RIP Low-Code 2014-2025

Summary

The rise of AI and particularly agentic development presents an existential threat to an entire category of low-code platforms. While the adoption of new techniques and tooling will take years to propagate through the Byzantine ranks of larger, slower-moving enterprises, the fundamental ROI case for these tools looks different in a world where the cost of shipping code now approaches zero. This may seem like a preposterous conclusion given the substantial size and growth of the sector. Forrester, who actually gave low-code its name back in 2014, projects the category will reach $50b by 2028 and sees no current indication that things will slow down, let alone contract. However, it’s worth digging in to why these tools arose in the first place and the problems they solve to explore how much the landscape has shifted in just the past year. Put simply, these software platforms exist to allow users to create software with fewer developer resources. By purchasing one of these platforms, a company can enable non-technical stakeholders to ship production-ready experiences, often with little to zero actual code being written. This frees up developer bandwidth, accelerates the company, and until recently was a no-brainer investment for building internal and even customer-facing software. To enable these platforms in the real world, developers spend considerable time on prerequisite and ongoing work: piping and transforming data, writing and maintaining custom components that go beyond out-of-the-box functionality, and meshing authentication systems, to name a few. This investment is in turn justified by the reduction in development scope and complexity downstream of the low-code platform—non-technical users can be left to their own devices to ship to their hearts’ content. With the emergence of AI coding, this ROI case gets inverted. It is now often faster, cheaper, and easier to ship the kind of tools you might have built with low-code tools outside these platforms. Yes, thi...