WAVE REPORT

The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Professional Developers, Q2 2025

In our evaluation of low-code platforms for professional developer providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps you select the right one for your needs.

The Everything Platform Is Coming

Low-code platform adoption continues to rise, and most developers globally now use low-code for most of their development work. At the same time, the need to deliver AI-infused use cases (such as agents) and the dramatic usefulness of AI in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) (via TuringBots) upend all the traditional calculus of software. The direction: Low-code platforms for professional developers are moving toward application generation (AppGen) platforms, where firms increasingly generate and adapt the solutions they need as they adopt platform-first software strategies. Low-code platforms for professional developer customers using this evaluation to inform a purchase decision should consider that:

1. The fundamental components are most important. Low-code features for data modeling and storage, UX development, digital process automation (DPA), management of the SDLC, and government of developers are the core elements of your future software approach. As AI matures, working with these pieces will become easier and more automated, and the delivery of AI-infused solutions will change the patterns of how they are put together. In the long term, the fundamental quality of these core components and the integration between them are what matters most.
2. The AI feature race has barely started, so closely watch roadmaps and announcements. Virtually every vendor in this assessment has aggressive plans to deliver features aimed at full and robust SDLC automation (leading to AppGen) and the delivery of AI-infused applications (such as agents) in the next several quarters. Many already have valuable features in these areas. The pace of change in this sector is unprecedented — those ahead in AI features today likely won’t be in a matter of months. Again: This means the foundational components and elements of the platform are the more important long-term considerations.
3. Consider citizen development and the future of your IT operating model. This report focuses on evaluating products for professional developers delivering significant applications to high enterprise requirements. But the future of the IT operating model will depend on federation of software development to those outside of IT and pure technology roles — so even professional developer tools must have some hands-on-keyboard participation by less technical staff. This means you must consider whether the platform’s integrated development environments (IDEs) are suitable for citizen developers, how integrated those tools are with the rest of the toolkit, and how well the platform’s tools for managing and governing many developers and applications meet your strategy’s requirements.

Evaluation Summary

The Forrester Wave™ evaluation highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders (see Figures 1 and 2). We intend this evaluation to be a starting point only and encourage clients to view product evaluations and adapt the findings based on their priorities using Forrester’s interactive provider comparison experience. Figure 1 - Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Professional Developers, Q2 2025 Figure 2 - Forrester Wave™: Low-Code Platforms For Professional Developers Scorecard, Q2 2025

Leaders

Microsoft

Microsoft is a tech behemoth and dominates many technology markets. Its Power Platform tightly integrates with its Azure Cloud and Office 365 offerings and is the most widely adopted low-code platform in the market.

1. Strategy. Microsoft’s vision is exemplary, with an unflinching focus on AI-infused use cases and AppGen’s potential to disrupt both software development and the core economics of enterprise applications. Its superior roadmap balances innovation with core product and commercial improvements. Microsoft’s strategy of providing a basic version of the platform for free in its enterprise agreements has led to broad adoption and a large and enthusiastic community. Its main weakness: complexity and frequent changes in the Power Platform’s various interconnected pricing models and SKUs, which confuses customers. This being said, the common in-scope product license (Power Apps Premium) as documented in its pricing guide is stable and clear.
2. Capabilities. The product leads in AI: AppGen is a core focus throughout, multiple AI services are included in the base license, and an agent-building framework (Microsoft Copilot Studio) is natively available in its portfolio at an additional cost. The platform’s features for managing large communities of decentralized developers are also a strength, based on real-world case studies and requirements. Note: It is only available as an Azure cloud service, so customers can’t deploy to other infrastructure. All other features are competitive.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s easy integration and suitability for both IT and citizen developers. Pricing complexity is a common complaint, and both UX development and high-scale data scenarios are cited as areas for improvement.
4. Forrester’s take. Microsoft is the obvious choice for Microsoft shops and a leading option for firms that want an enterprise-grade platform that can reasonably serve the needs of both professional and citizen developers.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is best known for enterprise IT service management. Over the past few years, it has emphasized more universal workflow and platform messages with great success.

