OutSystems frequently asked questions

OutSystems is an AI development platform that helps organizations build, deploy, and manage applications and AI agents on a single, unified platform. Built on a high-performance low-code foundation, OutSystems enables teams to rapidly create mission-critical applications, modernize legacy systems with AI, and govern the full development lifecycle with enterprise-grade security, scalability, and control.

See everything you can build with the AI technology in OutSystems by exploring the enterprise apps our customers are building.

An OutSystems developer is a skilled professional who uses the OutSystems platform to deliver enterprise applications.

Our AI development platform enables these developers to accelerate development, customize applications, and integrate the platform with other systems.

Learn the key reasons why professional developers are adopting low-code.

OutSystems was designed for a broad range of users—from professional developers to business users with little to no experience in traditional development—and is suitable for all business sizes across several industries.

OutSystems offers a visual development environment with built-in tools for integration, security, app performance, and data management. It empowers teams to focus on innovation without becoming stuck by the complexity of traditional development.

utSystems is used by more than 1,000 companies from various industries. These include banking and financial services, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, education, energy and utilities, and retail and wholesale.
You can take a look at what OutSystems customers are developing by reading their testimonials and stories.

No. OutSystems is not an open-source platform.

Founded in 2001, OutSystems is a privately held company.

OutSystems was founded in 2001 by Paulo Rosado, the company Founder and Chairman of the Board.

OutSystems is both software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

As SaaS, OutSystems provides ready-to-use development tools and environments through a subscription model, handling software updates, maintenance, and infrastructure management.

As PaaS, OutSystems provides development and deployment platform infrastructure, enables custom application development and hosting, manages underlying runtime environment, databases, and scalability.

OutSystems incorporates AI capabilities to enhance the development process by:

• Generating and editing a fully functional app from a prompt or uploaded requirements document
• Providing suggestions for next steps
• Automating repetitive tasks
• Automating code quality review and validation
• Making recommendations for code optimization
• Generating and summarizing content
• Enabling semantic search

The platform also integrates AI for predictive analysis, improving user experiences, and optimizing performance.

Agent Workbench empowers enterprises to design, build, govern, and scale agentic AI systems, giving you everything you need in one place.

AI agent integration with OutSystems connects agents to ERP, CRM, databases, and legacy platforms through secure APIs and prebuilt connectors. Strong system integration ensures agents can call services, retrieve data, and trigger workflows without replacing core systems. The goal is governed interoperability—extending existing architecture rather than disrupting it.

OutSystems Mentor uses generative AI (GenAI) and other AI capabilities to quickly build scalable, error-free, and secure apps with no coding required.

Yes. OutSystems supports third-party integrations of AI tools through APIs and connectors. Some examples of services you can connect to are:

• Amazon Bedrock
• ChatGPT
• Azure OpenAI

Yes. OutSystems Workflows is a tool built into the OutSystems platform to automate workflows. You can also build GenAI apps with an AI toolset.

OutSystems supports GenAI integration into applications. With OutSystems AI Agent Builder, you can infuse your apps with generative AI agents that humanize digital interactions, testing them out in a “playground” before you put them into production.

The AI Agent Builder is an autonomous computer program that performs tasks without human involvement. It combines LLMs and RAG with proprietary knowledge in AI agents that leverage LLMs to prompt and respond in natural language and optimize outputs using RAG.

The platform’s AI capabilities enhance application development by:

• Streamlining complex processes like debugging
• Providing real-time security checks
• Improving overall code quality and app architecture
• Minimizing technical debt
• Automating workflows beyond business process management

Common agentic AI use cases include document processing, repetitive decision workflows, and personalization at scale. Agentic AI ROI comes from automating complex processes while preserving human oversight. Organizations use OutSystems agents to validate procurement rules, streamline healthcare workflows, and improve customer engagement with measurable efficiency and cost savings.

OutSystems does not provide public LLMs for agent execution. You connect your preferred models—such as GPT, Claude, Gemini, or custom LLMs—through secure APIs. The platform enables model flexibility, so you can switch providers, use enterprise-approved models, and maintain control over data and execution policies.

To build AI agents, teams don’t need deep AI research expertise. OutSystems minimizes complexity through visual development, reusable components, and integrated DevOps. Developers, architects, and even skilled IT teams can design, deploy, and manage agents within enterprise guardrails, reducing reliance on scarce AI specialists.

Unlike standalone tools used to build AI agents, OutSystems' agentic AI capabilities combine visual development, enterprise integration, governance, and lifecycle management. Other platforms may generate code or isolated workflows, but lack unified control. OutSystems enables secure, scalable agent development deeply integrated into enterprise architecture.

AI use cases with OutSystems include document automation, chatbots, scheduling agents, workflow orchestration, decision support, personalization, and integration-driven process automation. High-value scenarios typically involve repetitive decisions, data extraction, and multi-step workflows where AI augments—not replaces—enterprise systems and human oversight.

