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Is Airtable free? What it actually costs in 2026

The short answer

Airtable Free caps each base at 1,000 records and 1 GB of attachments, with five editors per workspace.

The Free plan is available to teams at no charge. It is a genuine plan, but sized for small datasets — the record cap per base is what most people hit first.

What the free tier actually includes

  • 1,000 records per base
  • 1 GB of attachment storage per base
  • 5 editors or creators per workspace, 50 commenters, unlimited read-only
  • 2 weeks of revision and snapshot history
  • 1,000 API calls per workspace per month

Where the wall is

Record 1,001. A base that grows past 1,000 rows — a CRM, an inventory, a content calendar — has to move to a paid plan, and so does a team that needs a sixth editor.

After that: Team at $20 per collaborator per month billed annually, or $24 billed monthly. Business is $45 per user per month billed annually.

Can you self-host Airtable? No — cloud only

Every Airtable plan is a cloud subscription; none is self-hosted. The self-hostable alternatives compared on this page are the route to running it on your own server.

What it actually takes to run one yourself

Real RAM against the documented minimum, monthly cost, setup time, and the one thing that catches people out.

Self-hosting Baserow

needs 4 GB. Baserow staff advise starting at 4 GB, and say a basic setup grows to about 3 GB (docs say 2 GB for the all-in-one baserow/baserow image, as stated in Baserow's own forum FAQ)$12–24/mo for a 5-user instance on a 4 GB VPS. The all-in-one image already includes PostgreSQL, Redis and the Caddy proxy, so nothing else is required

Self-hosting Grist

needs 8 GB. That is Grist's 'known good configuration for a variety of moderate workloads'. Memory follows how many documents are open at once, because each open document is loaded fully into RAM (docs say Not stated by the vendor. Its docs show one template document served from a container with 100 MB RAM (200 MB with sandboxing) and 1 CPU)$24–48/mo on an 8 GB VPS. Nothing else is required: documents are SQLite files and the home database defaults to SQLite. Add Redis if you want webhooks and notifications, and S3-compatible storage for automatic snapshots

Self-hosting Teable

needs 4 GB. That is the vendor's stated minimum for the app, PostgreSQL and Redis together, and Teable publishes no higher recommended figure. Treat it as the floor and watch memory once tables grow large (docs say 4 GB)$12–24/mo for a 5-user instance on a 4 GB VPS. PostgreSQL and Redis run in the same compose file; S3 or MinIO is needed only if you move attachments off the disk

Self-hosting NocoDB

needs 8 GB. That is the vendor's production specification, with 4 vCPU and 50 GB+ disk; its 2 GB minimum is for trying it out (docs say 2 GB (with 2 vCPU and 10 GB disk))$24–48/mo on an 8 GB VPS. The installer runs PostgreSQL, Redis and Traefik on the same box, so nothing else is required

When paying is still the right call

Airtable's polish, templates, Interfaces, and automations are still ahead of every alternative. If your team leans on those daily and the per-seat pricing fits, staying is a defensible choice — the alternatives win on cost, data ownership, and on-premise control, not on gloss.

What you are locked into

Bases, records, linked-table relationships, interfaces, and automations live inside Airtable's cloud; there is no self-hosted deployment. You can export individual tables to CSV, but that flattens relationships, interfaces, and automations — there is no clean one-click export of a full multi-table base with its links and app logic intact. Migrating a complex workspace generally means rebuilding schema, relationships, and automations in the destination tool. You also depend on Airtable's pricing, record limits, and uptime.

If you would rather not pay: Baserow

93

Baserow

MIT-core, self-hostable no-code database with the closest Airtable-style experience.

Free to self-host (MIT core); paid cloud and self-hosted premium/enterprise tiers available

See all 4 Airtable alternatives compared

Compare the free options head-to-head

Baserow vs Grist→Baserow vs Teable→Baserow vs NocoDB→

Read from Airtable (Formagrid, Inc.)'s own pricing and documentation on 2026-09-11 — 46 days ago. Vendors change prices without notice; confirm before you commit.

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