Airtable is one of the most popular project management and cloud collaboration platforms, but its high pricing is forcing users to look for cheaper alternatives. So in this article, we have curated a list of the 10 best Airtable alternatives that are cheaper, offer cloud storage at no extra cost, have an intuitive interface, and support relational databases. While compiling this list, we have focused on platforms that offer speed, flexibility, automation and plugin support, and a lot more. So without any delay, let’s go ahead and explore the list of best Airtable alternatives, including some self-hosted and open-source software.
Best Airtable Alternatives (2022)
We have included the 10 best Airtable alternatives, including cloud solutions, self-hosted platforms, and open-source frameworks, in this article. Expand the table below and check out each platform at your convenience.
What is Airtable?
Airtable is a project management platform where database features are applied to spreadsheets to build a granular cloud collaboration service. With Airtable, you can track the progress of tasks assigned to your team members, control the workflow, check the workload on the team, and integrate various third-party plugins to automate redundant tasks.
There are multiple kinds of views that let you understand the roadmap of various projects of your company. Basically, with Airtable, you can streamline and bring multiple individuals to a single workspace and keep track of the progress. Some of the notable features of Airtable are low-code database management, third-party plugin support, multiple views, cross-tables (relational database), intuitive UI, quick data pulling, task prioritization, and more.
Why You Should Look For Airtable Alternatives?
While Airtable is a great solution for handling large teams, its pricing has put off many users, especially smaller organizations and budding startups. Currently, Airtable charges $10 per month per user – that too when you sign up for the annual plan. Even if you have a team of 20 people, the price skyrockets to $200 per month, which is untenable for small businesses. Other than that, you are charged extra if you reach the 5GB storage limit.
Not to mention, some of the important features such as the Gantt chart and Timeline views are locked behind a paywall. They are not even available to Plus customers. You need to upgrade to the $20 per month plan to get advanced features that are generally available on other platforms.
Keeping all these points in mind, you should look for Airtable alternatives that are cheaper, offer more features even on the base plan, and offer no restrictions on third-party integration.
Top Airtable Alternatives (with Pros and Cons)
1. ProofHub
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration tool that is the best alternative to Airtable. With ProofHub, you can create a Gantt Chart or Project Map that shows the status of all your ongoing projects in one place. Chat with your team members, share feedback with them using our built-in proofing tool, and track time spent on various tasks so that you can bill clients accurately. With ProofHub you can use custom fields to add extra information to your tasks.
One of the best things about ProofHub is its simplicity. It’s easy to use and set up, so you can get started right away without having to go through a complicated onboarding process. You can also customize the software according to your needs with ProofHub’s flexible options for fields and templates. And when it comes down to it, ProofHub’s pricing is very competitive compared to other project management tools on the market today—you’ll never have to worry about paying for features you don’t need or want!
| Pros | Cons |
| All-in-one project management and team collaboration tool | Can’t sign in using third-party service. |
| Flat rate pricing | |
| Easy-to-use |
Pricing: The Ultimate control plan will cost you about $89 per month/flat, when billed annually.
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2. Notion
If you are looking for a cloud collaboration platform similar to Airtable, Notion would be my first recommendation. It’s much more than just a tool for maintaining spreadsheets, offering a single workspace for large or small teams. You can add your team members, share documents, assign tasks, create wikis, start campaigns, and best of all, connect various third-party tools. There are multiple templates to choose from, and you can view projects by the owner, status, calendar, and much more.
It also supports drag and drop support like Airtable, where you can seamlessly manage tasks and move projects to progress or complete. In terms of UI, it matches Airtable and brings a lot of cohesive features. What I like the most about Notion is that it lets you modify pre-made templates to suit your needs and there’s no need to dwell on coding. And if you want to automate tasks, it offers APIs that can connect with social media channels, Slack, platforms like Hootsuite, and more. Overall, at half the price, Notion brings a lot more than Airtable, and you can definitely give it a try.
| Pros | Cons |
| Single workspace | A little overwhelming to new users |
| Supports automation | |
| Multiple views, including Kanban | |
| Drag and drop support |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Pro plan starts at $4 per month
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3. Asana
Asana is the second best alternative to Airtable, especially if you want a platform that scales for larger teams without losing the context of the roadmap, projects, campaigns, etc. It has many more features that can help you keep track of the tasks and progress of team members. In comparison to Airtable, Asana brings views in the form of a List, Board, Timeline, Calendar, Progress, Workload, and more. In contrast, Airtable offers Grid, Kanban, Calendar, Gallery, etc.
