Hi Everyone, I’m Meenu Hinduja and my husband Dheeraj Sudan, run a business. I’m trying to pull in external data that isn’t one of Softr’s built-in sources, and I’m not sure what the best approach is.
Has anyone here successfully connected a custom API or another external database?
Regards
Dheeraj Sudan and Meenu Hinduja
Hi Meenu
The most common approach would be doing that with Rest API. Please check our documentation to learn more about this:
If you need to pull in external data that isn’t one of the built-in sources, the usual approach is to connect to it through an API. Most platforms let you make HTTP requests to a REST or GraphQL endpoint, then map the returned JSON data into your app’s data structure. You’ll typically need the API URL, any required headers (like an API key or authorization token), and then set up a workflow or data source that fetches the data and stores it in variables or a collection. If direct API calls aren’t supported, you can use a middleware service to fetch and format the data, then expose it in a way your app can consume.
@mhindujadheerajsudan Yes this is possible, but not directly inside Softr.
Softr only connects natively to a few data sources like Airtable, Google Sheets, HubSpot, and SmartSuite. To use a custom API or external database, the usual approach is to place a middleware layer in between. Most people use Airtable, Xano, or Supabase as the bridge, then sync data from the external API into that source using Make, Zapier, or scheduled scripts. Softr then reads from the synced database.
If you need real-time or more complex logic, Xano or Supabase tends to work better than Airtable because they’re built for APIs and structured backends.