OutSystems is an AI development platform with low-code foundations that help teams build applications and AI agents faster. Its visual development environment, reusable components, and built-in guardrails make it easier to accelerate enterprise development while maintaining the governance, flexibility, and control required for production.

OutSystems uses its own visual development language, but it generates HTML, JavaScript, and CSS for the user interface and SQL for database scripts. Developers can use Visual Studio to develop custom C# code and .NET frameworks.

OutSystems is a full-stack platform, meaning it covers both front-end and back-end development.

OutSystems accelerates app development through the platform’s AI capabilities, which provides visual tools, pre-built components, reusable templates, integration capabilities, visual consoles for application management, and 1-click publish.

These features streamline the application development process and allow teams to deliver apps faster than with traditional development methods.

OutSystems’ AI features allow you to build a wide variety of applications, including:

• Web and mobile applications
• Intranets and extranets
• Core systems
• Customer and internal enterprise apps
• Complaint management systems
• Digital banking apps
• Digital lending solutions
• Citizen portals
• Self-service portals

See the enterprise applications our customers are building

OutSystems provides automated version control, 1-click publishing, zero-downtime updates, and impact analysis to handle application modification, new releases, and upgrades.

Automated version control tracks all changes automatically, maintains version history, and enables rollbacks if needed. 1-click publishing validates changes before deployment, handles database updates automatically, and deploys across environments (dev, test, prod). Zero-downtime means it updates applications without service interruption, maintains user sessions during updates, and automatically manages database schema changes. Impact analysis analyzes dependencies before updates, identifies potential conflicts, and shows affected components.

Yes. The OutSystems AI development platform supports both web apps and mobile app development—from native apps to hybrid applications.

Yes, OutSystems offers robust third-party integration capabilities as part of its AI development platform. You can understand all the options provided by taking a look at all integration capabilities overview in the Evaluation Guide.

OutSystems facilitates development collaboration through a multi-user environment. With version and source control capabilities, OutSystems stores all app versions and modules in a central repository, simplifying team collaboration.

With built-in version control that tracks app changes automatically, OutSystems allows teams to create multiple versions of the same application, roll back to previous versions, and manage different development streams.

Yes. Organizations can build internally, engage partners, or work with professional services depending on internal capacity. Implementation support with OutSystems ranges from architecture guidance to hands-on development and governance design. This flexibility ensures teams can move forward regardless of in-house AI maturity or resource availability.

OutSystems includes many built-in security features like automatic security patching, app shielding, a web application firewall and CDN, intrusion detection, runtime integrity monitoring, Private Gateway for secure connections, least-privilege access controls, and multi-AZ failover. Compliance and formal certifications depend on the deployment and plan; consult the documentation or contact sales for specific certification and audit details for your environment.

Yes. OutSystems allows you to deploy applications across environments such as development, testing, and production. Deployments can also be managed on the platform to ensure that transitions between environments go smoothly.

OutSystems does not natively run Python. You can integrate Python-based services by exposing them via APIs or external services and calling them from OutSystems applications.

OutSystems supports databases such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.

In OutSystems 11, user licensing is managed through the OutSystems licensing dashboard. There you can assign licenses based on the number of users, environments, and application components.

You can download OutSystems Service Studio from the OutSystems downloads page.

OutSystems offers a free plan—the OutSystems Personal Edition—which allows you to try the platform and learn AI at no cost.

The Personal Edition lets you try the platform and learn AI at no cost and supports up to 100 users. It’s intended for evaluation and learning, so some enterprise features, scaling and support levels available in paid tiers may be limited. For the full list of capabilities and exact limits, check the dedicated free edition page.

The pricing plans available vary based on your organization’s needs and the complexity of the applications you want to build. The number of users, any extra features, the type of support, hosting options, and uptime guarantees are some of the variables that impact pricing.

Yes. The plans can be upgraded at any time—even if you start with the free edition and want to access more features or add more users, OutSystems provides options to upgrade the plans to higher tiers.

The plans for the OutSystems AI development platform vary in the features available, compliance options, number of users, and type of applications you can build. The best way to understand which features fit each plan is to compare the options available and choose the plan that suits your organization the best.

Yes. The number of users is charged according to the plan:

• The free edition supports up to 100 users.
• OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC) starts with 100 internal users.
• Advanced add-ons allow you to add internal and external users as needed.

Migration costs depend on application complexity, integration depth, and detachment timelines. OutSystems generates standard, open code based on widely used frameworks, which supports extensibility and long-term flexibility. While migrating any enterprise system can require planning and effort, customers retain architectural control rather than being locked into proprietary code.

