Is Airtable worth it in 2026?

It is enough while the data stays small. Free costs $0 and allows up to 5 editors per workspace, plus 50 commenters and unlimited read-only collaborators, so five people can all edit. What stops a growing team is 1,000 records per base, counted across every table in the base according to Airtable’s plans article, 100 automation runs per workspace per month and 1 GB of attachments per base. The pricing page lists unlimited bases, while the plans article’s FAQ gives 1,500 bases per workspace, and the record and attachment caps apply to each base.

Airtable counts a run each time an automation’s trigger fires, failed runs included, and resets the count on the first day of each month. An automation that fires on every form submission uses up the whole allowance after 100 submissions, about 3 a day over a 30-day month (computed). On the comparison grid, Free leaves the pre-built extensions and the scripting and custom extensions rows unticked, and limits external email recipients to collaborators.

At a record or attachment cap your bases keep working and no data is removed, but you cannot add more until you upgrade, while automation and API limits stop at the plan’s allowance. A new account’s first workspace also starts on a 14-day Team trial, so the first two weeks show the Team trial’s limits, not Free ones.

Team is $20 per seat per month billed annually or $24 billed monthly. Business is $45 billed annually or $54 billed monthly. The monthly rate is 20% above the annual rate on both plans (computed). Five Team seats cost $1,200 a year billed annually and $1,440 billed monthly, so the yearly commitment saves $240. Fifteen Business seats cost $8,100 billed annually or $9,720 billed monthly, against $3,600 or $4,320 for the same 15 seats on Team (all computed).

Who counts as a seat is the catch. The collaborators article says Team bills Owner, Creator, Editor and Commenter permissions, so a commenter added to keep costs down still adds to a Team bill. Self-serve Business bills Owner, Creator and Editor only. Read-only collaborators, shared view links and standalone forms are not billed on self-serve paid plans.

Annual billing locks the seat count in: adding a billable collaborator is charged for the full remaining annual contract, and removing one mid-cycle does not reduce the current invoice. Airtable recommends a monthly cycle when team size fluctuates. Business and Enterprise Scale also need a private email domain, so a Gmail or Yahoo address cannot upgrade to either. Students may not need Team at all: the plans article says qualifying students can apply for a free Team workspace for 6 to 24 months.

Every plan includes a monthly pool: 500 credits per editor on Free, 15,000 per paid user on Team, 20,000 on Business and 25,000 per paid user at list price on Enterprise Scale. The pricing page words Free as per editor and the paid cards as per paid user, and the AI billing article says Team’s allowance is per billable collaborator, so a billed commenter also counts toward the pool on Team. The included credits are pooled across the workspace or organization, expire monthly and do not roll over.

Five Free editors share 2,500 credits a month, and five Team seats share 75,000 (computed). Airtable’s typical costs are 10 credits for a question about your base and 200 for analyzing a 10-page contract, so 2,500 credits cover about 250 questions or 12 contract analyses (computed; Airtable says real costs vary with model and input). Building apps and agents with Omni uses no credits.

Extra credits are monthly packs. On a monthly plan, 10,000 credits cost $20 a month. On an annual plan they cost $200 a year, which is $40 less than twelve monthly payments (computed). The help-center table runs to 400,000 credits, and the pricing page starts packs at 10,000 for Team and Business and makes Enterprise Scale quote-only.

Read by which cells of the comparison grid carry a tick, Team adds over Free the Gantt and timeline views, extensions and scripting, custom branded forms, personal and locked views and standard sync integrations. Business adds over Team the Roadmap view, two-way sync, verified data, premium sync integrations, user groups, the admin panel, SAML single sign-on, AI admin controls and email support. Enterprise Scale adds items such as HyperDB, audit logs and data loss prevention. Omni and AI Field Agents are ticked on all four plans, so the credit pool, not access to Omni or the agents, separates the AI tiers.

Portals gives outside guests access to your interfaces and is an add-on, not part of a seat. The pricing page shows Starting from $120 for 15 guests a month on Team and Starting from $150 on Business, contact sales on Enterprise Scale, and no entry for Free. A footnote puts Business Portals at $127.50 a month for 15 guests on the annual plan, and the cards name no billing basis, so confirm which figure applies at checkout. The collaborators article says a portal guest with at least Editor access is billed as a portal seat, and read-only portal users are not billable.

Team commenters. The pricing page FAQ says Team and Business charge users with edit permissions on at least one base, and nothing for read-only collaborators, form submissions or share links. The collaborators article says Commenters are billable on Team, and not on Business.

Credit packs on Free. The AI billing article says Free customers must upgrade to Team to buy credits, and its FAQ says Free, Team and self-serve Business customers can buy them. The pricing grid lists pack sizes from 10k to 200k credits under Team and Business, Contact Sales under Enterprise Scale, and nothing under Free.

Caps are counted in different units, so compare what each limit measures as well as the price. Notion’s pricing page, read in the US view with Pay yearly selected, shows Plus at $10 per member per month, and says guests are free but see only the pages they are invited to. Our Notion AI review looks at those plans through their AI allowances.

Baserow Cloud, on its default yearly view, has a Free plan with 3,000 rows per workspace and Premium at $10 per user per month billed yearly or $12 billed monthly, with 50,000 rows per workspace. Airtable counts records per base and Baserow counts rows per workspace, so the two caps are not like for like. On the yearly per-seat rates read here, Notion Plus and Baserow Premium list half of Airtable Team’s rate (computed).

Our tutorial on building a project management app in Airtable is a Beginner tutorial published 2 April 2025, so check its screens against the plans above. The Airtable tool page lists the rest. For base design, formulas and automations, try the Claude prompts for Airtable or the ChatGPT prompts for Airtable, and browse the no-code automation collection. For an AI app builder priced by credits instead of seats, see our Base44 review.