1. Strategy. ServiceNow’s vision is clear: Deliver a world-class AppGen platform with significant AI features aimed at its direct competition — but carefully, with a pragmatic focus on AI governance that resonates with its risk-averse IT audience. This approach differentiates ServiceNow from some of its more fanciful “AI is everything” competitors. Pragmatism may be seen in the vendor’s history of useful innovations, such as its three-tiered IDE and roadmap, which is strong. Its marketplace of platform add-ons and third-party applications is quite large. One weakness: Its platform pricing model is unpublished.
2. Capabilities. ServiceNow’s great strengths are consistent with its message: It brings mature capabilities in both process automation and integration, enabling it to win against the DPA industry’s traditional leaders. Its features for empowering citizen developers (and governing through access controls, portfolio management, etc.) are superior, as exemplified by its IDE that provides different experiences based on the developer’s technical depth. It also differentiates in AppGen, with prompt-based development available for its full stack of components, including code for new integrations. Note: It is only available as a managed cloud service or on-premises.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s workflow capabilities and general flexibility but criticize its licensing complexity.
4. Forrester’s take. ServiceNow is a strong choice for companies that want a strategic general-purpose low-code platform for both citizen and professional developers without sacrificing complex process automation.

OutSystems

OutSystems is a longtime poster child for low-code as a serious engineering tool. It’s currently transitioning from OutSystems 11 platform to the offering evaluated here: OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), which aims at enabling unusually high-scale applications.

1. Strategy. OutSystems’ goal of avoiding the categories and trade-offs of traditional software market segments through a best-in-class AppGen platform is superior and aggressive. Its roadmap is strong. It balances critical core improvements with the requisite AI enhancements and plans for technical differentiation in areas like mobile development. A weakness: Its pricing structure is unpublished, and a pricing team is required to create an estimate for potential purchases.
2. Capabilities. The platform is superior in UX development and suits highly custom B2C web app and mobile experiences. Data modeling tools stand out. Its Mentor AppGen authoring experience shows promise and can generate simple CRUD apps and dashboards entirely from prompts. Its features for governing large populations of developers through options like custom policies and processes are not yet mature, although its access controls for developers and portfolio management features are typical of the industry. The core IDE is too technical for serious citizen developer strategies, but we have high hopes for the future of Mentor.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s UX development capabilities, features for driving component reuse, and scalable architecture. They describe its consumption-based pricing model as difficult to predict.
4. Forrester’s take. OutSystems’ ODC is the obvious choice for firms focused on unusually large-scale applications and is a strong choice for professional low-code development strategies generally.

Mendix

Mendix is one of the low-code industry’s enterprise pioneers and is owned by Siemens. It retains a strong global reputation as a horizontal low-code platform, even as it is increasingly integrated into the Siemens portfolio and augmented for industrial use cases.

1. Strategy. Mendix’s vision of “a world where ideas become outcomes” is made credible by its superior roadmap: It’s the most thoughtful and comprehensive plan for applying AI using low-code across the SDLC we’ve seen. Its large marketplace for add-ons and applications is also impressive. A weakness: Its pricing isn’t published in sufficient detail to estimate an actual purchase price.
2. Capabilities. Mendix’s capabilities in UX development, mobile development, and data modeling (integrating native and external data stores) are superior. It also provides Git-based version control out of the box and a comprehensive toolset for agile planning. Despite the prominence of AI in its roadmap, it currently lags in AppGen capabilities. Its tools for developing generative AI (genAI) and traditional machine apps are solidly competitive. The IDE is unsuitable for citizen developers, and its features for governance guardrails to aid large citizen development implementations are weak. The vendor recently received FedRAMP certification.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s power, ecosystem, and infrastructure options but criticize its lack of governance features and the decision to retire its simplified citizen development environment.
4. Forrester’s take. Mendix is a strong general-use low-code platform with few flaws and clear differentiation in industrial use cases. It is a top choice for industrial firms and a strong option for firms in other industries uninterested in serious citizen development.

