The short answer
Pick Airtable if
The team wants the established product with nothing to install, the apps it already uses connect to Airtable, and the seat count is small. Every editor costs $20 a month on Team with annual billing.
Pick NocoDB if
The team is growing past a handful of editors, the data has to stay on your own server, or it already lives in PostgreSQL or MySQL. Plus stops charging after nine seats, and the Community edition costs nothing to self-host.
| Airtable | NocoDB | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 · 1,000 records per base up to 5 editors | $0 · 1,000 records 3 editors, 10 commenters |
| Entry paid tier | Team $20/seat/mo annual ($24 monthly) · 50,000 records | Plus $12/seat/mo annual ($15 monthly) · 50,000 records |
| Seat ceiling | none, every seat is billed | Plus capped at $108/mo Business at $216/mo |
| API calls a month | 1,000 Free · 100,000 Team unlimited from Business | 1,000 Free · 100,000 Plus 1,000,000 Business |
| Self-hosting | not available on any plan | Community edition free Business $24/seat/mo annual |
| Licence | proprietary service | Sustainable Use License since 9 January 2026 |
| Blind spot | the bill grows with every editor | free cloud plan holds 3 editors |
Checked 26 October 2026 against airtable.com/pricing, nocodb.com/pricing (cloud and self-hosted tabs), NocoDB's licence page and its documentation on external data sources. Annual billing unless stated. All prices in US dollars.
What NocoDB is for
NocoDB gives a team the interface Airtable made familiar: records in a grid, the same records as a kanban board, gallery, calendar or form, links between tables, and an API for every table. Airtable keeps every base in its own cloud. NocoDB keeps its bases in a database you choose, SQLite in the one-line Docker install or PostgreSQL on a production server, and it can also open a database you already run.
The data source guide covers that last case: point NocoDB at PostgreSQL 14 or later, or MySQL 5.7 or later, and the tables appear as a base. SQL Server and Oracle are add-ons for Enterprise customers. Schema editing on a connected database is off by default, and the guide asks you not to switch it on "unless it is absolutely necessary", because changes made in NocoDB alter the real tables. NocoDB's plan table allows one such connection on Free and Plus and ten on Business. It gives a team whose records already sit in an application's database a grid over them without copying anything.
How much NocoDB costs next to Airtable
Airtable's pricing page prices every paid plan per seat. Team is $20 a seat a month on annual billing and $24 month to month; Business, where SAML single sign-on and the admin panel come in, is $45 and $54. Enterprise Scale is priced by sales.
NocoDB's cloud plans are per seat as well. Plus is $12 a seat on annual billing, and the page adds "Unlimited seats at just $108" a month, so the ninth seat is the last one that costs anything. Business is $24 a seat with a ceiling of $216. On monthly billing the seat prices are $15 and $30 and the ceilings $135 and $270. Commenters do not need a paid seat on Plus.
The paid tiers hold similar amounts of data. Airtable Team allows 50,000 records per base, 25,000 automation runs and 20 GB of attachments per base. NocoDB Plus lists 50,000 records, 30,000 automation runs and 20 GB of storage. Further up, NocoDB Scale costs $45 a seat with a three-seat minimum and holds a million records, with row-level security and audit logs; Airtable's custom-priced Enterprise Scale tops out at 500,000 records per base.
The free plans, line by line
Both free plans stop at 1,000 records, 100 automation runs and 1,000 API calls a month. Airtable's allows up to five editors, any number of bases, 1 GB of attachments per base and two weeks of revision history. NocoDB's has room for three editors and ten commenters, 1 GB of storage, one extension and one interface of up to three pages, and keeps three days of history. On the cloud, Airtable's free plan is the roomier of the two. NocoDB's generous free option is the Community edition on your own server.
Is NocoDB open source?
Not under an OSI-approved licence any more. NocoDB's licence page dates the move from AGPL-3.0 to the Sustainable Use License to 9 January 2026. Internal use "is permitted for organizations of all sizes", including self-hosting and modifying the code. A commercial licence is needed once "your business model makes money from access to NocoDB": selling it as a hosted or managed service, giving outside customers direct access, or reselling it. The GitHub repository carries the new licence and more than 65,000 stars. How the change compares with Baserow's MIT licence is the subject of Baserow vs NocoDB.
Running NocoDB on your own server
The README starts with one Docker command that keeps NocoDB's data in SQLite on a mounted folder and serves the app on port 8080. It also shows a PostgreSQL setup for a server a whole team will depend on. On the self-hosted tab, the free Community edition includes unlimited records, storage and seats, every role, six view types, record comments, conditional webhooks, workflows and interfaces.
The paid self-hosted plans add the controls larger companies ask for. Business is $24 a seat a month on annual billing ($30 monthly) and brings SAML single sign-on, scripts and dashboards, table and field permissions, teams and sync from outside apps. Scale at $45 adds audit logs and row-level security. The self-hosted tab shows no seat ceiling for these plans, so the cloud's nine-seat cap does not carry over.
Moving a base out of Airtable is a separate job. NocoDB has an Airtable import, and Airtable self-hosted sets out what it brings across and what has to be rebuilt by hand, formula fields and automations among them.
Frequently asked
How much does NocoDB cost?
NocoDB Cloud has a free plan with 1,000 records and 3 editors. Plus is $12 per seat a month billed annually and never more than $108 a month, and Business is $24 per seat, capped at $216. Self-hosted, the Community edition is free and Business costs $24 per seat a month billed annually. Prices checked 26 October 2026.
Is NocoDB open source?
Not under an OSI licence any more. Since 9 January 2026 NocoDB is published under the Sustainable Use License, a fair-code licence that lets organisations of any size use, modify and self-host it for free, and requires a commercial licence to sell NocoDB itself as a hosted or managed service.
Is NocoDB cheaper than Airtable?
Yes on every published tier. NocoDB Plus is $12 per seat against $20 for Airtable Team, and its bill stops growing at nine seats. For 20 editors a year costs $4,800 on Airtable Team and $1,296 on NocoDB Plus, and the self-hosted Community edition has no licence fee.
Can NocoDB replace Airtable?
For grids, forms, kanban boards and an API over your records it covers the same ground, and unlike Airtable it can run on your own server. A move means rebuilding formula fields and automations, because NocoDB's Airtable import does not bring them across.
What self-hosting actually costs
Twenty editors over twelve months, the size at which NocoDB's seat ceiling shows. At five editors the hosted figures are $1,200 and $720.
| Airtable Team | NocoDB Cloud Plus | NocoDB Community, self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licence, 20 editors | $4,800/yr ($20 × 20 × 12) | $1,296/yr (capped at $108/mo) | $0 |
| Server | included | included | ~$72/yr (2 vCPU, 4 GB) |
| Your time | none | none | ~2 h setup + ~12 h/yr |
| Record ceiling | 50,000 per base | 50,000 | your hardware |
| Year one | $4,800 | $1,296 | ~$72 + 14 hours |
Assumptions, so you can argue with them: the same 2 vCPU, 4 GB server at about $6 a month that every self-hosted cost on this site uses, two hours to install and an hour a month for updates and backups. The self-hosted column is the free Community edition. If the team needs single sign-on on its own server, self-hosted Business at $24 a seat comes to $5,760 a year for twenty editors, more than NocoDB's own cloud, since the cloud ceiling does not apply there. Between the two hosted columns no hourly rate is involved: NocoDB Plus is $3,504 a year cheaper at this size.