There is also support for advanced search, progress reporting, portfolio management built into Asana, where Airtable falls short. And the best part is that Asana does not charge extra for data storage. You get unlimited storage and can view the activity history of the past many days. Moreover, there is also support for integration with third-party tools such as Slack, Google, Microsoft Office, and more. To sum up, Asana is simple to use and can help you plan and structure your workflow, yielding more productivity.
| Pros | Cons |
| Multiple views | UX could be improved |
| No extra charger for data storage | |
| Third-party integration available |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Premium plan starts at $10.99 per month
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4. Zenkit
Zenkit is another project management suite like Airtable but built with a powerful framework that can give insight into your workflow. It’s much more than spreadsheets and databases. Zenkit lets you customize your tasks with different templates, tasks reminders, and multiple data views. In comparison to Airtable, Zenkit lets you view projects and data in Calendar View, Kanban View, List View, Mindmap View, Wiki View, etc. There is also support for the Gantt chart, which is missing on Airtable.
In terms of task management, Zenkit lets you perform actions in bulk, a huge bonus point for larger teams. Then there is the global search feature, workload monitoring, etc. Moreover, you also get a To-Do app, Hypernotes, and a chat app with Zenkit. To conclude, Zenkit is an amazing Airtable alternative that can serve all your project management needs. Do try its mindmap view for better conceptualization.
| Pros | Cons |
| All-in-one platform for project management | File management can be better |
| Database, collaboration, Hypernotes | |
| Perform actions in bulk |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Plus plan starts at €9 per month
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5. ClickUp
ClickUp is another suitable alternative to Airtable with no-code project management. It offers a single workspace from where you can build projects, track progress and collaborate with your team members. It has resource management, real-time reporting, goals reminder, and much more to offer a productivity-driven suite, just like Airtable. You can manage Spreadsheets in multiple views with support for drag and drop, timeline management, workload view, etc.
ClickUp includes a Goals feature to keep track of a project or a roadmap. Then, you also have support for a relational database, where you can pull data from one database and merge it to another database and sync both of them seamlessly. You can also create a conditional automation workflow with more than 100 third-party tools. Other innovative features include customizable board view, Docs and notepad, custom roles, API support, Team chat, workload view, etc. Overall, ClickUp is a worthy alternative to Airtable that I recommend trying out right away.
| Pros | Cons |
| Real-time reporting, goals reminder | Some integrations are slow to respond |
| API support, relational database | |
| Customizable data view |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Pro plan starts at $5 per month per member
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6. Coda
Coda is a popular platform to bring all your work to one place with a simple document. The selling point of Coda is that it offers no-code implementation to its projects, docs, and spreadsheets. You can use its doc with tables feature and convert them into a database with a single click. The Lookup feature, on the other hand, lets you connect tables and view data visually from various data sources. And finally, it offers hundreds of templates for you to choose from – be it for a campaign, roadmap, or for tracking the progress of a project.
In terms of pricing too, Coda is much cheaper than Airtable. For example, if you have a team of 10 users, you will have to pay around $150 on Airtable, whereas Coda can get things done within $100. I would say that Coda is a great and cheaper alternative to Airtable as you get support for third-party tools, cross-tables, forms, and revision history.
| Pros | Cons |
| Affordable | UI can be improved |
| Database support | |
| Cross-table support |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Pro plan starts at $10 per month per Doc Maker
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7. Trello
If you run a small team, I would suggest using Trello instead of Airtable. It’s a great collaboration platform that lets you easily track all your projects, and get things done without much fuss. The best part about Trello is that its user interface is simple and the onboarding process is seamless. Sure, Trello is not as feature-packed as Airtable, but it does get the basics right with task scheduling, shared team calendar, tasks prioritization, and more.