Pegasystems

Pegasystems (Pega) has been in business for more than 40 years. It’s known as a comprehensive automation platform vendor that aims at the most complex use cases in the world.

1. Strategy. Pega’s vision is to enable the AI-based “autonomous enterprise.” The firm has a strong history of R&D leading to innovation, reflected in its early entry into the AppGen race with the release of its Blueprint product. This innovation is seen in its roadmap, which builds on its strengths and includes some novel (but credible) product plans. One weakness: Its pricing isn’t published on its website with sufficient detail to estimate a purchase price. Most importantly, market and buyer concerns related to its past legal woes appear to have mostly blown over after a higher court overturned the original verdict; the case is now reworking its way through the legal system and further appeals.
2. Capabilities. Pega provides a comprehensive orchestration and automation toolset with components for case management, robotic process automation (RPA), complex rules, process mining, and ML — all proven in the real world. The IDE is highly opinionated, and its weaknesses flow from this: The platform is inelegant for bottom-up data-first development, while its UX tools aren’t aimed at the highly customized pixel-perfect experiences or standalone frontend projects more typical of the low-code industry. Its SDLC tools for version control, testing, agile management, deployment, and governance are exemplary. App Studio remains a beautiful citizen developer experience; the full Dev Studio is much more complex.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise Pega’s commitment to innovation, its version control features, and the suitability of its App Studio experience for citizen developers. They note that finding Pega developers is a challenge.
4. Forrester’s take. Pega remains a top choice for the most demanding automation and orchestration use cases.

Appian

Appian has transitioned from being an automation-first low-code vendor to a strong general-purpose low-code platform aimed exclusively at large organizations. It’s known for its work in the federal government and for being the first company to go public as a low-code vendor.

1. Strategy. Appian’s strategy focuses on the difficult business of enterprise orchestration and application development, not little departmental apps. AI is part of this, but Appian refreshingly hasn’t embraced the AI-fueled flights of fancy currently fashionable in tech. Its roadmap is well balanced between core engineering improvements, such as increasing the scale of its data throughput, and the requisite AppGen and agent-building features. The structure of its pricing is published without dollar figures, but unlike many vendors, Appian includes its entire platform and a wide range of automation features in a single SKU.
2. Capabilities. The Appian platform is balanced and pragmatic with no significant flaws. True to its focus, its automation and orchestration features are superior and include a full complement of supporting services, including RPA, a rules engine, case management, and process mining. Its reporting is also superior, which its data fabric enables. The vendor’s emphasis on government and regulated enterprises also comes through in the product: Its security practices and features for developer access controls are superior.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s development speed and reliability but criticize the vendor’s comparatively slow adoption of genAI.
4. Forrester’s take. Appian is the ideal choice for firms that are unconcerned with functional edge cases and want a broad, pragmatic platform to deliver and govern the majority of low-code business app requirements.

Salesforce

Salesforce is best known for its CRM offerings and is the most vocal proponent of the current agent trend. Its low-code platform, underpinning its core CRM, is our focus in this evaluation.

1. Strategy. Salesforce’s ecosystem is profound: Its partner roster and platform marketplace are extraordinary, and its community is large and enthusiastic. Its pivot to a platform-first vision and message (in Agentforce) is a wise and dramatic shift, although we take issue with the message of “digital labor.” Its recent innovations and roadmap focus largely on genAI and agents. While its pricing is often called “expensive,” it is published and doesn’t produce the same complaints and confusion as other large vendors’.
2. Capabilities. Salesforce is one of the first platforms to market with genAI tools, and customers are using these tools in the real world. Its security practices are also strong. Also of note are its Flow component for process modeling (backed by the respected MuleSoft integration platform as a service [iPaaS] through a separate subscription) and its ongoing improvements of its DevOps and SDLC tools. Its mobile development provides comparatively few specific tools and control. Its security practices are strong. Note: Salesforce is only available as a cloud service.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the Flow automation component and are bullish on the vendor’s AI plans. They criticize its cost, the vendor’s tendency to overpromise on its roadmap, and the complexity of the platform’s permissions sets.
4. Forrester’s take. Salesforce is a good fit for customers that demand a mature ecosystem for their low-code strategy, buy into the Salesforce AI vision, and are willing to write custom code to meet their UX requirements.

