UPDATE 10/31 - we have changed the way we enforce API limits on our Trial and Free plan. Please see our support center for the latest information.
Hello, Airtable community! I'm Nitya, senior product marketing manager here at Airtable. I wanted to share more information about recent changes to our pricing plans.
Over the past few years, we’ve released many new products and features – including new sync integrations, extensions, and automation capabilities – and the way customers use Airtable has evolved. We’re updating our plans to ensure people have flexible options based on their needs, reflecting feedback we heard from customers and how they use our platform. For example, many Pro plan customers have asked for access to features that were previously limited to the Enterprise plan, and that extension limits were too stringent.
Our new plans give customers a progressive journey as their organization’s use of Airtable becomes more complex, mapping the features and functionality that customers need with their stage of growth. Below is an overview of the key changes we’ve made and some background on these changes.
Updating the Airtable Free Plan
Airtable’s Free plan gives you the ability to start building your own flexible apps. We’ve updated the Free plan to be more reflective of the types of usage we see from customers who are just getting started building apps in Airtable. With the changes to the free plan, you'll continue to be able to build your own flexible apps, but will notice a few changes in our storage capacity and limits.
Specific changes to the Airtable Free plan include:
- Bases: You’ll still be able to create unlimited bases to manage your workflows
- Record limits: 1,000 per base
- Attachment storage space: 1 GB total storage per base
- API limits: 1,000 API calls per month before rate limits are imposed. You can review current rate limits in our developer docs.
- Sync integrations and extensions: These will now only be available on paid Airtable plans
If you’re a Free plan customer, there’s no action required on your part, but you can manage your plan and review usage at any time by visiting your workplace settings. If you are over the limits of the Free plan, none of your data will be removed or deleted from Airtable, but you will see notifications that you have exceeded new limits or are using functionality that is no longer available. If your needs exceed what’s included in the Free plan, we offer multiple paid plans that can help you manage your work in Airtable.
Creating a New Team Plan for Current Plus and Pro Customers
We will replace our current Plus and Pro plans with a single offering for small teams: the Airtable Team plan.
As an Airtable Team customer, you can create tailored apps for your team that power critical workflows using features like Gantt and Timeline views, forms, and advanced controls including private views and table permissions.
For Airtable Plus customers
Plus customers will get access to the Team plan features without any increase to your bill. If you're a Plus customer today, you'll have the features you enjoy on your current plan, with a few updates including:
- Increased storage and record space: Scale your data with 10GB of storage and 50,000 records per base
- API limits: 100,000 API calls per month before rate limits are imposed. You can review current rate limits in our developer docs.
- Sync integrations: You will still have access to Airtable’s most popular sync integrations like Google Docs and Slack, but certain sync integrations like Jira and Salesforce will only be available on the Business and Enterprise Scale plans.
- Basic permissions: Manage your team’s data and access with field and table editing permissions.
For Airtable Pro customers
Pro customers will be automatically migrated to the new Team plan and will see similar functionality to what you’re currently using on Airtable today, with a few updates including:
- Extensions: You can now add unlimited extensions to your Airtable bases
- Automations: 25,000 runs per month
- API limits: 100,000 API calls per month before rate limits are imposed. You can review current rate limits in our developer docs.
- Attachment storage space: 10GB total storage per base
- Sync integrations: You will still have access to Airtable’s most popular sync integrations like Google Docs and Slack, but certain sync integrations like Jira and Salesforce will only be available on the Business and Enterprise Scale plans.
Although the vast majority of customers will not exceed these new limits we recognize that some of you will be impacted and do not take these changes lightly. If you’re a customer with bases over the Team data limits, all of your data will still be available in Airtable, however, you’ll need to upgrade to add any more attachments or records or continue using any active sync integrations available on a higher capacity plan.
Improving How We Serve Enterprises
Finally, we are introducing two new Airtable plans geared towards multi-team organizations. Airtable Business is for small businesses and departments that need advanced features and basic admin capabilities, offered at $45 per user per month on an annual plan and $54 per user per month on a monthly plan. Smaller organizations can purchase Business on their own, and we encourage larger organizations to contact our sales team to discuss the Business plan. Enterprise Scale is for large enterprises building flexible and powerful apps that can scale across their organizations, and pricing is customized to the organization’s needs.
If you are currently on Airtable's Enterprise plan, you will not see any changes today. Your account team will provide more information to your organization’s admins and billing owners so they can choose the right plan prior to your contract renewal. If you’re interested in learning more about these plans today, you can contact our sales team.
Looking for more info?
We’re here to help you throughout the process. To get more information about migration timelines, what happens if your account is over limits, and to see a full overview of the changes, please review this Help Center article.
Wow. @nityadb and the Airtable team really needs to up their game on their communication, transparency, and good will to existing customers.
AT BEST, existing customers got bait-and-switched into paying more for less. AT WORST, Airtable is hostaging businesses and shaking them down for more money. There are no good outcomes here, and it's terrible.
@Robert_William1
> Is there an extension for moving all my clients from Airtable to Google Sheets, Smartsheets, or Glide?
Those would be very clunky replacements for Airtable. There are much better choices now, which are specifically designed to be Airtable clones/alternatives.
Look into SeaTable, APITable, NocoDB, Baserow, Grist, Rowy, etc.
I've been collecting a comparison table of features if you'd like to see it, not sure if I should post a link here.
I just received this response saying nothing and including various links to pages I had visited before making my query, including one that will take you right back here, which I guess is the perfect response since all they seem capable of doing is sending us in circles.
Hi,
Thank you for your patience and for reaching out with these questions – we appreciate your feedback and understand your concerns about API usage and the new plan limits.
