European Alternatives to Bubble
Looking for a European alternative to Bubble? Bubble hosts every app on its own platform (on AWS, with a dedicated instance and a choice of hosting region only on the Enterprise plan), and by its own documentation an app cannot be exported as code, only its data as CSV files. Paid plans are priced per app, from $29 a month billed annually for a web-only Starter plan, with usage metered in workload units.
The European tools below cover the same ground in different ways: Betty Blocks (Netherlands) compiles to standard React, Appsemble (Netherlands), Budibase (Northern Ireland), Lowcoder (United Kingdom) and Convertigo (France) are open source, Noloco (Ireland) builds portals, and Ninox (Germany) builds database apps.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
8 European Alternatives to Bubble
Betty Blocks
No-code builder whose apps compile to React you can take away
Noloco
Client portals and internal apps on top of your own data
Appsemble
Open-source apps defined as text, hosted for a flat monthly fee
Ninox
Table-based database apps with a built-in scripting language
Budibase
Open-source builder you can self-host without per-app fees
Convertigo
Open-source platform with a no-code studio and a developer studio
Lowcoder
Open-source builder where app viewers cost nothing
Mendix
Siemens-owned enterprise platform with a free prototyping tier
Key takeaways
- Bubble's own manual says a Bubble app can only run on the Bubble platform, with data leaving as CSV files or through the Bubble API.
- In Bubble's manual a web-only plan costs $29, $119 or $349 a month billed annually for Starter, Growth and Team, plus usage metered in workload units.
- Betty Blocks (Netherlands) states that its applications compile to standard React and WebAssembly, which is a concrete exit route that Bubble does not offer.
- Appsemble (Netherlands), Budibase (Northern Ireland), Lowcoder (United Kingdom) and Convertigo (France) are open source, so the platform can keep running if the vendor changes direction.
- Noloco (Ireland) and Ninox (Germany) are the closest European matches for a Bubble user who wants tables, forms and portals without writing code.
Why people leave Bubble
Bubble is a visual programming environment and a hosting service in one. You draw pages, define data types and chain workflows in a browser editor, and Bubble runs the result on its own servers. Its manual describes the platform as a no-code tool and also as a platform-as-a-service, and the second description is the one that matters when you think about leaving: the editor, the database, the backups and the runtime all belong to one vendor.
The vendor sits in New York according to our research plan, and its GDPR documentation is written for customers outside the United States. It says Bubble acts as a data processor for your app, that Standard Contractual Clauses are built into its data processing agreements, and that it relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework for transfers. That is a workable legal route, but it is a transfer mechanism, not a European contracting party.
Most people who go looking for a different platform are not worried about the editor. They have built something that works and have started to count what it costs to keep it there: a plan per app, usage metered in a unit that is hard to forecast, and an application that, by the vendor's own words, cannot be taken anywhere else.
- An app cannot be exported as code Bubble's manual states that user-created data can be exported as CSV files and read through the Bubble API, and that "Bubble apps can only be run on the Bubble platform". Leaving means rebuilding the application logic. The same page offers help exporting the design. Bubble keeps ownership of the engine that runs your app, and you keep ownership of your design and your data.
- Pricing is per app and metered in workload units Plans are chosen per project. In the manual, a web-only plan costs $29 a month billed annually for Starter, $119 for Growth and $349 for Team, or $32, $134 and $399 billed monthly. A mobile plan or a web plus mobile plan costs more. On top of the plan, usage is counted in workload units, a single metric introduced in April 2023, and extra units are bought as overage or as a subscription.
- Hosting region and a dedicated instance are an Enterprise matter Bubble hosts its engine and database on Amazon AWS and spreads file assets over the Cloudflare CDN. Choosing a hosting region, a static IP address and an isolated Bubble-managed instance is listed under the Enterprise plan, alongside SOC 2 Type II and invoicing. A customer on a standard plan can ask where its data sits, but the documentation offers no region setting at that level.
- Your continuity depends on one company's roadmap Because the runtime is proprietary, a change in price, a deprecated feature or a policy change lands on every app at once. Bubble does promise that if the company ever discontinues the product, its source code will be released under an open-source licence so that apps can run on a self-hosted server. That page was last updated three years before this check, and a promise of that kind is no substitute for owning the code today.
