Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Aiven VS Airtable

Compare Aiven VS Airtable and see what are their differences

Aiven logo Aiven

Leverage the complete open source ecosystem of extensions and tools to create highly-performant data pipelines for event-driven applications on all major clouds.

Airtable logo Airtable

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.
  • Aiven Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-23
  • Airtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19

Aiven

Website
aiven.io
$ Details
Release Date
-
Startup details
Country
Finland
City
Helsinki
Employees
50 - 99

Airtable

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

Aiven features and specs

  • Managed Services
    Aiven offers fully managed cloud data infrastructure services, allowing businesses to save time and resources on maintenance and management of their databases.
  • Multi-Cloud Support
    Aiven supports various cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, providing flexibility in choosing or migrating across different cloud environments.
  • High Availability and Scalability
    With Aiven’s infrastructure, businesses can easily scale their services and ensure high availability, which is critical for handling growing workloads and avoiding downtime.
  • Comprehensive Security Features
    Aiven offers robust security measures, including encryption, access control, and compliance with major industry standards, ensuring data is secure and protected.
  • Variety of Supported Technologies
    Aiven supports a wide range of open-source technologies such as PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka, and Elasticsearch, providing versatility in building diverse applications.

Possible disadvantages of Aiven

  • Cost
    Managed services can be significantly more expensive than self-hosted solutions, potentially increasing overall business costs, especially for startups or small businesses with limited budgets.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    While Aiven offers multi-cloud support, businesses using proprietary features or integrations might experience challenges if they decide to migrate away from Aiven to another provider.
  • Limited Customization
    Managed services might not offer the same level of customization as self-managed solutions, limiting specific configurations or optimizations that businesses might require.
  • Dependence on Network Performance
    Performance is highly dependent on the quality and reliability of network connections, which can affect data access speeds and service availability.
  • Potential Learning Curve
    Despite being designed for ease of use, some teams may experience a learning curve when adopting new tools and technologies provided by Aiven.

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.

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

Aiven videos

Introduction to Aiven Postgres Cloud Database

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Aiven and Airtable)
Databases
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Infrastructure
100 100%
0% 0
No Code
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 Aiven and Airtable

Aiven Reviews

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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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Airtable should be more popular than Aiven. It has been mentiond 130 times since March 2021. 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.

Aiven mentions (32)

  • SonicScan - A Music Fingerprinting and Identification App
    For the database I used Valkey on Aiven for free. - Source: dev.to / 11 days ago
  • How to Connect Your Next.js React Application to Redis
    For this demo I'm using Aiven, they offer a 1GB free account, which is more than enough for a POC or prototype. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Run Postgres For Free: Top 3 Options
    Unlike Neon, Aiven provides many open-source managed data infrastructures, such as PostgreSQL Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Apache Kafka Connect, Apache Kafka MirrorMaker 2, Elasticsearch, Grafana, InfluxDB, M3, M3 Aggregator, MySQL, and Redis. It’s a jack of all trades regarding its support for open-source technology. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Building Scalable Data Pipelines with Python – A Complete Guide.
    A PostgreSQL database (created using Aiven and connected using DBeaver). - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Top 8 Managed Postgres Providers
    Aiven provides managed cloud service for PostgreSQL, making sure databases run smoothly, safely, and can grow easily on different cloud platforms. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

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 / 6 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

What are some alternatives?

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

SAP HANA - SAP HANA is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system.

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.

Ninox - Ninox is a human-friendly database. Create your own Business Application with Ninox that matches your workflow. Ninox lets you integrate CRM, ERP, HR and many more...

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.

Amazon Aurora - MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. Performance and availability of commercial-grade databases at 1/10th the cost.

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.