Every list of Microsoft Access alternatives I can find was written by somebody who sells one. So is this one: I build Bionic Forms, near the bottom where a pre-launch product belongs. What I offer instead is arithmetic: verified prices, the meters that quietly change them, and a straight answer about who should not migrate. Prices checked 18 August 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page; Ninox publishes in euros, so I quote euros.
Access is not dying. Access 2024 and Access LTSC 2024 are current releases, and Office LTSC 2024 has five years of mainstream support with "no Extended Support" after it. It is free if you already pay Microsoft, included with Microsoft 365 Family, Personal, Business Standard, Business Premium and Apps for business. So if it runs on a couple of Windows PCs, somebody can still read the VBA, and the file is under two gigabytes, migrating has no payoff. Stay.
Keep the Access front end and move the tables to SQL Server Express, which is free, or Azure SQL. Concurrency and the 2 GB ceiling go away, your forms, reports and VBA survive, and you have bought years. It fixes nothing about Mac or the web. If corruption is the problem, cost this before anything else here.
The reasons are specific, and none is that Access is old. No Mac: "Access isn't available for devices running macOS." No web client, so a phone on a warehouse floor cannot open a record. Then the ceilings: "2 gigabytes, minus the space needed for system objects", 255 concurrent users. And nobody left can maintain the VBA, which is my reason, not Microsoft's.
Then the shared .accdb. Microsoft's own split-database guidance is the admission: after splitting, corruption "is usually limited to the copy of the front-end database that the user had open". A smaller blast radius is not a fix. Hold onto that, because it is the question I put to everything below: what happens when two people save the same record at once.
The first trap is the one only Access users walk into. You pay nothing today, so any number looks like an increase, and your tier decides how big. Business Basic includes no desktop client apps, and Microsoft's page does not list it among the plans that include Access, so that team is already choosing between $179.99 for a standalone copy on one PC and a plan bump. Price the move against that, not against zero.
The other three are this category's usual, priced out at length in the FileMaker version of this post: seat minimums times annual terms (FileMaker's five-seat minimum makes 5 x $19 x 12 = $1,140 a year the floor for three people), undisclosed minimums (Quickbase's "$35/user/mo" excludes a "platform minimum" it never publishes), and flat fees that cap rows rather than seats (Knack, $49 a month, unlimited users, 20,000 records). The fourth belongs to Power Apps.
Microsoft's answer is Power Apps, the only one on this list with a Microsoft-built Access migration tool. Premium is $20 per user per month paid yearly, and the $12 figure needs 2,000-plus new licences, so ignore it.
Dataverse is billed separately, and this is where a $20 seat stops being $20. Each Premium seat accrues 250 MB of database and 2 GB of file storage on top of a tenant default Microsoft's August 2026 licensing guide puts at 10 GB in prose and 20 GB in a table on the facing page. So ten people have 12.5 GB or 22.5 GB depending on which figure is current: you cannot budget this from the published documents. Extra capacity is $40 per GB per month on the pricing page; file, log and pay-as-you-go rates are licensing-guide only, so check those with your reseller. Concurrency itself is fine here; the bill is the risk.
If your Access file is really a tracker that grew forms, the honest answer is Microsoft Lists, in a browser and on a phone, free on a business plan. It rides on SharePoint Online, so Business Basic, Standard and Premium have it; Family, Personal and Apps for business do not. Business Basic is the neat case: no desktop apps, so no Access, but Lists and Power Apps use rights included. Concurrent editing is fine; the wall is the 5,000-item default view threshold, with no relational integrity and no report writer. Three tables and a form belongs here. A twelve-table schema does not.
FileMaker is the one I would actually buy here. Schema, layouts, scripts and reports in one tool, the exact shape of what you built, and client/server, so concurrent editing is ordinary rather than risky. $19 per user per month on Starter and $39 on Max, annual, five seats minimum, so the floor is $95 a month whether you have three or five people. Starter covers 5 to 10 users and Max 5 to 99, so past ten it is $39 times your headcount: twelve people is $468 a month.
Ninox is the small-team version below it: free to five users, then EUR 25 per user per month, on Mac, iPad and web.