What you have to replace, not just match
Moving off Bubble is a rebuild, so the first job is an inventory. List the data types and their fields, the privacy rules that decide who sees which record, the workflows and scheduled backend tasks, the API connections, the plugins and the page designs.
The data leaves as CSV or through the Data API; none of the rest does. Appsemble, Budibase, Lowcoder, Convertigo and Betty Blocks each offer a different answer to where that logic will live afterwards, and the difference is larger than the price tag suggests.
Check what Bubble is doing for you that nobody will notice until it stops.
It creates a development and a live database for every app, keeps point-in-time backups for both, encrypts data at rest with AES-256 on AWS RDS, scales the servers as workload grows and puts a CDN in front of your files. Several European tools hand some of those jobs back to you. A self-hosted Budibase or Lowcoder installation means you run the database, the backups and the updates yourself, or pay the vendor to do it.
Also decide what kind of application you are replacing. Bubble is used for marketplaces, client portals, internal dashboards and consumer web apps with sign-up and payments. The European tools are stronger in the first three than in the last. If your product is a public consumer app with thousands of anonymous visitors, a portal builder will not match it, and the realistic route may be a developer on a conventional stack rather than another visual platform.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Betty Blocks | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Create EUR 1,500 a month / Scale EUR 3,500 a month / Enterprise quoted | EU (Netherlands) |
| #2 | Noloco | Dublin, Ireland | Free $0/month (unlimited team seats, 50 active clients, 2,000 records, 100 workflow runs). Build $79/month on monthly billing ($65 billed annually, 10 seats, 1,000 clients, 25,000 records). Enterprise on request (SSO/SAML, audit logs, data residency, white-label). | EU (Ireland) |
| #3 | Appsemble | Eindhoven, Netherlands | Building an app on the standard blocks costs nothing. Hosted SaaS: EUR 50 per app per month excl. VAT (European cloud, standard backend, 10 GB storage, standard SLA). Enterprise SLA from EUR 100 per app per month. Third-line support for self-hosting from EUR 40 per app per month. Custom blocks from EUR 1,000 and apps from EUR 5,000 on request. | EU (Netherlands) |
| #4 | Ninox | Berlin, Germany | Free for up to 5 users (100 MB, 5,000 records) / Team EUR 25 per user a month billed yearly / Business EUR 40 per user a month billed yearly / Enterprise quoted, with a private-cloud option | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | Budibase | Belfast, United Kingdom | Self-hosted open source: free (1 workspace, unlimited apps and users). Cloud: Pro $19/month, Premium $49/month, Business $299/month, Enterprise on request. Add-ons: end users $5/user/month and creators $50/creator/month on yearly billing. | UK (Northern Ireland) |
| #6 | Convertigo | Paris, France | Community Edition: free, on-premises only. Paid editions are priced per internal user per month from EUR 15 (first-tier prices that drop with volume), with a Starter Edition adding the no-code studio, 99.5% uptime guarantee and managed cloud, and an Enterprise Edition adding a dedicated customer success manager. External users are priced by usage volume. | EU (France) |
| #7 | Lowcoder | London, United Kingdom | Community Edition: free and open source (self-hosted). Enterprise: EUR 459/month or EUR 4,990/year for one instance, EUR 918/month or EUR 9,980/year for two, EUR 1,377/month or EUR 14,970/year for three. Optional AI Robot and Support and SLA add-ons from EUR 0.39 to EUR 3.49 per admin/editor per month. App viewers are not billed. | UK |
| #8 | Mendix | Rotterdam, Netherlands | Free tier for prototypes and small personal apps (no SLA or support) / Standard from EUR 918 a month for one app or EUR 2,295 a month for unlimited apps / Premium quoted | EU (Netherlands) |
How each alternative compares to Bubble
Best for: Organisations that like the visual approach but refuse to be locked into one runtime again.
Betty Blocks, founded in Amsterdam in 2007, answers the objection people raise most often against Bubble. The vendor states that applications compile to standard React and WebAssembly, and that deployment infrastructure is left to the customer. Where Bubble says an app can only run on Bubble, this is the one platform on the page that promises code you can take away, though you should ask to see an exported application running elsewhere.
It is also the most expensive route on the page for a small team. Published tiers are Create at EUR 1,500 a month and Scale at EUR 3,500 a month, which is far above Bubble's Growth plan at $119 a month billed annually. The vendor now leads with AI application generation, so ask for the classic visual builder in the demo.
