Airtable review: a data-backed look
Explore Airtable’s adoption trends, spending patterns, and category benchmarks to determine if it's the right cloud-based project management solution for your team’s workflow.
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Airtable overview
Airtable bridges the gap between spreadsheets and databases, allowing teams to create relational databases without coding knowledge. The platform combines familiar spreadsheet interfaces with powerful database capabilities, enabling teams to visualize data through multiple views (Grid, Kanban, Calendar, Gantt), automate workflows, and connect information across departments.
How much do businesses spend on Airtable?
The chart below showcases trends in average quarterly spend on Airtable across different business segments, which can help you evaluate what your organization might invest:
Very small businesses reveal a steady upward trajectory throughout the year, mid-sized organizations maintain substantial yet stable investments with minimal variance, while enterprise customers show pronounced spending fluctuations reflecting strategic deployment cycles.
Your organization's investment will correspond to your business category, with spending influenced by deployment scope and specific capability needs. The differentiated spending patterns highlight Airtable's tiered approach, which serves diverse organizational requirements from startups to established enterprises.
Who is Airtable best for?
The chart below provides an overview of Airtable’s user base, segmented by Micro-SMB, SMB, Midmarket, and Enterprise businesses.
Airtable's user distribution reveals a significant preference among smaller organizations, with very small businesses representing nearly half (47.1%) of the user base. Small and medium-sized businesses follow at 35.6%, while mid-market and enterprise organizations account for 17.4% of users.
This distribution highlights Airtable's strong appeal across the business spectrum, but with particular resonance among smaller teams. The significant adoption by very small businesses suggests the platform successfully balances powerful database functionality with accessibility for organizations that may lack dedicated technical resources.
The substantial representation of small and medium-sized businesses (over one-third of users) indicates Airtable effectively scales to meet more complex organizational needs while remaining cost-effective for growing companies.
While mid-market and enterprise customers make up a smaller percentage, their presence demonstrates Airtable's capability to serve sophisticated use cases requiring advanced data management, custom workflows, and integration capabilities.
These adoption patterns align with Airtable's positioning as a flexible database-spreadsheet hybrid that can start simple but expand to accommodate complex business processes as organizations grow.
Airtable key features
Visual database management
- What it does: Enables teams to create and manage relational databases without SQL knowledge, with data viewable as spreadsheets, kanban boards, calendars, or custom interfaces.
- Key benefit: Democratizes powerful database capabilities for non-technical users, allowing anyone to create sophisticated data systems without coding skills.
Multiple data views
- What it does: Presents the same dataset in various formats including Grid, Kanban, Gantt, Calendar, Gallery, and Timeline views.
- Key benefit: Provides different perspectives on your data, allowing teams to interact with information in ways that best suit their specific tasks and workflow.
Automation capabilities
- What it does: Creates trigger-action sequences that automatically perform tasks like updating records, sending notifications, moving items between views when conditions are met.
- Key benefit: Eliminates repetitive manual work, reduces human error, and ensures consistent process execution across teams and projects.
Robust integrations
- What it does: Connects with 36 native integrations across project management, file handling, communication, and social networking tools, plus offers API access.
- Key benefit: Enables seamless information flow between Airtable and existing tools, creating a unified ecosystem where data moves automatically between systems.
Custom interfaces
- What it does: Allows creation of tailored dashboards and data entry screens without coding knowledge.
- Key benefit: Creates intuitive, purpose-built experiences for different users and departments, increasing adoption and reducing training needs.
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Airtable pricing
Plan | Price per user/month | Features | Best for |
---|---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Up to 5 creators or editors, 1,000 records per base, 1 GB attachment storage per base, 5 views, real-time collaboration and commenting, 100 automation runs per month | Individuals or very small teams needing basic organization and collaboration tools. |
Team | $20 | 50,000 records per base, 20 GB attachment storage, revision and snapshot history, 5 sync integrations, 5,000 automation runs per month, custom branded forms, personal views, locked views | Small to medium-sized teams requiring enhanced features and greater capacity. |
Business | $45 | 100,000 records per base, 100 GB attachment storage, 7 sync integrations, 7 interfaces per base, 50,000 automation runs per month, advanced interface controls, admin panel with unified workspace management, SAML-based SSO | Larger teams or departments needing advanced collaboration features, administrative controls, and increased capacity. |
Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited records per base, 1 TB attachment storage per base, unlimited sync integrations, extensions and interfaces per base, 500,000 automation runs/month, enterprise-wide admin panel, advanced security features, dedicated customer success manager, custom contract and invoicing | Large organizations requiring enterprise-grade features, security, and personalized support. |
Airtable pros & cons
Airtable is a good fit if:
- You need multiple data views, such as Grid, Kanban, Calendar, Gantt, and Timeline, from a single dataset.
- A no-code database solution for easy creation and management suits your workflow.
- Robust workflow automation is essential for streamlining your processes.
- Your team relies on native integrations with 36+ popular tools.
- You want customizable interfaces without needing to write code.
- Pre-made templates would help you set up projects quickly and efficiently.
Look at alternatives if:
- You work with very large databases and are concerned about performance issues.
- Your team struggles with database structures and needs a more intuitive tool.
- Budget is a concern, as Airtable’s pricing is higher than some similar tools.
- You need seamless data migration from other systems without challenges.
- Lower-tier plans lack customization options, limiting flexibility.
Airtable alternatives
- Monday.com is an intuitive project management tool with strong visualization features, making it easier for beginners to adopt. It’s best suited for teams focused purely on project tracking and task management, rather than complex data relationships.
- Notion blends document management and databases into a versatile, all-in-one workspace. It’s ideal for teams needing knowledge management and light project coordination at a lower price point.
- Asana is designed for task-oriented teams, offering superior task management and an intuitive interface for traditional project workflows. It’s a great choice for teams prioritizing task completion over complex data organization, though its database functionality and data structuring capabilities are somewhat restricted.
- Smartsheet provides a spreadsheet-like interface that’s familiar to teams accustomed to Excel. With robust reporting and financial tracking, it’s an excellent option for teams transitioning from traditional spreadsheets to a more collaborative system.
- ClickUp offers a broad feature set at a lower price, making it an attractive choice for teams seeking an all-in-one project management and productivity platform. It goes beyond databases with extensive customization and workflow automation.