OutSystems does not require a lengthy or costly assessment to begin. Many teams start with a defined use case and move quickly into delivery. The platform is designed for speed to action, enabling rapid prototyping and iteration without prolonged upfront studies that delay execution or inflate early-stage costs.

Customers pay AI providers directly for LLM token consumption when using external models. OutSystems enables secure connectivity, but model usage charges remain between the organization and its chosen provider. This separation ensures transparency in cost tracking and vendor flexibility.

Trial environments and evaluation options with OutSystems allow AI agent testing before full production deployment. These options typically include limited executions or sandbox environments so teams can validate workflows, integrations, and governance models before committing to expanded capacity.

OutSystems provides an extensive training catalog with online courses, hands-on tutorials, documentation, community forums, and free Jump Start workshops. There is an OutSystems A certification program for validating skills with coursework and real-world projects and partner-delivered training options are also available.

Training with OutSystems includes structured learning paths, certification programs, documentation, and hands-on labs. Developers and architects can build skills in AI integration, governance, and lifecycle management through guided resources designed to support enterprise-grade AI delivery.

OutSystems technology simplifies app development and is therefore relatively easy to learn compared to coding and writing scripts.

The OutSystems platform learning curve will vary according to your background and the complexity of the apps being built.

Although OutSystems is an AI development platform, you’ll still need to master the basics if you don’t have experience coding. More experienced developers can become comfortable with the platform in a short period of time.

OutSystems has several resources available for you to start your low-code journey:

• Training and certification: With several online courses available, the OutSystems training catalog has the right materials for you to build mission-critical applications. The OutSystems Certification Program allows individuals to become certified in both knowledge and real-world projects.
• Documentation: OutSystems documentation is the right place if you’re looking for useful information to help you get started with the platform.
• Jump Start workshops: Free training sessions hosted by OutSystems experts worldwide.

You can also take a look at the resources available—from ebooks to technical white papers—or deep dive into the OutSystems Evaluation Guide.

Yes. OutSystems offers workshops and proof-of-concepts to provide hands-on evaluation where teams build sample solutions together. These engagements validate feasibility, integration depth, governance design, and business value before scaling into full production initiatives.

OutSystems is an AI development platform that runs on the cloud, offering cloud-native development capabilities such as microservices and container creation and management. It makes it easy and fast to build, update, and scale applications as companies modernize and grow.

OutSystems allows you to choose cloud deployment, on-premises deployment, or hybrid deployment depending on regulatory and infrastructure requirements. App deployment supports isolated environments for development, testing, and production. Highly regulated industries may require air-gapped or self-hosted models, while others prefer managed cloud environments for speed and scalability.

The platform supports vertical and horizontal scalability.

OutSystems Cloud—and the platform itself—is designed to ensure scalability by automatically scaling apps to accommodate increased workloads and fully adjust to customer requirements.

OutSystems Cloud offers several benefits, including:

• Fully managed infrastructure
• Automatic scalability
• Enhanced security
• Seamless updates
• Global reach for deployments

The platform provides built-in tools for managing and storing data in the cloud environment. It secures data with encryption and supports various data management capabilities like caching, synchronization, and modeling.

The OutSystems platform includes several performance monitoring features. These include real-time visibility, built-in KPIs, automated dashboards for monitoring application health and performance issues, third-party APM integration, and log data exports.

For more details, you can check the OutSystems App Performance Monitoring page.

Yes! OutSystems Cloud is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), offering high availability and robust security for applications.

The partner program is open to organizations looking to collaborate with OutSystems in delivering AI solutions.

To become an OutSystems partner, you can apply by filling out the form available. To understand the different partnership models available and decide what fits your business needs and goals the best, you can visit the Become a Partner page.

Yes. OutSystems partners have exclusive access to the OutSystems platform along with tools and resources to help achieve business success.

These include:

• Receiving unique licensing and pricing terms
• Driving subscription revenue
• Increasing customer satisfaction through more agile and rapid application development
• Increasing the productivity and value of your development resources
• Bidding for large projects with the confidence you can meet and exceed customer expectations

From technology providers to independent software vendors and consulting firms, the OutSystems partners list includes several worldwide organizations with specialized expertise to provide industry-specific solutions, such as Xebia, Truewind (Axians), Capgemini, Fujitsu, or KPMG Advisory.

Visit our partner network

The type of certifications that OutSystems partners need depends on the type of partner. For example, OutSystems Training Partners must be certified OutSystems trainers. There are also certifications for sales and presales, along all kinds of development certifications.

Yes. With specialized training options, partners can access partner-exclusive courses, workshops, and bootcamps, while also having access to resources that support certification preparation.

The OutSystems Training Partners Program is authorized to deliver training to OutSystems partners (and customers) to accelerate the adoption of the platform. Training services are delivered worldwide.

If you’re interested in becoming a Training Partner, you can submit this form and one of our team members will reach out to you.