What Betty Blocks does better than Bubble
- Gives you standard React and WebAssembly output, not a proprietary runtime
- Lets you choose where the application is deployed
- Has a governance model with IT oversight for business-built apps
- Contracts with a Dutch company under Dutch and EU law
Where Betty Blocks is a step down from Bubble
- Costs many times more than a Bubble Starter or Growth plan
- Has no free tier and no self-service sign-up at a small price
- Is documented mainly for Dutch insurance and public-sector use
Standout against Bubble. It is the only tool here that hands you standard code at the exit.
Best for: Small teams that want a branded portal for customers or suppliers on top of existing data.
Noloco is run by Noloco Limited in Dublin, and its subscription agreement is governed by Irish law with the Irish courts as the forum. A company that moves a customer portal from Bubble gets a contracting party inside the EU, which removes the Standard Contractual Clauses discussion from the data processing agreement. The vendor pages we read do not state which region the cloud runs in, so ask.
The free plan gives unlimited team seats, 50 active clients and 2,000 records, and the Build plan is $79 a month on monthly billing. Limits are counted in clients and records rather than workload units, which makes the bill easier to predict than Bubble's usage metering. SSO, audit logs and data residency are reserved for Enterprise.
What Noloco does better than Bubble
- Counts clients and records, so the monthly cost is easier to forecast
- Offers a free plan with unlimited team seats and no card
- Puts the contract under Irish law, with an EU contracting entity
- Focuses on portals, which is where many Bubble apps end up
Where Noloco is a step down from Bubble
- Cannot match Bubble's freedom to design arbitrary pages and workflows
- Holds SSO, audit logs and data residency back for Enterprise
Standout against Bubble. A usable free plan and an Irish contracting company make it the easiest first test.
Best for: Teams that want a known monthly bill per app and apps they can version like code.
Appsemble, from Appsemble B.V. in Eindhoven, defines an app as a YAML or JSON recipe assembled from reusable blocks and runs it as a progressive web app. Against Bubble, where the logic lives inside a proprietary editor, a recipe is plain text that can sit in a Git repository, be reviewed in a pull request and move to another server. The licence is LGPL-3.0.
Hosting is EUR 50 per app per month excluding VAT, with European cloud hosting, a standard backend and 10 GB of storage. That is above Bubble's entry plan, but it has no workload meter, so the number on the invoice does not change when traffic spikes. Custom blocks start at EUR 1,000 and custom apps at EUR 5,000, and most documentation is in Dutch.
What Appsemble does better than Bubble
- Stores an app as readable text you can version and move
- Charges a flat price per app instead of metering workload
- States European cloud hosting for the paid service
- Can be self-hosted, with third-line support from EUR 40 a month
Where Appsemble is a step down from Bubble
- Offers far fewer ready-made elements and plugins than Bubble
- Has a small community and mostly Dutch documentation
- Charges for custom blocks and apps when the standard ones fall short
Standout against Bubble. An app is a text file, so the lock-in question largely disappears.
Best for: Small departments that think in tables and forms rather than pages and workflows.
Ninox Software GmbH in Berlin builds database applications: you create tables, relate them, design forms and views, and add logic in a built-in scripting language. Bubble starts from the page, Ninox from the data, and that suits back-office jobs such as inventory, projects or a customer register more than a public product. The vendor reports more than 5,000 customers, many of them in the German and Swiss Mittelstand.
Pricing is per user: a free tier for up to 5 users with 5,000 records and 100 MB, then Team at EUR 25 and Business at EUR 40 per user a month billed yearly. For a team of ten that is more predictable than usage units, but a consumer app with many end users does not fit a per-seat model. The scripting language is proprietary, so an app is as portable as it would be on Bubble.
What Ninox does better than Bubble
- Publishes per-user prices in euros on every paid tier
- Gives a real free tier for up to 5 users
- Adds scripting for calculated fields and triggers without a developer
- Offers a private-cloud deployment on the Enterprise tier
Where Ninox is a step down from Bubble
- Is poorly suited to public apps with many end users
- Uses a proprietary scripting language with thin English documentation
- Has a tight 100 MB cap on the free tier
Standout against Bubble. It starts from tables and logic, so a department can finish an app without designing pages.
Best for: Developers and small IT teams who can run Docker and want internal tools at no licence cost.
