The best Airtable alternatives, compared honestly
Airtable invented this category and still has the best interface in it: views, linked records and the automation builder are why teams adopt it in the first place. What forces the upgrade is usually not headcount, it is the record ceiling, and the unit it is measured in. Airtable caps records per base: 1,000 on Free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business. Its rivals cap per workspace or per document instead, so the same number means a completely different amount of headroom. This page compares four alternatives on that unit.
The best Airtable alternative depends on which ceiling you are hitting:
- Best all-round replacement → Baserow: MIT core, free self-hosting, $10 per user per month billed yearly.
- No limits at all when self-hosted → NocoDB: unlimited seats and records, but a source-available licence.
- Formulas and Python → Grist: Apache-2.0 core, 100,000 records per document on Pro.
- Closest UI feel, OSI licence → Teable: AGPL-3.0 community edition, free to self-host.
Why teams look elsewhere
What pushes teams off Airtable
Airtable did not get worse at being Airtable. What recurs in migration write-ups is that two separate meters, records and seats, both tighten as a project succeeds, and the record one is measured in a unit that makes it arrive sooner than people expect.
The cap is per base, not per account
1,000 records per base on Free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business. Because the unit is the base, a single growing table hits the ceiling while your account is nowhere near it, and the fix is a plan upgrade rather than housekeeping.
Attachment storage uses the same unit
1 GB per base on Free, 20 GB on Team, 100 GB on Business. Teams that use Airtable as a light asset library find storage, not rows, is what moves them up a tier.
Edit permission is what makes a seat billable
Airtable charges for every user with edit permissions on at least one base in the workspace, at $20 per user per month on Team and $45 on Business, billed annually. Read-only collaborators and form submitters are free, so the bill tracks how casually access is granted.
History is short on the free plan
Free keeps 2 weeks of revision and snapshot history against 1 year on Team and Business. For anything used as a system of record, a fortnight of history is the constraint that makes Free unusable rather than merely limited.
The shortlist
4 Airtable alternatives worth evaluating
Everything here can be self-hosted, which is the real dividing line from Airtable: a self-hosted instance moves the record ceiling from a commercial decision to a hardware one. The ranking optimises for a genuine escape route, so the licence and what the free self-hosted edition actually includes carry as much weight as the cloud price. Each pick lists one honest strength and one real weakness.
The best balance of licence, price and polish. The core is MIT licensed and self-hosting is free; the cloud runs 3,000 rows per workspace and 2 GB storage free, Premium at $10 per user per month billed yearly ($12 monthly) for 50,000 rows and 20 GB, and Advanced at $18 ($22 monthly) for 250,000 rows and 100 GB. Automation credits are stated per tier too, from 2,000 to 500,000. Weakness: rows are counted per workspace rather than per base, so if you keep many separate bases the headline number is less generous than Airtable's at the same figure, and role-based permissions and audit logs only appear on Advanced.
The closest thing to Airtable's interface with a real open-source licence: the community edition is AGPL-3.0, with the contents of its packages directory under MIT, and it is free to self-host with tables, collaboration, API and automation included. Roughly 21.7k GitHub stars. Activating the paid tier is a licence key rather than a different image, so there is no migration to upgrade. Weakness: AI features and the App Builder require that paid key, and it is the youngest project here, so expect fewer battle-tested integrations than Baserow or Grist.
The pick when your data work is genuinely spreadsheet-shaped: Grist puts Python formulas over relational tables, and grist-core is Apache-2.0 with roughly 11.5k stars and no activation key needed to self-host. Cloud is $10 per user per month ($8 yearly) for 100,000 records per document, $30 ($24 yearly, 5-user minimum) for 150,000. The full edition is free for orgs under $1 million in total annual funding. Weakness: Free is only 5,000 records per document, Business enforces a five-user minimum, and the document-centric model is a different mental shape from Airtable's bases and views.
Ranked fourth on licence, not on capability. Self-hosted NocoDB is the most generous option on this page by a wide margin: unlimited seats, unlimited records and unlimited storage, with roughly 63,000 GitHub stars. Its cloud is per-editor with workspace-wide record caps of 1,000 free, 50,000, 300,000 and 1,000,000 by tier, and Free covers 3 editors. Weakness, and it is the important one: NocoDB is released under the Sustainable Use License, which is source-available rather than OSI-approved open source, so if your reason for leaving Airtable is licensing freedom, read that licence before you commit.
Deliberately left off: Notion databases and Smartsheet are adjacent products rather than Airtable replacements, since neither offers self-hosting and neither treats the base as a queryable API-first datastore. SeaTable is a reasonable candidate we could not verify at the source while compiling this, and we do not publish limits we have not read on the vendor's own page.