While Trello and Airtable both offer Kanban-style views, you get the best experience with Trello. The task card interface management is superb and supports checklists, labeling, threads, etc. To conclude, Trello is an easy-to-use project management platform and can be a viable alternative for small businesses.
| Pros | Cons |
| Suitable for smaller teams | Not too feature-packed |
| Great Kanban view | |
| Easy to use |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Pro plan starts at $5 per month per user
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8. SeaTable
If you are looking for a self-hosted alternative to Airtable, then SeaTable is the perfect solution to your needs. While it supports cloud solutions too, SeaTable’s on-premise, self-hosted solution is quite popular because of the robust framework it offers. You can choose where to store your data, who can access it, be it on a Linux server or a Windows server. In fact, under the free version, SeaTable offers 2000 rows and 1GB of data storage without any cost.
As for automation, SeaTable lets you create scripts for individual workflows. You can connect 100+ plugins from its repository and get things done in a jiffy. Not to mention, it also supports recurring processes. As I mentioned above, SeaTable is powerful in its deployment. You can create more than 50,000 rows with SeaTable in comparison to Airtable, which is amazing. All in all, SeaTable is a great pick for users looking for a self-hosted alternative to Airtable.
| Pros | Cons |
| Self-hosted solution and affordable | Some APIs lack important features |
| Pretty fast | |
| Supports more rows than Airtable |
Pricing: Free for Individuals; Plus plan starts at €7 per month per user
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9. Baserow
If you are looking for the best open-source alternative to Airtable, Baserow is my top recommendation. It’s relatively cheaper than Baserow, and you can use install it on your own server without any extra cost. It also means you will not be locked into a vendor and can move from one server to another. You can create custom plugins, templates, extend rows to as much as you want, and use its own hosted SaaS version as well.
In terms of UI, Baserow looks similar to Airtable, so if you are planning to migrate, you will have no problems dealing with Baserow’s database management system. The great part about Baserow is that you get unparalleled speed and flexibility in comparison to Airtable since you are hosting it on your own server. To sum up, for users looking for an open-source alternative to Airtable, Baserow is a top-notch choice.
| Pros | Cons |
| Open-source and self-hosted | Requires self-installation |
| Great speed and flexibility | |
| Quite cheap |
Pricing: Free for Self-hosted users, Paid plan starts at $5 per month per user
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10. NocoDB
If you are looking for another open-source alternative to Airtable, NocoDB is a great choice. It allows you to self-host your database server and lets you connect your existing databases such as MySQL, PostgresSQL, etc. It also allows you to convert the databases into smart spreadsheets without using any code. It’s popular among the open-source community for its powerful framework, APIs, and third-party integration support. You can invite team members, assign tasks, track progress, set reminders, and do more.
| Pros | Cons |
| Free and Open-source | Requires self-installation |
| Turn your SQL database into a smart spreadsheet | |
| Assign and track tasks, third-party integration available |
Pricing: Free
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11. Microsoft Lists
In case you are looking for an Airtable alternative from the house of Microsoft, well, the company recently announced Microsoft Lists. It offers similar features under the Microsoft 365 program. You can create spreadsheet-like lists and organize events, tracks issues, manage inventory and do a lot more from a single workspace. There are hundreds of ready-made templates to choose from, and you can make your favorite lists and share the tasks with your team members.
And if you are already a Microsoft Office user, it gets even better. Microsoft Teams is directly integrated with Lists, so real-time conversations are a click away. Apart from that, you can view your lists in Grid view, Gallery view, Calendar view, or you can create your own custom view. There is also support for automation using Microsoft’s Power Automate app. All in all, Microsoft Lists stands as a great alternative to Airtable if you are an existing Microsoft user.
| Pros | Cons |
| A great solution for Microsoft users | Not for all users |
| Supports Lists, multiple views, automation | |
| Additional Microsoft goodies, including Office apps |
Pricing: Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan starts at $5 per month per user
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Pick the Best Alternative to Airtable from Our List
So these are the 10 best alternatives to Airtable that you can pick. As far as project management services go, almost all of them offer great reliability, fast connectivity among tables, multiple views, and additional features like wikis, notes, charts, etc. We have also included self-hosted and open-source alternatives to Airtable if you are interested in those solutions. Anyway, that is all from us. In case you are looking for the best Zapier alternatives, head over to our linked article. And if you have any questions, let us know in the comments section below.
