Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Airtable VS AppWrite

Compare Airtable VS AppWrite and see what are their differences

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Airtable logo Airtable

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.

AppWrite logo AppWrite

Appwrite provides web and mobile developers with a set of easy-to-use and integrate REST APIs to manage their core backend needs.
  • Airtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19
  • AppWrite Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-28

Airtable

$ Details
-
Release Date
2013 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Andrew Ofstad
Employees
250 - 499

Airtable features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Airtable provides an intuitive, visually appealing interface that makes it easy for users to create, manage, and navigate complex data sets without extensive technical knowledge.
  • Customizability
    Airtable offers robust customization options, allowing users to tailor databases and views to their specific needs, including various field types, multiple views, and linked records.
  • Collaboration Features
    Airtable supports real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on the same database simultaneously while tracking changes and maintaining version history.
  • Integrations
    Airtable integrates with various third-party applications and services such as Slack, Google Drive, and Zapier, allowing for seamless workflow automation and enhanced productivity.
  • Templates
    Airtable offers a wide range of pre-built templates for different use cases, which helps users get started quickly without having to build everything from scratch.
  • Mobile App
    Airtable's mobile application allows users to access and manage their databases on the go, ensuring flexibility and continuous productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Airtable

  • Cost
    While Airtable offers a free tier, many of the more advanced features and higher usage limits are locked behind a subscription model, which can become costly for larger teams or extensive use.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users have reported performance issues with Airtable when working with very large databases, including slow load times and laggy interface responsiveness.
  • Limited Offline Access
    Airtable relies heavily on an internet connection, and its offline capabilities are limited, which may be a drawback for users who need consistent access without reliable internet.
  • Data Export Options
    Data export options are somewhat limited compared to other database management tools, making it more difficult to extract data in certain formats for use outside of Airtable.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, the extensive features and customizability of Airtable can present a learning curve for new users, requiring time to explore and understand its full capabilities.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    Airtable may lack some advanced features found in more specialized or traditional database management systems, making it less suitable for particularly complex or highly specific data management needs.

AppWrite features and specs

  • Open Source
    AppWrite is an open-source platform, allowing developers to inspect, modify, and contribute to the code base, ensuring transparency and flexibility.
  • Self-Hosted
    Being self-hosted, AppWrite gives developers complete control over their data and server environment, enhancing security and customization options.
  • Comprehensive Backend
    AppWrite offers a wide range of backend services out-of-the-box, including authentication, database management, storage, and serverless functions, reducing the need for additional third-party services.
  • Multi-Language Support
    AppWrite supports various programming languages, which makes it versatile and developer-friendly, allowing the integration with different tech stacks.
  • Community and Documentation
    AppWrite has an active community and well-documented guides, tutorials, and API references, which are essential for learning and troubleshooting.

Possible disadvantages of AppWrite

  • Resource Intensive
    Being a self-hosted solution, AppWrite may require significant server resources for optimal performance, which can be costly.
  • Initial Setup Complexity
    The initial setup and configuration can be complex and time-consuming, particularly for those less experienced with server management.
  • Limited Third-Party Integrations
    As compared to some other backend-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms, AppWrite has fewer pre-built third-party integrations, which might limit its extensibility.
  • Newer and Evolving
    AppWrite is relatively new and still evolving, which can mean fewer features compared to more mature platforms and the potential for more bugs.
  • Maintenance Responsibility
    Since it is self-hosted, the responsibility for server maintenance, updates, and security falls solely on the user, which can be a drawback for smaller teams or solo developers.

Analysis of Airtable

Overall verdict

  • Airtable is a highly effective tool for individuals and teams looking for an easy-to-use, versatile platform to manage data and collaborate. It is especially suitable for users who need more functionality than a traditional spreadsheet but don’t require a full-scale database management system.

Why this product is good

  • Ease of use
    Airtable offers a user-friendly interface that combines the simplicity of spreadsheets with the power of a database, making it accessible for users without technical expertise.
  • Flexibility
    It provides flexibility in terms of creating customizable databases, allowing users to adapt it for various use cases such as project management, inventory tracking, and more.
  • Integrations
    It integrates with a wide range of third-party applications and services, enhancing its utility and reach.
  • Collaboration
    Airtable supports real-time collaboration, enabling teams to work together seamlessly and share updates instantly.

