Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Handsontable VS Airtable

Compare Handsontable VS Airtable and see what are their differences

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Handsontable logo Handsontable

JavaScript Spreadsheet

Airtable logo Airtable

Airtable works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organize anything. Sign up for free.
  • Handsontable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Airtable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-19

Airtable

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

Handsontable features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Handsontable provides an Excel-like interface that many users find intuitive and easy to navigate, reducing the learning curve for new users.
  • Feature-Rich
    It offers a wide range of features, including data validation, sorting, filtering, and support for complex data operations, making it suitable for various applications.
  • Customization
    Handsontable allows for high flexibility and customization, enabling developers to adapt it to their specific project requirements.
  • Performance
    Optimized for handling large datasets efficiently, thereby improving performance in data-intensive applications.
  • Integration
    Can be easily integrated with other frameworks and libraries, such as React, Angular, and Vue.js, offering a seamless development experience.
  • Active Development
    Handsontable is continuously maintained and updated with new features and improvements, ensuring it remains relevant and up-to-date.

Possible disadvantages of Handsontable

  • Cost
    Handsontable is not free for commercial use, which may be a limitation for small projects or individual developers with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    For very simple applications, Handsontable may be overkill, adding unnecessary complexity and overhead.
  • Performance Limitations
    While optimized for large datasets, performance can still be an issue with extremely large or complex data manipulations.
  • Documentation
    Some users have reported that the documentation, while comprehensive, can sometimes be difficult to navigate or lacks clarity in certain areas.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, developers might still face a learning curve when integrating it with complex applications.

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

Handsontable videos

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

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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 Handsontable and Airtable)
Data Grid
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100
JavaScript Tools
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 Handsontable and Airtable

Handsontable Reviews

Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Data Grid Libraries and Widgets
There are a lot of plugins available to add extra functionality to your grid. This includes things like auto-fill with drag-down and copy-down functionality. You can even perform Excel-like calculations by integrating HyperFormula, which is a powerful calculation engine developed by the Handsontable team.

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 seems to be a lot more popular than Handsontable. While we know about 130 links to Airtable, we've tracked only 9 mentions of Handsontable. 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.

Handsontable mentions (9)

  • Battle of the Rows: The Limits of Data Performance
    Welcome to our recently conducted series of performance benchmarks. Data grids are becoming more popular and increasingly important as they play a vital role in managing and visualizing large datasets, especially in data-intensive applications. In this article we are going to evaluate one of the most famous data grids: AG Grid, Handsontable, and RevoGrid. Our goal was to provide you with some insight into this... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Recommendation on stack for a spreadsheet-like product
    Https://handsontable.com/ This is the best commercial library you can just buy and put it in your product. Source: over 2 years ago
  • [AskJS] Is there a good table js library?
    I've always liked https://handsontable.com/ but I'm not sure what the licensing is for something other than a personal project. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2022)
    Handsontable | Head of Engineering/Tech Lead | On-site/Hybrid/Remote within Poland | https://handsontable.com/ We are looking for a Head of Engineering for our portfolio of. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Top JavaScript Spreadsheet Components for Data Management Apps
    Handsontable is primarily known as a JavaScript grid library for business apps but the decision to include it in this article is not accidental. Although this tool doesn't offer as many text formatting options as Excel, it includes quite a lot of features for manipulating data typical of spreadsheets. The list of the most widely used Handsontable features includes operations on rows & columns (moving, hiding,... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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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 Handsontable and Airtable, you can also consider the following products

AG Grid - The best HTML5 datagrid in the world

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.

ZingGrid - Built using web components, ZingGrid is a fully-featured, native solution for interactive, mobile-friendly JavaScript data grids and tables.

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.

DataTables - DataTables is a plug-in for the jQuery Javascript library.

Basecamp - A simple and elegant project management system.