LibreOffice Base is free and the closest free like-for-like desktop shape, but it answers the concurrency question badly: the Base Guide describes the bundled Java HSQLDB as a "single-user database system", and multi-user means running PostgreSQL or MariaDB yourself, the skill the team that lost its VBA person does not have. Baserow is the better host-it-yourself answer, MIT licensed and free to self-host, though free in licence is not free in labour.
Bionic Forms is a local-first business-app platform where the database is the app: you describe what you need, an assistant builds the forms, views, workflows and history, then you edit it by hand. The desktop app keeps your data in an encrypted SQLite file on your own machine (adiantum full-file encryption via the pure-Go SQLite encrypting VFS, with the key held by the operating system's own secret store, and that is the whole claim), syncing through our server when online; everyone else uses the browser version. Every save is an immutable revision, so two people saving the same record at once leaves two versions to compare, not a corrupted file.
Pricing has no seat count in it anywhere. Every plan carries unlimited users, and you pay for how much you build: one app free with 1 GB, $29 a month for ten apps and 50 GB, $99 a month for unlimited apps and 250 GB. Ten people on one app is $0. Ten people across ten apps is $29 a month in total, and so is fifty. That is what makes the Power Apps comparison awkward: ten Premium seats are 10 x $20 x 12 = $2,400 a year before Dataverse touches the bill.
Now the limits, in body text where you can see them. It is pre-launch, with no external customers yet. There is no Windows desktop app; that card on our site is a waitlist, not a download, although the browser version works fine on Windows. There is no iOS or Android app. Offline is a desktop feature, so the browser version needs a connection.
There is no .accdb importer either, and I will not pretend a rebuild is a click. The importer moves records from a CSV or a Google Sheet: it does not convert applications, and there is no automatic conversion of forms, reports or VBA. It reads your tables together and works out how they relate, so an order naming a customer ID arrives connected to its customer. Where it is unsure it asks rather than guesses, and if one value will not parse, nothing imports.
Two places to buy somebody else's instead: three tables and a quarterly report belong on Microsoft Lists, which you already pay for, and a decade-old app with printed invoices moving because the office went Mac belongs on Claris FileMaker, where twelve people at $468 a month buys a long support history rather than a promise.
There is a live demo database at /demo. One click, no account, no email. The longer Access-specific version, importer detail and all, is at /access.
The data moves: Microsoft's Access-to-Dataverse migration is GA and handles tables, relationships and data. The application does not, and Microsoft says why: "Dataverse and Dataverse for Teams are data sources". Its published exclusions are specific: OLE Object and Calculated columns, attachments one per column, decimal precision capped at 10 places. Microsoft ships no converter for forms, reports or VBA, and neither does any vendor here; third-party conversion services exist, but they are rewrites with a sales process attached.
Ten people, annual list prices, against the nothing you pay today. Microsoft Lists: $0. Bionic Forms: $0 on one app, or $348 for ten. Knack: $588. Zoho Creator Standard: $960. FileMaker Starter: $2,280. Power Apps Premium: $2,400, plus Dataverse past roughly 12.5 GB, where each extra gigabyte is $480 a year. Run yours.
Lists if it is three tables and a form. FileMaker if it has to run on Macs, or Ninox if it is small. Knack or Tadabase if everyone in the building edits. Zoho Creator if you want cheap seats and do not mind trading VBA nobody can maintain for Deluge nobody can maintain. Baserow if the data must sit on hardware you control. Otherwise open the demo and tell me what your Access app actually does.
