The difference that actually matters
Airtable has no self-hosted option at any plan, including Enterprise. Every base lives on Airtable's servers, under Airtable's terms, and if the company changes pricing or shuts down a feature, you have no fallback except exporting your data. Baserow ships a free, MIT-licensed Open Source Edition you can run on your own server with no per-user fee and no row cap beyond what your hardware can hold. Baserow also sells a hosted cloud version for people who want the software without the maintenance, which is where its paid tiers come in.
Airtable pricing
Airtable's current pricing runs four tiers, all cloud-only:
The jump from Team to Business roughly doubles the seat price. For a five-person team, Team plan billed yearly runs about $100 a month; Business runs about $225. Neither figure includes the difference in automation runs, storage, or admin controls between tiers, so check Airtable's own pricing page for the current full breakdown before committing.
Baserow pricing
Baserow splits into two paths: self-host it yourself for free, or let Baserow host it for you.
A team that wants Airtable-like convenience without running a server can just buy Baserow's cloud Premium plan, which lands well under Airtable's Team tier per seat. A team with the technical staff to run a Docker container gets the same core software for the cost of a small VPS, no per-seat fee at all.
Where each company came from
Airtable was founded in 2013 by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas, and is based in San Francisco, according to Wikipedia. It has stayed a closed, venture-backed SaaS product since launch, with no open-source release of any part of the platform.
Baserow is built and maintained by Baserow B.V., a company based in the Netherlands, and publishes its core product as open source under the MIT license alongside its hosted cloud offering. That structure, an open-source core plus a paid hosted version, is the same model used by tools like GitLab and Ghost, and it's why self-hosting is a real option rather than a footnote.
What you actually give up on each side
On Airtable: no self-hosting, ever, at any price. Your data governance is whatever Airtable's terms of service say this year. In exchange you get a more mature ecosystem, more third-party integrations, and an interface millions of people already know.
On Baserow: fewer built-in integrations than Airtable, a smaller template library, and if you self-host, you're the one applying security patches and backups. In exchange you get to own the software outright, run it on hardware you control, and never pay a per-seat fee that scales against you as the team grows.
Frequently asked
Can I self-host Airtable?
No. Airtable is a closed, cloud-only service with no self-hosted option at any plan tier. Your data lives on Airtable's servers.
Is Baserow really free?
The self-hosted Open Source Edition is free under the MIT license, with no row or user caps beyond what your own server can handle. Baserow's cloud version, where the company hosts it for you, has a free tier capped at 3,000 rows per workspace, then paid tiers starting at $10 per user a month billed yearly.
Which one has a bigger row limit?
On Airtable's Free plan, records are capped per base rather than by a simple row count tied to storage. Baserow's cloud Free plan caps at 3,000 rows per workspace. Self-hosted Baserow has no built-in row cap; the limit becomes your server's storage and memory.