Airtable vs SeaTable

Airtable is a cloud platform, founded in San Francisco in 2012 by Howie Liu and two co-founders, that blends the familiar interface of a spreadsheet with the structure of a relational database. Tables link to each other, fields have types such as attachments, single selects, lookups, rollups and formulas, and the same records can be viewed as a grid, kanban, calendar, gallery, form, Gantt chart or timeline.

On top of the data, Interface Designer builds dashboards and lightweight apps for people who should not edit raw tables, automations run actions on triggers and schedules, and syncs bring in data from other bases or tools. AI fields categorize records, summarize text and generate content inside the base. The free plan allows unlimited bases with 1,000 records each and five editors; Team raises limits to 50,000 records per base and adds Gantt and timeline views; Business adds 125,000 records, premium syncs, an admin panel and SAML SSO; and Enterprise Scale is custom-priced with HyperDB and enterprise APIs.

Airtable powers content calendars, product catalogs, lightweight CRMs, inventories, applicant trackers and production schedules at thousands of companies, and it shines when non-developers need a structured database they can build themselves. In recent years it moved upmarket and raised prices, which pushed small teams toward open-source or cheaper options such as Baserow, NocoDB and Grist, or to Notion databases for document-heavy work. Per-seat pricing, record limits per base and automation run limits are the main constraints to check before adopting.

SeaTable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid made by SeaTable GmbH in Mainz, Germany. It was founded in July 2020 by brothers Ralf and Christoph Dyllick-Brenzinger, longtime sales partners of the file sync product Seafile, together with Seafile's developers. Its core job is the same as Airtable's: give teams a familiar grid for structured data, then add relations, views, forms and automations on top.

Bases support linked tables, formulas, Kanban, calendar, gallery and timeline views, web forms, an App Builder for no-code internal apps, automation rules, and both Python and JavaScript scripts. AI credits power AI-assisted automations, processed on SeaTable's own AI server in Germany. The free cloud plan allows up to 25 users and 10,000 rows, Plus and Enterprise are priced per user in euros, and SeaTable Server can be self-hosted with a free 3-user license and paid licenses beyond that.

SeaTable fits European companies, public bodies and schools that want Airtable-style flexibility with EU hosting or full on-premise control. Its interface and template library are less polished than Airtable's, and the row limits on Plus are tight for larger datasets. Airtable has the bigger ecosystem, NocoDB and Baserow are open-source options that sit on top of your own database, and Grist is stronger for formula-heavy work.

The product moves quickly: SeaTable 6.0 in November 2025 added AI automations and a redesigned rule editor, and version 6.2 in July 2026 brought an HTML page type and more App Builder features. Prices are in euros excluding VAT; annual billing saves about 20 percent.