| Product | Entry price | Model | Free tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Access | $0 extra with most Microsoft 365 plans; $179.99 standalone | bundled, or perpetual for 1 PC | No | Windows desktop only: no Mac, no web. Relational. 2 GB file, 255 concurrent users. |
| Microsoft Power Apps + Dataverse | $20/user/mo Premium, annual | per user; a pay-as-you-go meter exists but is not priced on the pricing page | Developer Plan only (one person, unshareable) | Browser and phone, relational via Dataverse. Dataverse billed on top: 250 MB per seat, then $40/GB/mo. |
| Microsoft Lists | $0 extra | bundled with SharePoint Online | Yes, on a business plan you already buy | Browser and phone only, and not on Family, Personal or Apps for business. Not relational, no report writer. 5,000-item default view threshold. |
| LibreOffice Base | $0 | free desktop, self-managed | Yes | Mac yes, web no. Relational, but the bundled engine is single-user per TDF's Base Guide. |
| Claris FileMaker | $19/user/mo Starter, $39 Max, annual | per user, 5-seat minimum; Starter covers 5-10 users, Max 5-99 | No | Mac and web yes, relational. Floor is $95/mo ($1,140/year); past 10 users it is $39 each, so 12 people is $468/mo. |
| Airtable | $20/user/mo Team, $45 Business, annual | per user, editors only billed | Yes | Browser, any OS. Links between tables, not relational integrity. Entry forms and printed reports get redesigned. |
| Ninox | EUR 25/user/mo Team, EUR 40 Business, annual | per user | Yes, permanently free to 5 users | Mac, iPad and web, relational with forms. Published in EUR, so quoted in EUR. |
| Zoho Creator | $8/user/mo Standard, $20 Professional, $25 Enterprise, annual | per user | Yes (1 app, 5,000 records) | Browser, any OS. Scripting is Deluge, so VBA maintenance debt becomes Deluge maintenance debt. |
| Knack | $49/mo billed annually, flat | flat, unlimited users | No | Browser, any OS. 20,000 records and 3 apps on Starter. The $19 seen online is a 3-month promo. |
| Tadabase | $50/mo, or $42/mo billed annually, flat | flat, unlimited users | No | Browser, any OS. No free tier at all, so evaluation is a paid decision. |
| Quickbase | from $35/user/mo Team, $55 Business, annual | per user plus an undisclosed platform minimum | No | Browser, any OS. The minimum is never published, so you cannot price it without a salesperson. |
| Baserow | $10/user/mo Premium, $18 Advanced, annual; self-host free | per user (cloud) or self-host | Yes (3,000 rows) plus free self-hosting | Browser, any OS. MIT licensed, so the exit is real. Self-hosting is free in licence, not in labour. |
| NocoDB | $12/user/mo Plus, $24 Business, $45 Scale (3-seat minimum on Scale), annual; Community free | per user (cloud) or self-host | Yes, cloud tier and Community edition | Browser, any OS. Source-available under a Sustainable Use License, not OSI open source. |
| Bionic Forms | Free for 1 app; $29/mo for 10 apps; $99/mo unlimited apps | flat by apps + storage, unlimited users | Yes (1 app, 1 GB, unlimited users) | macOS and Linux desktop plus browser, and the browser version works on Windows. Relational. Pre-launch, no external customers. No Windows desktop app, no iOS or Android app. |
Is Microsoft Access being discontinued? No. Access 2024 and Access LTSC 2024 are current releases, Office LTSC 2024 carries five years of mainstream support with no Extended Support afterwards, and the Microsoft 365 build still gets features. Leave Access because of what it cannot do, not because of a retirement notice.
Can I run Microsoft Access on a Mac? No. Microsoft's documentation states that Access isn't available for devices running macOS, and the standalone copy is sold for 1 PC on Windows 11 or Windows 10. If Mac support is the reason you are moving, Claris FileMaker is the closest equivalent, and Ninox is the cheaper small-team option with a free tier up to five users.
Is there a free alternative to Microsoft Access? Several, with different catches. LibreOffice Base is free software but its bundled engine is single-user. Microsoft Lists costs nothing extra on a Microsoft 365 business plan, though it rides on SharePoint Online, so Family, Personal and Apps for business do not have it, and views stall at a 5,000-item default threshold. Ninox is free up to five users, Airtable, Baserow and NocoDB all have free tiers, and Bionic Forms is free for one app with unlimited users, though it is pre-launch, so treat it as the early bet on this list.
How many people can share an Access database at once? Microsoft's published specification says 255 concurrent users, but the practical trouble starts long before that on a shared file. Microsoft's own guidance is to split the database, and its stated benefit is that corruption is usually limited to the copy of the front-end database the user had open. That reduces the damage; it does not prevent it. Moving the tables to SQL Server Express while keeping the Access front end is the cheapest real fix.
Does Microsoft have a tool to convert an Access database to Power Apps? There is a GA first-party migration tool, run from Access's export feature, and it moves tables, relationships and data into Dataverse. It does not convert forms, reports, queries, macros or VBA, because Dataverse is a data source and the interface layer is rebuilt in Power Apps. Microsoft publishes an exclusion list covering OLE Object and Calculated columns, attachment handling and decimal precision, so check it against your schema before you plan.