AgilePoint

AgilePoint is a small vendor that historically focused on process automation but has successfully made the shift to a general low-code platform offering over much of the past decade. Forrester’s data suggests it enjoys disproportionate adoption/mindshare in the low-code developer community.

1. Strategy. AgilePoint laser-focuses on technology differentiation through its modeling language. Its goal: Facilitate AI-enabled dynamic processes on top of existing IT investments. Its roadmap and innovation approach are pragmatic and credible, demonstrated by the continued competitiveness of its product, a substantial budget for R&D, and its soon-to-be-released AppGen features. It has no third-party ecosystem to speak of, and its partner roster is small. Its pricing structure is published, transparent, and reasonable.
2. Capabilities. AgilePoint excels in DPA, and its core modeling component is proven for complex workflows. It provides a full reporting module out of the box at no additional charge. Its features for custom governance policies and portfolio management are superior, with a wide array of monitoring reports out of the box and many settings that are both deep and user friendly. Unlike most citizen-developer-plausible platforms, AgilePoint can be deployed on-premises or to multiple clouds. It has no prebuilt genAI actions, and its testing tools are minimal.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise the platform’s usefulness for complex workflows and its intuitive learnability. They note that keeping platform documentation up to date is a weakness.
4. Forrester’s take. AgilePoint is best for firms that want to empower a wide range of personas to automate many processes and avoid the headaches or price tags of working with most megavendors.

Oracle

Oracle historically gave away its APEX product for free with the Oracle database, but it is now a standalone product. According to Larry Ellison, APEX is the “application generator” used to build most new Oracle applications.

1. Strategy. Oracle is making thoughtful strategic choices with APEX — notably optimizing its underlying modeling languages for AI generation and using it to build new applications in the Oracle portfolio. This alone reinvigorates APEX’s relevance in the market. Its great advantage is pricing: Billing is based on a simple consumption model of storage and compute and doesn’t charge for additional users. A weakness: APEX lacks significant partnerships with the large systems integrators and consultancies that enterprises generally prefer.
2. Capabilities. APEX offers flexible deployment (uniquely among low-code products from the megavendors), competitive UX tools, and a range of AppGen features consistent with its stated strategy. Its tools for developer role-based access control (RBAC) portfolio management are useful and underpin Oracle’s internal citizen development work. Its core weakness is its medium-code design philosophy: Working directly in languages like PL/SQL and SQL is a core authoring experience. Other weaknesses are integration because APEX has few connectors and is Oracle-database-centric, AI because it has few genAI and ML features, mobile development because it only supports PWA, process automation because its new workflow engine is nascent, and tools that support the SDLC like version control and testing because they are not robust.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise APEX’s pricing structure and its adjacency to the Oracle database. They criticize its overreliance on coding languages and don’t see its workflow component as mature yet.
4. Forrester’s take. APEX is for Oracle shops and customers that value its differentiated commercial model.

Retool

Retool focuses exclusively on professional developers and claims multiple digital-native firms as customers. It is known for its focus on business-to-enterprise use cases.

1. Strategy. Retool’s vision is product driven and focuses on providing elegant abstractions aimed at professional coders to make them more productive while still allowing them to code when they want to. Its roadmap is practical, addressing both the obligatory AI enhancements and some significant functional gaps, such as a process engine. Its partner ecosystem and community are relatively small, and it has no platform marketplace. While its product philosophy and pitch are unique among successful low-code vendors, we see its platform investments as strictly practical rather than innovative.
2. Capabilities. Its web UI and mobile development tools are strong and compare favorably with most incumbent enterprise platform vendors’. Its integration tools are solid and support multiple protocols; the platform is backend agnostic. Its genAI features provide useful multimodal actions in the core logic modeler. But overall the platform is feature light, compared with competitors, and many useful abstractions expected of low-code platforms are absent. In practice, this means writing (a lot of) code isn’t optional — it’s required. And typical SDLC functions for versioning, continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), and automated testing require third-party products and integrations, although these are supported.
3. Customer feedback. Customers uniformly praise Retool’s customer service and value its code-level flexibility. They see version control and tools for working with data and large datasets as areas for improvement.
4. Forrester’s take. Retool is a suitable toolset for transitioning teams of skeptical high-coders to the low-code future.

