(Retool PM here) Our automation product Workflows (https://retool.com/products/workflows/) now has an AI actions block so it's easy to build flows with steps like “summarize text” or “classify image”. Our approach is to make it easy to chain different steps together into flows whether those steps are code (JS/Python/SQL), API calls, database queries, or LLM prompts.
Zapier is no-code, catering more towards a citizen developer audience, where we’ve built Workflows with professional developers in mind. We typically see customers turn to Workflows when they want scalable self-hosting and more customization options (e.g. complex branching/looping, source control, custom error handling) than what Zapier is offering.
Not directly imo. Zapier focus is still on workflow automation and retool is on internal tools. This directly competes with a bunch of startups that recently launched including an open-source project we put out a few weeks back (https://github.com/trypromptly/LLMStack)
Zapier is no-code, catering more towards a citizen developer audience, where we’ve built Workflows with professional developers in mind. We typically see customers turn to Workflows when they want scalable self-hosting and more customization options (e.g. complex branching/looping, source control, custom error handling) than what Zapier is offering.