Side by side
Airtable alternatives compared
Prices as of August 2026, from each vendor's own pricing page. The column that decides most migrations is Record cap unit: per base, per workspace or per document. A 50,000 cap per workspace and a 50,000 cap per base are not the same product decision, and no listicle table distinguishes them. Airtable's own row is the baseline.
| Tool | Record cap unit | Free ceiling | Cheapest paid tier | Self-host / licence | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airtable | Per base | 1,000 records, 1 GB per base, 2 weeks history | Team $20/user/mo billed annually, 50,000 per base | ✗ proprietary SaaS | Best interface, many small bases |
| Baserow | Per workspace | 3,000 rows, 2 GB, 2,000 automation credits | Premium $10/user/mo yearly, 50,000 rows | ✓ MIT core, free self-host | A licence-clean all-round swap |
| Teable | Unlimited when self-hosted | Full community edition, self-hosted | Licence key for AI and App Builder | ✓ AGPL-3.0 (packages MIT) | Closest Airtable feel with an OSI licence |
| Grist | Per document | 5,000 records/doc, 10 team members, 2 guests | Pro $10/user/mo ($8 yearly), 100,000/doc | ✓ grist-core Apache-2.0 | Python formulas, spreadsheet-shaped work |
| NocoDB | Per workspace (cloud), none self-hosted | 1,000 records, 3 editors on cloud | Per-editor seat, 50,000 records on Plus | ✓ Sustainable Use License (source-available) | The most generous free self-hosted ceiling |
Numbers that do not fit in cells: Airtable Business is $45 per user per month billed annually with 125,000 records and 100 GB per base, and only users with edit permissions on at least one base are billable. Baserow Advanced is $18 per user per month yearly for 250,000 rows and Enterprise reaches 1,000,000. Grist Business is $30 per user per month ($24 yearly) with a five-user minimum, and the full edition is free for organisations under $1 million in total annual funding. NocoDB cloud record caps run 1,000, 50,000, 300,000 and 1,000,000 by tier. Pricing and limits change often; check each vendor for current terms. Compiled August 2026.
Official pages: Airtable · Airtable plan limits · Baserow · Teable · Grist · NocoDB
A fair call
When Airtable is still the right choice
Migrating means rebuilding views, automations and every integration pointed at the Airtable API, and the interface you land on will be a step down in polish. There is also a shape of team for whom the per-base cap is an advantage.
Airtable is still right if…
- You run many small bases. A per-base cap multiplies with the number of bases, so ten bases on Free is 10,000 records against Baserow's 3,000 rows per workspace.
- Most of your collaborators only read. Viewers, form submitters and shared links are free, so a large audience over a small editing team is genuinely cheap.
- Non-technical teams own the tool. The interface, view types and automation builder remain the best in this category, and that is worth real money.
- You have no appetite for running infrastructure, which is what every alternative here ultimately asks of you.
Look elsewhere if…
- One base is outgrowing its record cap: Baserow self-hosted or NocoDB self-hosted removes the ceiling entirely.
- Your work is formula-heavy: Grist gives you Python over relational tables.
- You need everyone to have edit rights: per-seat pricing at $20 or $45 per user makes broad write access expensive.
- Data residency or licence terms are a requirement rather than a preference.
Common questions
Common questions about Airtable alternatives
What is the best Airtable alternative in 2026?
Baserow is the strongest all-round replacement: the core is MIT licensed, self-hosting is free, and the cloud plans are $10 per user per month billed yearly for 50,000 rows per workspace. If you want the widest genuinely free self-hosted ceiling, NocoDB removes both seat and record limits when you run it yourself, though its licence is the Sustainable Use License rather than an open-source one. Grist is the pick for spreadsheet-style formulas and Python, with grist-core under Apache-2.0. The right answer depends on whether your constraint is people, records or licence.
What is Airtable's record limit?
Airtable caps records per base, not per account: 1,000 records per base on Free, 50,000 on Team and 125,000 on Business. Attachment storage follows the same unit, at 1 GB, 20 GB and 100 GB per base. This matters because the cap is per container, so ten small bases on the Free plan give you 10,000 records in total, while one growing base hits the wall at 1,000. Revision and snapshot history is 2 weeks on Free and 1 year on Team and Business.
Do Airtable alternatives count records the same way?
No, and this is the single most misleading part of any pricing comparison in this category. Airtable counts records per base. Baserow counts rows per workspace, so its 50,000 row Premium tier covers your whole workspace rather than each table. NocoDB's cloud record limits are workspace-wide too. Grist counts records per document, at 5,000 on Free, 100,000 on Pro and 150,000 on Business. Comparing a per-base cap against a per-workspace cap at the same number understates the per-workspace tool by however many containers you use.
Who exactly do I pay for in Airtable?
Airtable charges per seat, and its pricing page states you are charged for all users who have edit permissions for at least one base in the workspace. Read-only collaborators, form submissions and shared links do not incur a charge, so a viewer-heavy team is genuinely cheaper than the seat count suggests. Team is $20 per user per month and Business $45 per user per month, both billed annually. The practical trap is granting edit rights casually: permission level, not activity, is what turns a person into a billable seat.
Is there a truly open-source Airtable alternative?
Yes, but check the licence rather than the word open source. Baserow's core is MIT licensed and grist-core is Apache-2.0, both OSI-approved. Teable's community edition is AGPL-3.0 with packages under a MIT-licensed subdirectory, and self-hosting is free, though AI features and the App Builder need a paid licence key. NocoDB is the notable exception: it is released under the Sustainable Use License, which is source-available rather than open source, even though its self-hosted edition is the most generous here with unlimited seats and records.