Retool

Low-code platform for building internal tools and custom business applications with drag-and-drop UI components.

There are two ways to connect Retool to MotherDuck, depending on whether you use Retool Cloud or self-hosted Retool.

Retool Cloud (native connector)

Retool Cloud has a native MotherDuck resource type. To connect:

1. Go to Resources and select Create new > Resource.
2. Search for MotherDuck and select it.
3. Give the resource a descriptive name (for example, "MotherDuck analytics").
4. Under Resource credentials, enter your MotherDuck access token.
5. Optionally enter a Database name. Leave it empty to use workspace mode, which lets you query across multiple databases.
6. Click Test connection, then Create resource.

You can use this resource in your Retool apps to run SQL queries against your MotherDuck databases. The resource supports both SQL mode for reading data and GUI mode for write operations (insert, update, delete, upsert).

Connection options

You can pass optional key-value pairs under Connection options to customize behavior:

Option	Values	Description
access_mode	READ_WRITE, READ_ONLY	Controls whether the connection can write data
attach_mode	single, workspace	Sets the attach mode. single scopes the connection to one database (useful when querying a specific tenant or to avoid catalog clutter); workspace (default) attaches every database in your saved workspace.
TimeZone	For example, UTC, America/New_York	Sets the session time zone
default_null_order	NULLS_FIRST, NULLS_LAST	Default null ordering for queries
default_order	ASC, DESC	Default sort order for queries

For more details, see the Retool MotherDuck documentation.

Known limitations

• BLOB and ARRAY column types are not supported by the native connector. Queries that return these types will fail. Cast these columns to a supported type (for example, using CAST or list_string_agg) or exclude them from your result set.

Self-hosted (JDBC)

If you run a self-hosted Retool instance, you can connect to MotherDuck through the DuckDB JDBC driver. Your instance needs network access to motherduck.com over HTTPS (port 443).

1. In your Retool instance, go to Resources and select Create new.

2. Choose JDBC as the resource type.

3. Use the following JDBC connection string:

   jdbc:duckdb:md:<database_name>?motherduck_token=<your_token>

   Replace <database_name> with your MotherDuck database and <your_token> with your access token.

4. Test the connection and save.

For more details on the JDBC driver, see JDBC driver.