Unqork

Unqork focuses on financial, healthcare, and government customers. It’s known for its ongoing crusade against high-code development.

1. Strategy. Unqork is known for its public crusades: first “enterprise no-code,” then “codeless architecture,” and now “regenerative applications.” Its core point is right: Pure model-based development with an interpreted language on a vendor-managed codebase and platform is the smart way to build software instead of getting bogged down in maintenance and technical debt. But in our judgement, the vendor’s sales and marketing focus has taken precedence over addition of the features that enterprises want. That being said, its roadmap reflects a renewed focus on some of these challenges, such as version control, along with some obligatory AI enhancements. Its ecosystem remains small.
2. Capabilities. Unqork provides a rich and flexible frontend component that compares well with stodgy incumbents. Its workflow and automation engines are solid, supported by a simple rules engine. Reporting is useful, and the platform provides typical developer access controls. Since our last evaluation, Unqork has partnered with iPaaS leader Workato, significantly expanding its integration possibilities. Commendably, the platform has been FedRAMP certified. It provides some use case accelerators that win deals against competitors in target industries like insurance. Most other features in this assessment are absent or light.
3. Customer feedback. Customers appreciate the richness and speed of frontend development. They see version control, CI/CD, and integration into the DevOps toolchain as critical weaknesses to address. Unqork did not provide reference customers for this evaluation.
4. Forrester’s take. Unqork is for customers in its target industries that value its architectural ideals and can live with its functional gaps.

HCLSoftware

HCLSoftware is the software portfolio arm of HCLTech, a large IT consulting company. Its low-code HCL Volt MX product includes Iris (the desktop professional developer IDE), Leap (the citizen developer IDE), and Foundry (a middleware service).

1. Strategy. In our view, HCL’s vision, roadmap, and innovation are differentiated by two focus areas: 1) best-of-breed frontend-centric multiplatform development (for desktop, web, mobile, wearables, kiosks, etc.) aimed at professional developers and 2) a go-to-market and feature set for modernizing HCL Domino (i.e., Lotus Notes) applications. These areas are useful but niche. The product benefits from a competitive partner network and support from its parent consulting company. The platform’s pricing is transparent and offers several structures based on different user types or sessions. Its developer community is small.
2. Capabilities. The platform is among the strongest in this assessment for low-code UX development and mobile development: It generates native code for multiple mobile platforms, and professional coders commonly use it as a pragmatic path for multiplatform development and component reuse. Consistent with its focus, the platform’s integration capabilities are strong; its middleware supports more than 400 connectors in its catalog. It provides automated testing tools and industry-typical RBAC for developers. Weaknesses are tools for building genAI and ML apps, with virtually no features in this area; data modeling; and managing and governing many developers and apps. The Iris and Leap IDEs aren’t well integrated.
3. Customer feedback. Customers appreciate the product’s ability to generate native code for multiple platforms, support for component and service reuse, and licensing model. They note report building and the process engine as areas for improvement.
4. Forrester’s take. HCLSoftware’s Volt MX is tailor-made for frontend and mobile use cases with high requirements and should be of great interest to firms modernizing Domino/Lotus notes apps.

SAP

SAP is the world’s dominant enterprise resource planning vendor. Its low-code offerings as part of its Build products, housed under its business technology platform umbrella, are our focus.

