Airtable vs Teable

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.

Teable is an open-source no-code database that combines an Airtable-like spreadsheet interface with a real PostgreSQL database underneath. Launched in 2023, it targets teams that love Airtable's ease of use but run into its row limits, performance ceilings or lack of direct database access.

Tables support familiar field types, formulas, lookups, rollups, links between tables and views such as grid, kanban, gallery, form and calendar. Because data is stored in Postgres, Teable can handle millions of rows while staying responsive, and developers can query the same data directly with SQL or connect BI tools to it. Real-time collaboration, comments, permissions and record history support team work, while built-in AI features help generate fields, formulas and content. Automations and an API connect Teable to other tools. The hosted cloud has a free tier and per-seat paid plans with higher limits, and the community edition can be self-hosted for free with Docker.

Teable fits teams outgrowing Airtable, organizations that need to self-host for data control, and setups where developers and operations staff share the same data. It is a young product with fewer integrations, templates and extensions than Airtable and a smaller community, and some features are still evolving. NocoDB and Baserow are the other main open-source Airtable alternatives, Grist suits spreadsheet-heavy work, and Airtable remains the most mature ecosystem.