Budibase Ltd of Belfast publishes the core of its platform under GPL v3, and the self-hosted plan allows unlimited apps and users in one workspace for free. That is a different bargain from Bubble: you take on the hosting, backups and updates, and in return nobody meters your workload or charges per app. Its terms are governed by Northern Ireland law, so the contract is British rather than EU.
The hosted cloud starts at $19 a month on Pro with a 14-day trial, up to $299 on Business, and adds end-user and creator fees on yearly billing. There is no free cloud tier. It is a tool for internal dashboards, admin panels and approval flows connected to your own databases, not a builder of public marketplaces with elaborate page designs.
What Budibase does better than Bubble
- Lets you run the whole platform yourself under an open-source licence
- Allows unlimited apps and users on the free self-hosted plan
- Lets you wire up a database, an approval flow and a portal quickly
- Offers an air-gapped deployment for locked-down environments
Where Budibase is a step down from Bubble
- Requires you to operate the server when you self-host
- Has no free cloud tier and bills in US dollars
- Is lighter than Bubble for public, design-heavy applications
Standout against Bubble. The full platform can be run free on your own server, with nobody metering it.
Best for: IT departments that want business users and developers working in one open-source product.
Convertigo SA of Paris publishes its code on GitHub under AGPL-3.0 and sells it as an open-source alternative to Microsoft Power Apps. It pairs a low-code studio for developers with a no-code studio for business users, and over 300 connectors. Against Bubble, whose editor is a closed service, the engine here can be inspected, installed on premises or run in the vendor's managed cloud.
Paid editions are priced per internal user from EUR 15 a month, with first-tier prices that fall at volume and external users charged by usage. The Community Edition is free but on premises only, and the no-code studio and managed cloud arrive with the paid editions. The vendor also has offices in North America, so confirm which entity signs your order.
What Convertigo does better than Bubble
- Publishes its code, so the platform can outlive any commercial change
- Can be installed on premises as well as in a managed cloud
- Prices internal users per seat from EUR 15 a month
- Combines two studios for developers and for business users
Where Convertigo is a step down from Bubble
- Gives the free edition on premises only, with no hosted free tier
- Prices internal and external users differently, which needs a calculation
- Has a smaller community and fewer templates than Bubble
Standout against Bubble. A French open-source engine you can install yourself, with a no-code studio on top.
Best for: Teams with a few builders and many viewers who want a European, self-hosted dashboard tool.
Lowcoder Software LTD in London builds dashboards, admin tools, portals and forms. The Community Edition is open source under AGPL-3.0 and you run it yourself. The paid Enterprise licence is priced per instance, at EUR 459 a month or EUR 4,990 a year, and app viewers are not billed, which inverts Bubble's logic of paying for the activity your users generate.
It is the youngest company on this page, incorporated in October 2023, and its terms of service name no governing law, so settle that in the order form. The AGPL licence also needs a legal read if you want to embed or resell it. The sole person with significant control is an Estonian company, so there is no US parent in the ownership chain.
What Lowcoder does better than Bubble
- Does not charge for app viewers, however many there are
- Prices an instance in euros instead of metering workload
- Is open source, so the platform stays usable without the vendor
Where Lowcoder is a step down from Bubble
- Has the shortest track record of the tools here
- Names no governing law in its terms of service
- Is aimed at internal tools, not public consumer apps
Standout against Bubble. Per-instance pricing means ten thousand viewers cost the same as ten.
Best for: Organisations whose Bubble experiment has turned into a core system needing release processes.
Mendix started in Rotterdam and has belonged to Siemens since 2018, a German group in Munich, so the ownership chain stays in the EU. It is a model-driven platform with version control inside the editor, which suits several people changing one application, something a single Bubble app edited by a small team rarely needs to handle. A free tier covers prototypes and small personal apps, without support or an SLA.
The published Standard tier is EUR 918 a month for one app or EUR 2,295 for unlimited apps, so it is aimed at a different buyer than Bubble Starter at $29. Premium, with multi-region failover and round-the-clock support, is quoted. Moving a Bubble prototype to Mendix makes sense only when governance and scale are the real problem.
What Mendix does better than Bubble
- Tracks every change like source code, which helps larger teams
- Offers a free tier for prototypes without a trial clock
- Backs the roadmap with a large European parent company
Where Mendix is a step down from Bubble
- Costs far more than a small Bubble plan
- Meters by application count, which hurts many small apps
Standout against Bubble. It is the tool for the day a prototype has to survive audits and releases.
