Checked September 26, 2026. Based on published pricing pages, not a hands-on build. Jet Admin publishes this comparison and operates in the no-code space — read the "Where Jet Admin fits" section with that in mind.
One of these is free and one costs $20 per person per month. That gap is the comparison, and it only makes sense once you see what Airtable's Free plan actually allows: 1,000 records per base.
Not 1,000 rows per table across your workspace — 1,000 per base. Most people evaluating Airtable hit that ceiling during the evaluation. It is a genuine trial limit, not a small plan, and it means the real comparison is usually between free Google Sheets and Airtable Team at $20 a user.
At a glance
| Airtable | Google Sheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free — 1,000 records per base, 1 GB attachments per base, 5 editors, 50 commenters | Free with a Google account |
| Paid entry | Team — $20/user/month billed annually | Workspace Starter — €6.80/user/month |
| Next tier | Business — $45/user/month billed annually | Standard €13.60; Plus €21.10 per user/month |
| Enterprise | Enterprise Scale — custom | Enterprise — contact sales |
| Records | 50,000 per base (Team); 125,000 (Business) | No per-seat record charge |
| Attachments | 20 GB per base (Team); 100 GB (Business) | 30 GB pooled (Starter); 2 TB (Standard); 5 TB (Plus) |
| User cap | — | Starter, Standard and Plus max 300 users |
Sources: Airtable pricing, Airtable plan limits and Google Workspace pricing, checked September 26, 2026.
A note on the Workspace figures. Google's pricing page served us euros, so those are the numbers quoted. Workspace prices vary by region and US dollar amounts will differ — check your own region before budgeting. Google also lists an annual commitment saving 16%, and promotional first-three-month rates that don't reflect the ongoing price.
You may already be paying for Sheets
Google Sheets is free with any Google account and included in every Workspace plan. If your organization runs on Workspace — for email, calendar and Drive — Sheets is already paid for. Its marginal cost is zero.
Airtable is additive. Ten people at $20 a month on Team is $200 a month, or $2,400 a year, on top of whatever you already pay for email and documents. At Business it's $450 a month for the same ten people.
That framing matters because Airtable is frequently adopted for work Sheets already does adequately. If the honest answer to "what does Airtable do that Sheets can't?" is "it looks nicer," $2,400 a year is a lot for that.
What Airtable genuinely does better
Airtable is a database with a spreadsheet interface, and the difference is real:
Typed fields. A date field holds dates. A single-select holds one of a defined set. A linked record points at a row in another table. In Sheets, every cell is whatever someone typed, and data integrity is a matter of discipline.
Relations. Linking records across tables is the feature people actually switch for. Sheets can approximate it with VLOOKUP and its successors, but it's a formula, not a relationship, and it breaks when rows move.
Views. Grid, kanban, calendar and gallery views over the same underlying data, each filtered and sorted independently per user, without duplicating the data.
Interfaces. A usable front end over your data for people who shouldn't be editing the raw table.
If you're building something several people will use as an application rather than a document, those add up. If you're doing analysis, Sheets is the better tool and has the better formula language.
Where Airtable's limits bite
The per-base record caps are the thing to model before committing. Team gives 50,000 records per base and Business 125,000. Those are respectable, but they are per base, and a growing operational dataset — every order, every event, every log line — reaches them faster than people expect.
Airtable's own documentation notes you can still use bases that exceed record or attachment limits, and that automations and API calls cap at the usage limit. Worth confirming exactly what degraded behaviour looks like for your use case before you depend on it.
Google Sheets has its own scale ceilings, but they aren't per-seat charges and they don't escalate your bill as your data grows.
Which should you choose?
Choose Google Sheets if you're doing analysis, if the work is genuinely spreadsheet-shaped, if you're already on Workspace, or if cost matters and Airtable's advantages are aesthetic rather than structural for your case.
Choose Airtable if you need relations between tables, typed fields that stay typed, multiple views over the same data, or a usable interface for non-technical colleagues. If you've built something in Sheets that's becoming a fragile application held together by lookups, that's the signal.
Count seats before committing. Airtable's cost scales with people, not data. Five people is $100 a month on Team; twenty-five is $500. Whether that's worth it depends entirely on how many of those people genuinely need to be in the tool.
Where Jet Admin fits
Jet Admin overlaps with Airtable, so treat this as an interested party's account.
The overlap is specific: when you're using Airtable as an internal tool — a CRM, an operations tracker, a request queue — and paying per seat for people who only need to view and update records. Jet Admin connects to a database or API you already have and gives those people an interface over it, which changes the cost structure when a lot of your seats are consumers rather than builders.
Where Airtable wins outright is when you need the data store itself. Airtable is the database; Jet Admin needs one to point at. If your data lives in Airtable and works, there's no argument here.
Frequently asked questions
Is Airtable's free plan usable?
For evaluation and genuinely small projects. 1,000 records per base, 1 GB of attachments per base, 5 editors and 50 commenters. Most real operational uses exceed it quickly.
How much is Airtable for a team of ten?
$200 a month on Team at $20 a user billed annually, or $450 on Business at $45. That's per year: $2,400 and $5,400.
Is Google Sheets really free?
Yes with a personal Google account, and included in every Workspace plan. If you're already on Workspace, Sheets costs you nothing extra.
Can Sheets do what Airtable does?
Approximately, with effort. Lookups substitute for relations and data validation substitutes for typed fields, but both are conventions rather than guarantees. The maintenance burden is where the difference shows.
What happens when I exceed Airtable's record limit?
Airtable's documentation says you can still use bases that are over the limit, with automations and API calls capped at the usage limit. Confirm the specifics for your workflow before relying on it.
Which is better for non-technical colleagues?
Airtable, clearly — typed fields, views and Interfaces are designed for exactly that. A complex spreadsheet is easy to break by accident.
Decide on structure, then count seats
Ask one question first: does your data have relationships between tables that you're currently faking with lookups? If yes, Airtable is solving a real problem and the per-seat cost is buying something. If no, Sheets is free and probably sufficient.
Then multiply your seat count by $20 and decide whether that number is worth the difference.
If most of those seats are people who only read and update records rather than build, look at an interface layer over your existing data before paying per builder seat for every one of them.
