The tech world has long promised to democratize software development through “visual” tools that help non-coders develop digital products. In the past, this might have been something like Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) or Dreamweaver. More recently, no-code and low-code startups have raised a ton of funding, widening access to the software development process.
That's why Danish startup Toddle has entered the visual development space, launching a full-featured no-code platform alternative to Javascript frameworks with real-time collaboration, version control, and hosting capabilities.
Ultimately, the company says it wants to “change the way software is built.”
Todor in action Image provided by Todor
Crowded Space
Startups like Bubble, Flutterflow, Builder, Softr, Framer, Webflow and countless others have raised significant amounts of funding (often at billion-dollar valuations) with different interpretations of what a no-code development platform should be. While these startups aren't all targeting the same market, they all share a similar ideal: that anyone in a company should be able to get their hands on software development, regardless of their coding ability.
Founded in 2022, Toddle is the brainchild of CEO Andreas Møller and CDO Kasper Svenning. The co-founders set out to build a platform that gives designers direct access to a live codebase through a visual editing interface, allowing them to instantly update UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) changes to the underlying code framework.
Toddle Web App Builder Image Credit: Under Toddle License.
The founders pitch Toddle as a tool that can visually replicate the power of languages like React, and Møller envisions design and developer teams using Toddle to build full-featured SaaS apps, similar to how developers use Figma to design digital products, Webflow to create marketing websites, Glide to build prototypes, and Bubble to thoroughly test minimum viable products (MVPs).
“Basically any kind of SaaS application that requires advanced functionality,” Møller told TechCrunch. “Can you build it with React? [Then] You can build it with Toddler.”
The idea is that developers and designers can work on the same page, in the same “language”, without having to jump between different environments. Every component created in Toddle can be saved as a package and reused across projects, and versioning allows developers to reuse older versions of components or apps if needed.
So marketers can edit content while designers are working on tweaking the interface, and developers can focus on the core logic of building the app without having to get involved with every button style change. Toddle is essentially a “translation layer” that maps visual edits to corresponding front-end frameworks and CSS techniques, so everything stays in sync both visually and programmatically.
It's important to note that Toddle is not a full-stack web app builder; it doesn't have a built-in database, for example. While an all-in-one front-end and back-end builder might make sense in some cases (such as for prototypes or simple applications), Møller believes that the requirements of users building complex applications change, so it doesn't make sense to lock them into Toddle. “One-size-fits-all technology will always become less one-size-fits-all over time,” he wrote in a blog post explaining his reasoning.
Instead, for backend functionality like databases and authentication, Toddle works with whatever system a developer wants to use. The company offers integration libraries that include Xano, Supabase, Airtable, GraphQL, Stripe (for payments), and even AI models from OpenAI and Hugging Face.
In terms of pricing, Toddle follows a freemium model, with the free tier providing most of the building blocks you need to build a web app, although the big caveat here is that this only applies to open source projects, which must be hosted on Toddle's own domain.
Still, it's at least a good way to try out Toddle's features: users can pay a fee to unlock additional storage, access a custom domain, and remove all Toddle branding.
“Everything you can build with Toddle can be built at a free level,” says Møller. “That's important for us because we want to change the way software is developed. It needs to be accessible to anyone with a computer.”
Open source elements
The two-year-old company claims to have 9,000 individual users, with up to 80 new sign-ups and about 60 paid users every day. It's certainly a modest start, but Toddle announced Tuesday that it has raised $4.3 million in seed funding in preparation for open-sourcing much of its platform. The company plans to release the language and runtime components of its platform under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, with plans to open-source the editor later.
“Language” here refers to the output of the editor, the raw code that Toddle sends to an AST (Abstract Syntax Tree), which is then converted into machine-readable binary code. Runtime refers to the “interpreter” that provides the components and services needed to run a program.
In short, developers will eventually be able to self-host apps built with Toddle without using the platform itself, and they'll be able to modify and enhance the app's language. Møller says the company plans to open-source these various elements between this year and 2025.
“We still have work to do to separate the open source code,” Moller said. “We'll do it in stages.”
Todor's seed round was led by Finnish venture capital firm Inventure, with participation from Lifeline Ventures, PSV and several angel investors, including Typeform co-founder David Okuniev.