An Airtable alternative that starts with your export.
Airtable’s free plan stops at 1,000 records a base and five people who can edit, and the paid plans are priced by the editor. Download a table as CSV, drop it below, and get the same records back as a database your whole team can open — in the browser on any OS, or the desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux — with flat pricing, unlimited people and no editor count anywhere in the price.
Where this is up to
- Works today, on any OS, in your browser — nothing to install, and there are desktop apps for macOS, Windows and Linux as well.
- Windows is a download now; there is no iPhone or Android app yet. The Windows app is not code-signed yet, so the first time you run it Windows shows a blue “Windows protected your PC” box — click More info, then Run anyway. Some antivirus flags it for the same reason. A certificate is bought, not written, and we would rather ship the app and say this plainly than keep you waiting on a purchase order. The phone apps get built the moment someone needs them.
- Offline is a desktop feature. The encrypted local database ships with the desktop app — macOS, Linux and Windows. In the browser it is not true: that needs a connection, and I'd rather say so here than have you find out on a train.
- The local database file is encrypted on disk (adiantum full-file encryption), and the key lives in your operating system's own secure store rather than in the file.
- Airtable is a more finished product than this one, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It has automations, interfaces, an extension marketplace and years of polish. What I am claiming is narrower: a pricing model with no editor count in it, and a database that is a file on your own machine rather than only a row in someone else’s. If what you need is the breadth, buy the breadth.
- Calculation fields do not calculate yet. Collections, fields, links between records, screens and permissions all work. A calculated field can be created and labelled, but nothing works out the value, so it shows as empty with a note saying why. If the worth of your app is mostly in its calculations, that is worth knowing before you move anything rather than after.
What it actually looks like
Both of these are the CRM template as it ships — one click from an empty account, no setup. They are screenshots of the running product, not mockups.
A grouped list view. Fields are changed in the app’s settings, or by asking the assistant, never by accident from the list.
The same app's dashboard. The charts read live from the records above, not a separate reporting tool.
How the pricing works
Flat, by what you build — never by how many people use it. Add the whole team, the contractor, the client who needs read access: the price doesn't move. If you've been doing per-seat arithmetic before adding anyone, that's the habit this pricing is built to break.
What happens when the person who built it leaves?
That's the question this is really built around, and it's the one I'd genuinely like to hear your answer to. A departmental app usually outlives the person who wrote it, and what's left behind is often a file nobody can safely change.
- The app is described, not codedDoc types, fields, views and workflows are structured definitions — the next person reads what it does instead of reverse-engineering a script.
- Every change is a revisionRecords keep their history, so "who changed this, and when" has an answer after the original author is gone.
- The data is a database on your machineOffline-first and encrypted, syncing when it can. If my company disappeared tomorrow, the file wouldn't.
- Roles are part of the appPermissions live in the app definition, so handing it over doesn't mean rebuilding who can see what.
The number Airtable charges for is the number that grows
Airtable prices by the person, and specifically by the person who can change anything. Their own plans page lists Team at $20 per user per month and Business at $45 per user per month, both billed annually, and their help documentation caps the free plan at 1,000 records per base, 1 GB of attachments per base, and five collaborators with Editor or Creator permissions — with unlimited read-only people and fifty who may comment. Read on 30 August 2026; their prices move, so check yours.
That five-editor line is the one that actually bites, and it does not feel like a pricing decision when you meet it. It feels like a colleague asking to fix a typo in a record, and you having to think about it first.
| People who can edit | Airtable Team $20/user/mo | Airtable Business $45/user/mo | Bionic Forms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $20/mo | $45/mo | $29/mo — or $0 |
| 3 | $60/mo | $135/mo | $29/mo — or $0 |
| 6 | $120/mo | $270/mo | $29/mo — or $0 |
| 12 | $240/mo | $540/mo | $29/mo — or $0 |
| 25 | $500/mo | $1,125/mo | $29/mo — or $0 |
At one person, Airtable Team is cheaper than our paid plan, and I am not going to hide that row. $20 against $29. From two people onward the arithmetic goes the other way and keeps going; by twelve it is $240 against $29. The “or $0” is not a trick either — if your app fits inside 10,000 entries you are on the free plan with the whole team on it, and I would rather tell you that than sell you something.
Two places their numbers beat ours, stated here rather than left for you to find. Their attachment allowance is per base — 1 GB each on the free plan — so somebody with a dozen bases has more room than our 10 GB across everything. And their paid record ceilings, 50,000 and 125,000 a base, are far above our free 10,000; ours only stops being the smaller number on the $29 plan, where the cap is 1,000,000 entries per app.
What you can do yourself, today
You don't have to wait for anyone to move your data. Airtable exports each table as CSV, and the app reads one directly: drop it in and it builds a collection in one step — a field per column, each typed from what the column actually holds (dates as dates, amounts as numbers, a column of a few repeated values as a dropdown), named from your data, with a meter while the rows go in. Anything it typed wrong you change afterwards in the app's settings.
Where it can't tell, it asks rather than guesses. A column of dates like 03/04/2026 could be
the 3rd of April or March 4th, and the rows it would get wrong look exactly like the rows it would get
right — so it stops and asks you which, and won't import until you answer. If one value anywhere in the
file can't be read, nothing is imported at all: a half-loaded collection is worse than an empty one,
because you can't tell which records made it and running it again duplicates the ones that did.
Import your tables into the same app, one file after another and in any order, and it looks for the links between them — an order that names a customer ID gets connected to its customer, so you can open one and see the other. If your Airtable base is a handful of linked tables, that's the shape it recreates. It only links where both the column name and every value agree; where it isn't sure, it leaves the values alone rather than guessing.
Where it stops: it moves data. It does not convert forms, reports, pipelines or formula fields. Airtable’s automations, interfaces and extensions have nothing to be imported into, and a linked-record cell arrives as the text that was in it rather than as a live link unless the importer can match it. Those are a rebuild, done in the app itself — this just means your records can be in front of you in a couple of minutes rather than waiting on that.
What this is not
It isn't an Airtable importer — there's no automatic conversion of an existing base, and I'm not going to pretend a rebuild is a click. It isn't a spreadsheet, it isn't a form builder, and it isn't finished software with a track record. It's an honest early product with a pricing model that doesn't punish you for adding people, and I'm looking for a handful of people willing to tell me where it falls short.
What it costs to find out
Nothing, and there is no call to book. Open the demo, click around a real database, and decide for yourself. If you want your own, the free tier is genuinely free and takes a minute — and putting the rest of the team on it doesn't change the price.
When you are ready to bring your own data, Airtable exports CSV and the app reads it directly, working out how your tables relate to each other — that is the part described above, and it is self-serve. You do not need me for it.
Or do not build it yourself. Describe the app your business runs on and we will build a working version of it and show you — no fee, no card, and the app we build fits the free plan. How that works.
Bionic Forms is built by Matt Bidwell (Bionics LLC). If something here reads as overclaiming, tell me and I'll fix the page — that's a promise I can actually keep at this stage. Either way you can reach me at matt@bidwellhq.com.