1. Strategy. The products are presented and used primarily as an extension platform for SAP’s crown-jewel business applications. The low-code tools are just a part of this: The separate pro-code offering is described as “code optional” — in fact, it includes some low-code elements but only for backend work. This fragmented product strategy is confusing and lacks conviction. The roadmap is also mixed, including some strong AI enhancements for AppGen and agentic use cases but leaving core product issues unaddressed. That said, SAP’s significant partner ecosystem and dedicated marketplace serve the low-code offerings.
2. Capabilities. Consistent with SAP’s strategy, the low-code Build tools are SAP-centric and integrated into its app portfolio through a guided extension wizard. Its process automation engine is strong and includes supporting technologies like RPA. The UI builder is an elegant no-code experience and provides a robust visual engine for client-side logic in addition to a granular design canvas. It also supports native mobile app development for multiple platforms. Backend development is a weakness: The Build Apps experience doesn’t support relational data modeling, and serious backend work must be done in the separate Build Code IDE.
3. Customer feedback. Customers praise Build Process Automation’s ability to manage complex processes within the SAP ecosystem. They regard its low-code app building capabilities as SAP-centric and less functionally mature than more common low-code offerings. SAP did not provide reference customers for this evaluation.
4. Forrester’s take. For the time being, the SAP Build products are for extending SAP’s applications only.

Vendor Offerings

Forrester evaluated the offerings listed below (see Figure 3). Figure 3 - Evaluated Vendors And Product Information

We evaluated vendors against three categories:

1. Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave graphic indicates the strength of its current offering.
2. Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies, including elements such as vision and innovation.
3. Customer feedback. A halo on a vendor’s marker indicates above-average customer feedback relative to the other evaluated vendors. A double halo indicates outstanding customer feedback: We consider the vendor to be a Customer Favorite. As part of this evaluation, we speak with up to three customers of each vendor. We also consider customer input from our previous research.

Vendor Inclusion Criteria

Each of the vendors we included in this assessment has:

1. Broad enterprise-level support for functionality in low-code platforms for pro developers. The vendor natively provides all core functions for this space and has a demonstrated track record of supporting large enterprises as a broad general-development platform.
2. A solution for purchase as a standalone product, with a relevant go-to-market strategy. The product has its own SKU and pricing and is not solely available as a free feature within a larger portfolio, and the platform’s executed go-to-market strategy aligns with the professional developer low-code market.
3. Significant mindshare in the developer market. We’ve heard about the product from Forrester clients in the form of low-code inquiries, advisories, consulting engagements, and other interactions, or the platform is prominent as a primary low-code platform in our developer survey data.

Other Notable Vendors

The Forrester Wave evaluation is an assessment of the top vendors in the market; it doesn’t represent the entire vendor landscape. You’ll find more information about this market and additional vendors that Forrester considers to be notable for enterprise clients in our corresponding report: The Low-Code Development Platforms For Professional Developers Landscape, Q1 2023.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

A Forrester Wave is a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology marketplace. To offer an equitable process for all participants, Forrester follows The Forrester Wave™ Methodology to evaluate participating vendors. In our review, we conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors to consider for the evaluation. From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list based on the inclusion criteria. We then gather details of product and strategy through a detailed questionnaire, demos and briefings, and interviews with customers (vendors may provide up to three reference customers; we also consider feedback from other customers we’ve spoken with). We use those inputs, along with the analyst’s experience and expertise in the marketplace, to score vendors, using a relative rating system that compares each vendor with the others in the evaluation. We include the publishing date (quarter and year) clearly in the title of each Forrester Wave report. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave using materials they provided to us by February 26, 2025, and did not allow additional information after that point. We encourage readers to evaluate how the market and vendor offerings change over time. In accordance with our vendor review policy, Forrester asks vendors to review our findings prior to publishing to check for accuracy. We score vendors that met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate in or contributed only partially to the evaluation in accordance with our vendor participation policy and publish their positioning along with those of the participating vendors. Oracle, SAP, and Unqork declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process. For vendors that are not full participants, Forrester uses primary and secondary research in its analysis. For example, we might use public information, data gathered via briefings, and independently sourced customer interviews to score the vendor. We may ask the vendor for an abbreviated briefing and/or to provide reference customers. We may also rely on estimates to score vendors.

Integrity Policy

We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the integrity policy posted on our website.