Budibase gives you a deployment choice Cordango does not. Cordango gives you a company core Budibase does not.
Two corrections to what this page used to say. Budibase is not only self-hosted: there is a managed Budibase Cloud, so who operates the platform is a question you get to answer rather than one answered for you. And “open source” needs more precision than a checkmark. Budibase Core is GPLv3. Since April 2026 the Enterprise source is readable too, under the Business Source License, which is not an OSI open-source licence. European public-sector organisations get permanent production rights under it, and each Enterprise version converts to GPLv3 four years later.
That licensing move is serious work aimed at roughly the buyer Cordango is aimed at, and it deserves more than a table row. Where the two products part company is what exists before you start building. Budibase gives you a builder and lets you point it at data sources. Cordango gives you a company.
Feature availability and pricing change. Every row is checked against the vendor's own current documentation, linked at the foot of this page.
Default means it is there without anyone setting it up. Available means the vendor supports it, sometimes only on a particular plan. Build or configure means it is possible and it is your work. Not a focus means the product is aimed somewhere else.
| Cordango | Budibase | |
|---|---|---|
| Building an app by describing it | Defaultthe normal way in, alongside ready-made capabilities | Not a focusa drag-and-drop builder. We found no documented natural-language app generation. |
| Shared company records across every app | Defaultorganizations, people and teams are there before the first app | Build or configurepoint every app at the same source, and keep it that way as apps multiply |
| Organisation-level identity and roles | DefaultMicrosoft and Google sign-in on every plan, SAML and SCIM higher up | AvailableSSO from Premium, groups and stronger governance on Business |
| Authorisation inside the app | Defaultenforced below the application, per entity, per field and per command | Build or configureconfigured per app by whoever builds it |
| Audit across every app | Defaultfield-level history produced by the runtime, nothing to model | Availableaudit logs on Enterprise |
| Source you can read | Availablethe compiler and the CLI are Apache-2.0, so the part that turns a description into an app is inspectable. The platform is not. | DefaultCore is GPLv3, and Enterprise source has been readable under BSL since April 2026 |
| An OSI open-source licence for the whole product | Not a focusonly the compiler and the CLI. Calling Cordango open source would be a stretch. | Build or configureCore yes. Enterprise is BSL, which is not OSI open source, until each version converts to GPLv3 four years on. |
| Self-hosting and on-premises | Not a focusCordango is a managed service. If you have to own the infrastructure, Budibase wins this row outright. | Defaultself-hosted and on-premises are first-class |
| Managed hosting | Defaultbackups, updates and patching are ours | DefaultBudibase Cloud |
| Who operates the platform | Defaultwe do, and you cannot take it in-house | Availableyou, or Budibase Cloud. Having the choice is the point. |
| German or EU data residency | DefaultGerman data centres, sub-processors published | Availableself-host wherever you like, or use their cloud |
| External assurance today | None yetwe hold no ISO 27001, SOC 2 or C5 certification and have commissioned no external penetration test. We say so on the DPA page rather than in a footnote. | DefaultISO 27001 |
| Special rights for European public-sector bodies | Not a focusnot offered. This is a genuine Budibase advantage and it is deliberate on their part. | Defaultpermanent production rights under the BSL terms |
| Who has to build it | Defaultyou describe it, or you ask us to build it on the same core | Availablesomebody still assembles the app, though the builder is a good one |
Budibase’s April 2026 licensing change deserves more than a row in a table. Opening the Enterprise source under BSL, with permanent production rights for European public-sector organisations and conversion to GPLv3 after four years, is a real answer to a real sovereignty problem. If your requirement is that you can read the code and run it yourself, this comparison is over and Budibase won it.
Cordango took the opposite side of that trade on purpose. There is no instance for you to run, which means there is nothing for you to patch, and it also means you cannot bring the platform in-house if your policy changes. What arrives instead is a company that exists before the first app: organizations, people, teams and roles as platform records, with rights checked underneath every capability rather than configured inside each one.
The compiler and the CLI are Apache-2.0, so the part that turns a description into an application can be inspected on a laptop with no account. The platform is not, and we would rather write that here than let a checkmark imply otherwise.
Budibase is the better choice when self-hosting or reading the source is mandatory rather than preferable, and it is the obvious choice for a European public-sector organisation using the rights the BSL grant gives them.
What we can show you, and what we cannot. Cordango holds no ISO 27001, SOC 2 or C5 certification today, and has not commissioned an external penetration test yet. We would rather you read that here than find it in procurement. Security and permissions at Cordango, and the data processing agreement in full.
Bring an app you would otherwise assemble in Budibase. We will build it in the demo, on a company platform where the records, the rights and the history already exist.