What actually breaks when you switch
Plan for the data first. The export route from Bubble is CSV files or the Bubble API, so relations between records have to be rebuilt from exported IDs, and uploaded files live behind URLs that you must download before cancelling a plan.
Run an export early and check a few real records on the other side, including dates, option sets and user accounts. Check how user accounts and sign-in will be recreated on the new platform before you promise users a seamless switch.
Expect retraining and a freeze. Bubble's editor, its privacy rules and its plugin marketplace each have a counterpart on the European tools, but never a one-to-one one. Plugins you depend on for payments, maps or e-mail become API calls or custom blocks. Keep the Bubble plan alive until the new build has run live for a full billing cycle, then cancel, because a trial that rolls into a paid plan is the way many teams find out too late.
Can I move my Bubble app to a European platform without rebuilding it?
No tool on this page imports a Bubble application. Bubble's manual is explicit that the app runs only on its own platform and that you rebuild the logic if you move. What you can carry over is the data, exported as CSV files or pulled through the Bubble API with a script, and the design intent: the data model, the user roles and the screens are a specification for the new build.
Plan the move as a parallel run. Rebuild the data model first, load a CSV export, and rebuild one workflow end to end before touching the rest. A small internal tool can be rebuilt in a few weeks on Ninox or Noloco; a marketplace with payments and many workflows is a project, and the honest estimate comes from the first migrated workflow, not from a sales call.
Is a European no-code platform cheaper than Bubble?
It depends on how many apps you run and who uses them. Bubble charges per app and adds workload units. Appsemble charges a flat EUR 50 per app per month for hosting, Noloco lists a Build plan at $79 a month, Ninox charges per user, and Budibase and Lowcoder are free if you host them yourself. Betty Blocks and Mendix start far higher, at EUR 1,500 a month and EUR 918 a month on their published tiers.
The cheapest tools move cost from the vendor to your own people. Self-hosting means someone patches the server, watches the backups and answers when it is down. For a team without that person, a hosted plan at Appsemble, Noloco or Ninox will cost less in practice than a free licence that needs an engineer.
Which one to pick
If you want to stay in a no-code editor and gain an exit, Betty Blocks is the one that promises standard code, and Appsemble is the cheaper route if you are comfortable with text-based app definitions. If your Bubble app is really a portal for customers or suppliers, start with Noloco, and if it is a departmental database, start with Ninox. Both can be tested on a free tier in an afternoon.
If you have an engineer, Budibase, Lowcoder and Convertigo give you a platform you can run yourself, and the choice between them is licence and audience: GPL v3 and flexible data sources for Budibase, per-instance pricing for Lowcoder, and a no-code studio beside a developer studio for Convertigo. Mendix belongs on the list only when the application has outgrown a small team. Stay on Bubble if the app is a public product with a design you cannot afford to rebuild.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on what you built. For a no-code app that you want to be able to take with you, Betty Blocks is the closest fit because it states that its applications compile to standard React and WebAssembly. For a client portal on top of existing data, Noloco in Ireland is quicker. For open source, look at Appsemble, Budibase, Lowcoder and Convertigo. Ninox suits table-based back-office apps.
Not as code. Bubble's manual says the app can only run on the Bubble platform, and that moving off it means rebuilding the application logic. Data can be exported as CSV files or read through the Bubble API, and the vendor says it can help with exporting the design. Bubble also states that its source code would be released under an open-source licence if the company discontinued the product.
Bubble's manual says the engine and database run on Amazon AWS and that files are spread across the Cloudflare CDN. A choice of hosting region, together with a static IP and an isolated instance, is listed under the Enterprise plan. The pages we could read name no region setting for standard plans, so ask Bubble in writing which region applies to your app before you rely on it for GDPR.
Yes, four on this page. Appsemble (Eindhoven) is LGPL-3.0, Budibase (Belfast) has a GPL v3 core, and Lowcoder (London) and Convertigo (Paris) are AGPL-3.0. They are builders for internal tools, portals and business apps rather than clones of Bubble's page designer, so check the editor against your own screens before committing.
It removes one layer. With Noloco, Ninox, Appsemble and Convertigo you sign with an EU company, and with Budibase and Lowcoder with a British one, instead of relying on Standard Contractual Clauses and a US framework. You still have to ask each vendor where its cloud runs and who its subprocessors are, because several vendor pages in this category are silent on the hosting region.
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