Recommended for

  • Small to medium-sized businesses
  • Project managers
  • Creative teams
  • Freelancers
  • Non-profits
  • Product development teams

Analysis of AppWrite

Overall verdict

  • AppWrite is a solid option for developers looking for an open-source backend solution with robust features. Its well-documented APIs and active community support make it a viable choice for both small projects and growing applications.

Why this product is good

  • AppWrite is considered a good choice, particularly for its comprehensive backend-as-a-service (BaaS) features that cater to web and mobile developers. It provides a suite of services such as user authentication, databases, file storage, and serverless functions, allowing developers to streamline their development process. Its open-source nature means developers have access to the full code base and the community-drive contributions, ensuring transparency and continuous improvements. AppWrite also emphasizes developer experience, offering easy integration with client-side SDKs and providing extensive documentation.

Recommended for

    AppWrite is recommended for developers building applications who require a scalable backend solution without the overhead of managing infrastructure. It is particularly suited for developers who prefer open-source platforms and those who want to avoid vendor lock-in. AppWrite's features make it a good fit for startups, hobby projects, and even educational purposes where full control over the backend is desirable.

Airtable videos

Airtable Review | Features, Pricing & Team Use

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Airtable API Tutorial With cURL and JavaScript
  • Review - Airtable Blocks for Project Management
  • Review - Airtable vs. Google Sheets
  • Review - airtable review

AppWrite videos

No AppWrite videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Airtable and AppWrite)
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
No Code
100 100%
0% 0
Backend As A Service
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Airtable and AppWrite

Airtable Reviews

  1. Sanjana Shah
    · Data Scientist at Boston Institute of Analytics ·
    Airtable: Spreadsheets + Databases = Efficiency

    Airtable is a powerful cloud-based software that combines spreadsheets and databases, offering real-time collaboration and customizable features for efficient task management1.

    🏁 Competitors: monday.com, ClickUp, Smartsheet
    👍 Pros:    Free forever plan and affordable paid options starting at $10 per month.|Visually appealing and user-friendly interface.|Pre-made templates for easy setup and use.|Real-time collaboration and communication.|Customizable features for task management.
    👎 Cons:    Limited project customization without a paid plan.|Top-tier accounts required for gantt tools.|May take time to learn and grasp advanced features.

The Top 7 ClickUp Alternatives You Need to Know in 2025
Benefits:Airtable's ability to integrate various data sources into one platform allows teams to maintain a centralized source of truth while leveraging powerful visualization tools6.
Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
Airtable blends spreadsheets with database features, offering teams a powerful way to organize structured information. While its flexibility is impressive, it's not purpose-built for communication or team collaboration at scale.
25 Best Asana Alternatives & Competitors for Project Management in 2024
Airtable is one of the most popular Asana alternatives. It’s project management tool that helps teams create detailed databases for their work. Users can group and sort data in custom fields with views like Grid to include only the relevant project information.
Source: clickup.com
Top 10 Microsoft Power Apps Alternatives and Competitors 2024
Airtable Pricing: Airtable offers a freemium plan with limited features for individual users. Paid plans start at $10 per user per month for additional features and functionalities. Enterprise plans with custom pricing cater to large-scale deployments.
Source: medium.com
The 10 best Asana alternatives in 2024
If you're looking for a project management app that leans more toward data management, try Airtable. Out of the box, Airtable's default view looks like a spreadsheet. It offers a few project templates based on your team type (such as marketing or sales), or you can build a "base" from scratch. From there, you can add highly customizable fields (or columns) to each row, so...
Source: zapier.com

AppWrite Reviews

  1. Appwrite is awesome, free and open-source!

    I've use it instead of Firebase on a 15$ DigitalOcean droplet and saved around ~$150 a month. Managing my own infra does take some extra time, but definitely worth it. The APIs and SDK are also surprisingly much easier to consume than Firebase. Waiting for the cloud version.

