About REI3
REI3 is a free and open low-code platform for building and hosting business applications with full control and ownership. It targets organizations that want to replace spreadsheet-based solutions with proper multi-user apps, run them in the cloud or on-premise, and avoid walled gardens and cloud-only SaaS. Created applications can be used, shared or even sold.
Applications can summarize records, do date calculations and apply business rules, show tasks on Gantt charts, diagrams and dense lists, and include workflows such as forms that change with a record's state, PDF export and notifications. Roles and access policies restrict access globally or per record, and built-in end-to-end encryption comes with key management. Integration options include serving and calling REST endpoints, CSV import and export and ICS calendar access. The platform also covers mobile use with PWA features, full-text search, input types such as signatures and bar or QR code scanning, password policies and brute-force protection.
REI3 is written in Go and JavaScript, uses multi-core processing and bi-directional data channels for speed, and has downloads, documentation, a live demo and a catalog of applications. Its license is listed as Other.
Key features
- Low-code builder for multi-user business apps
- Roles and record-level access policies
- Built-in end-to-end encryption
- REST, CSV and ICS integration options
- Gantt charts and diagrams
- PWA support for mobile use
Good fit for
- →Replacing spreadsheets with proper applications
- →Internal business tools hosted on-premise
- Tags
- low-code
- self-hosted
- internal-tools
- business-apps
- golang
- workflow
- encryption
- no-code
REI3: questions and answers
- What is REI3 used for?
- REI3 is a free, self-hostable low-code platform for building multi-user business applications with workflows, access policies, encryption and mobile support. It is a good fit for replacing spreadsheets with proper applications and internal business tools hosted on-premise.
- Is REI3 open source?
- Yes. REI3 is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at r3-team/r3 and is written mainly in JavaScript.
- Is REI3 free?
- Yes. REI3 is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
- Can I self-host REI3?
- Yes. REI3 can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is REI3 an alternative to?
- REI3 is an open-source alternative to Quickbase, Knack, Kintone and Zoho Creator. Other open-source alternatives to Quickbase include Budibase, NocoBase and Totum.
- Is REI3 actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to REI3 was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v3.12.8, published on 19 August 2026. The project has 581 stars on GitHub.
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