect
Residency
EU hosted, or entirely your own infrastructure
Your choice
Customization
What your team can change
Your own code, interface, data model and configuration. Retool as its own documentation described it in October 2026. Where it says Not available, the vendor documents no such capability.
Your own code
C# endpoints, AI tools and tasks, compiled in Studio
JavaScript and Python in queries and workflows
Your own interface
Your own front end in C#, deployed from git
AI app builder with React code, custom components
Data model
Typed node and edge schemas you define
Retool Database tables, fields and linked tables
Configuration as code
Every change committed to git, pushed to your remote
Source Control syncs apps and agents to git
APIs and SDKs
REST API, C# and Python library, connector SDK
Retool REST API, CLI and MCP server
AI integration
What AI can build and reach
Whether AI can build on it, who reviews the result, and which models it runs. Retool as its own documentation described it in October 2026.
AI that builds
Sudo drafts endpoints, tools, schemas and screens
App builder agent builds and edits apps from chat
Review before it applies
Every change a diff a person approves, in a sandbox
Work on branches, data writes approved before publish
Model choice
Any major provider, or an OpenAI compatible endpoint
OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Bedrock, custom AI providers
Models on your servers
Open weights on your servers, or air gapped
Self hosted Retool, custom provider for own endpoint
Assistant permissions
Built in tools search as the user, per record
Tool calls need the user's resource access
Agent protocols
MCP server and an OpenAI compatible API
MCP client for agents, Retool MCP server
At Airbus, we developed the next generation of customer support AI assistance tools with Curiosity, enhancing our technical support’s ability to access and navigate vast data from multiple sources, including millions of documents.
Services Innovation Team
Airline Services at Airbus
App and agent builders
Other comparisons in this group
Microsoft Copilot Studio and Power Apps
Curiosity builds tools on your whole industrial estate; Copilot Studio and Power Apps build agents and apps inside Microsoft 365.
CompareMicrosoft Foundry
Curiosity builds tools on your connected records; Microsoft Foundry is Azure’s workbench for building agents.
CompareIBM watsonx
Curiosity builds tools on a context graph; watsonx gives you IBM’s parts to search documents and orchestrate agents.
CompareYour data. Your infrastructure.