    🏁 Competitors: Firebase
    👍 Pros:    Easy to use|Cost effective|Open-source|Great user experience|Super simple|Self hosted
    👎 Cons:    Self hosted

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Appwrite’s self-hosted nature gives you complete control over your data and infrastructure, great for those who are security-conscious. It also offers a comprehensive set of features, including user authentication, database management, storage, cloud functions, and more. It’s like having your very own Firebase, but on your terms.
Source: genezio.com
Top 7 Firebase Alternatives for App Development in 2024
Appwrite is an open-source backend-as-a-service platform that provides a comprehensive set of tools and APIs to help developers build modern applications. It focuses on simplicity and developer experience.
Source: signoz.io
Best Serverless Backend Tools of 2023: Pros & Cons, Features & Code Examples
Appwrite is a self-hosted BaaS platform giving you all the tools you need to build all sorts of application.
Source: www.rowy.io
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Appwrite permits the development to benefit from its open-source version without paying anything. However, its official website also declares that it will share the pricing details for Appwrite Cloud soon.
12 Best Open-source Database Backend Server and Google Firebase Alternatives
Appwrite is a self-hosted backend server for building web, mobile and desktop apps. It supports multiple applications natively without hacks or workarounds.It features a dashboard for apps, database, user, functions and storage management, real-time analytics per project, live connections monitor, background tasks and webhooks.Appwrite also is suitable for creating Geo-data...
Source: medevel.com

Social recommendations and mentions

AppWrite might be a bit more popular than Airtable. We know about 174 links to it since March 2021 and only 130 links to Airtable. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Airtable mentions (130)

  • How to Build Internal Tools 100x Faster
    It is possible to speed up the development and delivery process for many internal applications by using no-code or low code tools. These vary in offerings from open source to SaaS, including popular ones like AirTable, BudiBase, Retool, NocoDB and others. These can all greatly help speed up delivery times. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Growing a side-project to 100k Unique Visitors in one week
    For the backend, I opted for Airtable as a database. It's a simple, no-code solution that I've used before. It's not the most powerful database, but it's perfect for a project like this. I could easily add, edit, and delete records, and it has an embeddable form functionality that I used for user submissions. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • A list of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings that have free tiers of interest to devops and infradev
    Airtable.com — Looks like a spreadsheet, but it's a relational database unlimited bases, 1,200 rows/base, and 1,000 API requests/month. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to generate links to a record to view it in an Interface?
    The ?XXXXX part of the URL identifies the type of interface page it is. Just copy that and then your formula is just "https://airtable.com.../...?XXXXXX=" & RECORD_ID() I'm not sure it works in every type of interface page (where you've started from a blank page for example). There has to be something to identify the record viewed from the page, if you see what I mean. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Working on a personal app for data tracking. looking for suggestions
    So I started building something on airtable.com that would allow me to easily track updates for each batch. What in your experience would make sense to track that I may be missing? Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

AppWrite mentions (174)

  • Build a React File Sharing App with Granular Access Controls (ReBAC)
    Appwrite is a backend-as-a-service platform that provides authentication, storage, and database. Appwrite is used for authentication and storage. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Flutter vs Native: Why Flutter Wins for TV App Development
    Flutter plays well with modern backend solutions like Firebase, Supabase, AWS Amplify, Appwrite, and PocketBase. This gives you a variety of options to choose from whether you are an indie developer, startup, established company, agency, or enterprise. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 5 Tools Every Developer Must Use in 2024
    Appwrite also allows you to manage your application's backend services through a simple and intuitive dashboard, making it easy to monitor and control your resources. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • 100+ FREE Resources Every Web Developer Must Try
    . Netlify : Deploy your web projects with ease. . Render : Host web applications and static sites effortlessly. . GitHub Pages: Host your static websites directly from your GitHub repository. . Firebase Hosting: Scale your web apps effortlessly with Firebase. . Vercel: Deploy websites and applications with automatic deployments. . Cyclic.sh: Host your static sites with zero configuration. . Appwrite:... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Why Appwrite Is Your Ideal BaaS in 2024 I'm
    Appwrite is a comprehensive Backend as a Service (BaaS) platform designed to help developers build and scale applications quickly and efficiently. Whether you're a solo indie hacker or part of a growing startup, Appwrite provides the essential features you need—database management, authentication, storage, and cloud functions—all in one unified platform. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Airtable and AppWrite, you can also consider the following products

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Supabase - An open source Firebase alternative

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.

PocketBase.io - Open Source backend with realtime database, authentication, file storage and admin dashboard, all compiled in 1 portable executable.