Checked September 26, 2026. Based on published pricing, 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.
Two facts settle most of this comparison, and neither is on the front of either pricing page. Monday includes unlimited viewers from its cheapest paid tier. Airtable counts every editor and caps records per base.
If lots of people need to look at something, Monday is dramatically cheaper. If your data has real structure, Airtable is doing something Monday doesn't.
At a glance
| Airtable | Monday.com (Work Management) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Database with spreadsheet-style views | Work management across boards |
| Free plan | $0 — 5 editors, 50 commenters, 1,000 records per base | €0 — up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 3 docs |
| Entry paid | Team — $20/user/month billed annually | Basic — €9/seat/month, unlimited viewers |
| Mid tier | Business — $45/user/month billed annually | Standard — €12/seat; Pro — €19/seat |
| Enterprise | Enterprise Scale — custom | Custom |
| Data ceiling | 50,000 records per base (Team); 125,000 (Business) | Unlimited items from Basic |
| Automation ceiling | Capped at the plan's usage limit | 250/month (Standard); 25,000 (Pro); 250,000 (Enterprise) |
| Product split | One product | Separate products — Work Management, CRM, Service, Dev, each priced differently |
Sources: Airtable pricing and monday.com pricing, both checked September 26, 2026.
On the numbers. Monday's page served us euros and prices per seat, with the seat selector defaulting to a multi-seat quantity — so the total shown isn't the entry price for one person. Airtable's $20 and $45 are annual-billing figures; its monthly rates are higher. Check both in your own region.
Unlimited viewers is the headline
Monday's Basic plan at €9 a seat includes unlimited viewers. People who need to see a board but not edit it cost nothing.
Airtable has no equivalent on paid plans. Its free tier distinguishes 5 editors from 50 commenters, but once you're paying, the people doing operational work are editors and editors are seats.
Run ten people who edit and thirty who only need visibility. On Monday Basic that's 10 × €9 = €90 a month, with the thirty viewers free. On Airtable Team it's potentially 40 seats at $20 — $800 a month — unless those thirty genuinely never need to change a record.
For any tool where a wide audience reads and a narrow group maintains, this is the single largest cost difference between the two.
Airtable's records versus Monday's automations
They ration different things, and both will eventually make you upgrade.
Airtable caps records — 1,000 per base free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business. An operational dataset that grows steadily will reach those.
Monday gives unlimited items from Basic but caps automations: 250 a month on Standard, 25,000 on Pro, 250,000 on Enterprise. Basic has no automation allowance published at all, and workflows are similarly tiered — 3 on Standard, 20 on Pro, 250 on Enterprise.
So a process-heavy team on Monday gets pushed from Basic to Standard to Pro by automation volume rather than data volume. A data-heavy team on Airtable gets pushed by record count. Work out which of those describes you, because it's the thing that will move you up a tier in six months.
Monday sells four products, not one
This catches people out and it's worth knowing before you compare prices.
Monday publishes separate pricing for Work Management, CRM, Service and Dev, and the rates differ substantially. Work Management Basic is €9 a seat; CRM Basic is €18 monthly (€12 annually); Service Standard is €31; Dev Basic is €9.
If your team needs both a project board and a CRM, you are potentially buying two products at two per-seat rates rather than one subscription covering both. Airtable, by contrast, is one product — you build a CRM base and a project base in the same workspace at the same per-seat price.
Price your actual combination rather than the cheapest single tier on Monday's page.
The structural difference
Airtable stores records with relationships. Linked tables, typed fields, multiple views over the same underlying data. If your information has genuine structure — a product connected to orders connected to customers — that's what it's for.
Monday organises work on boards. Items move through statuses, people get assigned, dashboards summarise. It's excellent at making a process visible and less suited to being a system of record.
The usual failure: teams pick Monday for something that's really a database and end up with boards that duplicate information because nothing is properly linked. Or they pick Airtable for project tracking and miss the workload views that make coordination easy.
Which should you choose?
Choose Monday if many people need visibility and few need to edit, if your work is process-shaped, or if per-seat cost at scale matters. Unlimited viewers from €9 a seat is hard to beat for a widely-read tool.
Choose Airtable if your data has relationships that matter, if you need typed fields that stay typed, or if you want one product covering several different datasets rather than buying separate Monday products.
Count your viewers first. It's the number most likely to make one of these several times more expensive than the other, and it's the one most teams never write down.
Where Jet Admin fits
Jet Admin overlaps with Airtable more than with Monday, so treat this as an interested party's account.
The overlap is the case where Airtable has become an operational system — several people working in it daily, paying per editor. Jet Admin connects to a database or API you already have and includes unlimited users, which is the same argument Monday makes with unlimited viewers, applied to editing as well.
Where Airtable wins outright is being the data store. Jet Admin needs a database to point at. And Monday's boards, dashboards and work views are a different job again — Jet Admin doesn't attempt project management.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper?
Usually Monday, and by a wide margin when viewers outnumber editors. Ten editors and thirty viewers is around €90 a month on Monday Basic against potentially $800 on Airtable Team if all forty need edit access.
How many people can use the free plans?
Monday: up to 2 seats, with 3 boards and 3 docs. Airtable: 5 editors plus 50 commenters, capped at 1,000 records per base. Airtable's free tier is more generous for a small group.
Does Monday limit how much data I can store?
Items are unlimited from Basic. What's capped is automations — 250 a month on Standard, 25,000 on Pro — and workflows, at 3, 20 and 250 across the tiers.
Is Monday really €9 a seat?
That's the Work Management Basic rate. CRM, Service and Dev are priced separately and cost more — CRM Basic is €18 monthly. The seat selector also defaults to a multi-seat quantity, so the total displayed isn't a one-person price.
Can Airtable do project management?
Adequately, with grid, kanban and calendar views. It lacks the workload and dependency tooling Monday builds around, so coordination across several people is where it gets uncomfortable.
Can Monday act as a database?
For simple structured data, yes. It has no real equivalent of Airtable's linked records and typed fields, so relational data tends to get duplicated across boards over time.
Count viewers, then count relationships
Two questions decide it. How many people need to see this without changing it — and does your data have relationships that matter?
Many viewers, process-shaped work: Monday, comfortably cheaper. Real relational structure: Airtable, and the per-seat premium buys something Monday doesn't offer.
And if you're paying per editor for people who mostly read and update records, look at what unlimited users costs over the same data before renewing either.
