Knackvs
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Cockroach Labs: The cloud-native distributed SQL database
Knack
Hosted no-code database and web app builder priced by stored records and storage, with unlimited user accounts on every plan.
As of 30 August 2026, Knack starts at $59/month. Knack builds database-backed web apps with logins, roles and forms without code, and charges by how many records you store rather than by how many people use it. Softwr lists it under Databases.
Overview
What Knack does
Knack is a hosted platform for building database-driven web applications without writing code. You define tables, fields and relationships, then build pages: forms, searchable tables, detail views, dashboards, calendars and maps, with user roles controlling what each login can see and do. It includes user registration and authentication, email notifications, scheduled tasks, e-commerce payment collection, an API and webhooks, and an automation layer for flows. Applications are served from Knack's infrastructure under a Knack subdomain or a custom domain, and can be embedded into an existing site. The commercially distinguishing fact is the pricing axis. Plans are bounded by records and storage, not seats: users, tables, fields, pages, roles, forms and flows are unlimited on every tier, while records step from 20,000 on the entry plan, to 50,000, to a range from 125,000 to 2.5 million, with more negotiated at enterprise level, alongside 2 GB, 10 GB and 50 GB of storage. Against Airtable, Zoho Creator and most of the seat-priced no-code market that inverts the economics. A membership directory, a client portal or a volunteer scheduling app with five thousand external users costs the same as one with five, which is why Knack shows up disproportionately in associations, non-profits, schools and small operations teams that need to give logins to people outside the organisation. The buyer is usually an operations person or a small internal team replacing a spreadsheet and an email thread with something that has logins and an audit trail. The trade-off is a hard ceiling in two directions. Data volume is the metered resource, so an application that writes a row per event rather than per entity climbs through plan tiers on storage alone, and the API is capped per day at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 calls by tier, which constrains any integration that polls. More fundamentally the application cannot leave: you can export records, but the pages, roles, flows and logic exist only inside Knack, so outgrowing it means rebuilding rather than migrating.
What people use it for
- A member or client portal where thousands of external people need their own login and see only their own records
- Replacing a shared spreadsheet used by a team that has outgrown it but cannot justify a developer to build a bespoke internal tool
- Inventory, asset or case tracking for a small operations team that needs roles, forms and a record of who changed what
- A registration or booking application for an association, school or non-profit where the user count is large and the record count stays modest
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Knack.
- Plans are capped by stored records, so an application that logs events or keeps history rather than current state climbs tiers on data volume alone, and archiving old records becomes a permanent maintenance chore rather than a one-off.
- API access is capped per day, at 1,000 calls on the entry plan and 10,000 at the Corporate tier, so a scheduled sync or a busy automation can exhaust the day's quota before the working day ends and integrations then fail silently.
- The application itself cannot be exported or self-hosted; records can be downloaded but the pages, roles, flows and business logic exist only inside Knack, so outgrowing the platform means rebuilding the app rather than moving it.
- Customisation beyond the builder is limited to injected CSS and JavaScript that Knack's support does not cover, so any non-standard interface behaviour becomes yours to maintain against a DOM the vendor can change without warning.
- Compliance capabilities that regulated buyers assume are baseline, HIPAA and GovCloud options, advanced SSO, IP restrictions and private environments, are gated to the Corporate and Enterprise tiers, so a small regulated pilot cannot legitimately start on an entry plan.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Knack
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- KnackvsPostgreSQL
PostgreSQL: The world's most advanced open source relational database
- KnackvsAirtable
Airtable: Create apps that perfectly fit your team's needs
- KnackvsAmazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora: MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud
Pricing
What Knack costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Starter
$59 /mo
- 20,000 database records
- Unlimited users, tables, fields
- 25 AI credits
- Basic integrations via Knack Flows
Pro
$130 /mo
- 50,000 database records
- Remove Knack branding
- E-commerce payments
- Two-factor authentication
- 50 AI credits
- 1 custom domain
Corporate
$300 /mo
- 125,000-2.5M database records
- App restore functionality
- Advanced SSO
- 3 custom domains
- 100 AI credits
Enterprise
On request
- Dedicated account manager
- HIPAA/GovCloud-based options
- Custom pricing
Capabilities
Features
Visual database builder
Tables, field types and relationships defined in the browser with no schema migrations to write
User logins and roles
Registration, authentication and per-role page and record permissions built in
Page builder
Forms, searchable tables, detail views, calendars, maps and dashboards assembled from components
Unlimited users
User accounts are not metered on any plan, so external portals do not cost per person
E-commerce
Payment collection through integrated payment processors on paid tiers
Automation flows
Triggered actions with a per-tier monthly transaction allowance
Scheduled tasks
Recurring jobs that update records or send email on a schedule, from the Pro tier upward
REST API and webhooks
Programmatic access with a per-day call cap that rises with the plan
Custom domains and branding
Own domain and removal of Knack branding from the Pro tier upward
Embedding
Applications embedded into an existing website rather than hosted only on a Knack URL
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Knack charged per user?
No. User accounts are unlimited on all plans. Plans are bounded by stored record count, file storage, API calls per day and automation transactions.
What happens when I exceed the record limit?
You move to a higher tier or reduce stored records. Because the limit is on data rather than people, apps that accumulate history hit it while apps that track a fixed set of entities generally do not.
Can I export my application or self-host it?
You can export record data. The application itself, its pages, roles, permissions and flows, is not exportable and cannot be self-hosted, so leaving means rebuilding elsewhere.
Is it suitable for public-facing portals?
That is its strongest case, because logins are unlimited and role-based permissions are built in. The constraint is record volume and API throughput, not audience size.
Can I use it for regulated data?
HIPAA-aligned and government cloud options exist but only on the Enterprise tier, along with private server environments. Lower tiers should not be used for regulated workloads.
Keep looking
Where to go from Knack
- Knack alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Knack pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Knack badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Databases softwareThe full category
- Best Databases softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Databases software for
Compare Knack with
- Airtable
- Cockroach Labs
- PostgreSQL
- Amazon Aurora
- BigQuery
- Firebase Realtime Database
- Dremio
- DuckDB
- Immuta
- Turso
- FaunaDB
- Ninox
- TimescaleDB
- Apache Pinot
- Amazon RDS
- Turso
- Apache Pulsar
- Amazon Redshift
Other Databases software
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Free plan12 researched notesSQL query engine and lakehouse layer over Iceberg tables in object storage
Free, then $0.2/hour12 researched notesMIT-licensed analytical SQL database that runs inside your process, with no server, no dependencies and one writer at a time.
Free plan14 researched notesAttribute-based access control and masking applied inside Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery
Pricing on request12 researched notesSQLite-lineage database platform for running very large numbers of small per-tenant databases, with an MIT-licensed engine.
Free, then $4.99/mo14 researched notesDocument-relational database whose hosted service closed in 2025 and whose core is now unmaintained Apache 2.0 code.
Free plan14 researched notesTime-series database built on PostgreSQL for real-time analytics
Free plan12 researched notesSQLite-lineage database platform for running very large numbers of small per-tenant databases, with an MIT-licensed engine.
Free, then $4.99/mo14 researched notesCloud-native messaging and streaming with separated storage
Open source10 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Knack, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Knack
Knack alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Knack pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Knack
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Knack badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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