If you exceed the monthly limit, you will continue to have access to our APIs, but see a lower rate limit for the remainder of the month. Once that month ends, your rate limit will go back to normal. Rate limited requests will return a 429 status as documented here. We’re working to provide better ways to monitor your current usage in workspace settings and will have more to share soon. We understand your request for better visibility into your current API usage so I will share this feedback with our product and engineering teams. For now, please visit this community post to read more details on the motivation behind this change and to follow along for updates.
Additionally, there have been some questions around what constitutes an API call – this can be defined as a single REST HTTP request to any endpoint documented in our API documentation. If multiple calls are made to any of these endpoints to retrieve or modify data, each individual call is counted as one. For example a "list records" request then a "update records" request would count as 2 requests.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we roll out these plan changes and process feedback. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. We're here to help!
Best,
Airtable Developer Support Engineering Team
Yup, the new API limit is really not transparent, pricing page and support are not saying the same thing - who do we trust? Well... None of them.
@Rui_Chen1
AT BEST, existing customers got bait-and-switched into paying more for less. AT WORST, Airtable is hostaging businesses and shaking them down for more money. There are no good outcomes here, and it's terrible.
I don't really agree. Existing Pro plan will end up paying the same for 50% less power, indeed.
But the new Business plan is a good thing for many who were reaching the limits of the Pro plan, it's a good and welcome alternative for those who couldn't afford the Enterprise plan. (I'm amongst those)
Many are going to have to upgrade and pay x2 pricing, but they will get a lot more records and Attachment storage in return, that's got to count for something 😉
Although, I'd have preferred if they had kept the existing Pro plan, removed the useless Plus plan, and added the Business, without that clumsy API rate limit and 50% less power on Pro. That new pricing would have been good news for everybody.
Clearly, Airtable missed a good opportunity to do things properly, but I wouldn't call it all bad either.
P.S: I had forgotten how this new community forum/tool is terrible compared to before, tough reminder.
Can't say I'm thrilled with this announcement, quietly disappointed actually - so much so won't even bother to leave my real thoughts. Essentially, I've signed up and paid to use Pro, I and now it's been taken away from me - as mentioned by others "Bait and switch". Not only taken away from me, but the users that I've also set-up with Pro - you've essentially given me work to now figure out and resolve with my users and their management.
Similarly to "Plus" plans always having that vibe of a second-class citizen to "Pro" - now I'm getting those vibes for "Teams" in the face of "Business" plans.
> Many are going to have to upgrade and pay x2 pricing, but they will get a lot more records and Attachment storage in return, that's got to count for something 😉
unless they don’t need more records, and just need multi-source syncing or one of the other things being arbitrarily removed. Then that doesn’t count for sh!t.
@nityadb you getting these replies? Its kinda embarrassing being the face of such a stupid change for some of your biggest evangilists lol.
Most of us on here have probably on boarded colleagues / other companies and teams onto airtable plans and we get a smack to the nutsack in return lmao.
Never knew being so anti-customer was the new business trend. Oh well, beware beware building on someone else's platform.
The mission for everyone should be: Build on airtable, scale up to see if it is viable then once you get to critical mass begin your own systems to shift over your company and massively cut down on your costs.
Taking into account the increase in the number of records, is there any improvement on the overall performance of bases and API when going from Legacy Pro to Business?
We have seen that after you have a base with more than 1k records, performance gets lower, as the interface loading takes time, and when using third parties to inquiry such as Miniextensions, Bubble, or Parabola, te times are painful. Hopefully this is also addressed with this change?
@nityadb I think we all appreciate that you've addressed some of our concerns regarding the API limitations, but it's frustrating to see that you're replying to (and thus, reading) our concerns, but then see you entirely ignore everything other than the API. Can we please get some comments on:
- Cutting multi-source syncing and "custom" syncs from Pro
- Cutting email support
- The reasoning for removing these features in the middle of year-long contracts
- The reasoning for only giving us three weeks to react to these changes
Your loyal evangelists are eagerly awaiting a response.
@nityadb
Just a suggestion in the spirit of disclosure and respect for your client base.
Since the last response from support on API request monitoring was
"We’re working to provide better ways to monitor your current usage in workspace settings and will have more to share soon."
Would it not be more fair to postpone the conversion of existing Pro accounts to team until after the way to "monitor your current usage" has been implemented, and existing Pro account users are given sufficient time to monitor and evaluate? Thirty days would probably be reasonable.
Thanks.
I have been experimenting with various bases and found a workflow that works well with my budget and use. If I recall, there was a paid plan for 9/mo which I was getting ready to pull the trigger on. It was the main reason I started with Airtable, because the upgrade path was within reason for resources I projected would be needed. I do not use much bandwidth in terms of API calls and only use 2 extensions across 10 small bases. Now, it seems the 9/mo is gone and replaced with 20/mo?
$240.00/year to essentially to keep 1 custom script I wrote that sums and ranks a few values in a table is not something that works for me. I really do not understand why there isn't a light plan for light users with API throttling.
It's strange that the price increase comes shortly after AI integration which, at this moment I have no plans to use, yet..
Why not give us the option to pay 9/mo for access to 2 extensions per base, and 2 gigs? Heck, I'd even take 1 extension. Or charge me per extension.
If anyone has a list comparison of all the airtables alternatives would be great
So that people that wont continue on airtable like us can see what are the best alternatives
Totally disappointed by this change just like all other airtable users. Pro plan users, just like me, seem to be hit the hardest here. Lots of cuts and downgrades, while the price remains the same, essentially giving us just 2 options, upgrade to Enterprise or go to an airtable alternative.
We've been on the Pro plan for few years now. Our company runs around it. And these sudden downgraded changes is forcing us to look for alternatives. You should honor the legacy plan or give 1+ year to migrate. 3 weeks notice is not going well, and causing lot of heartburn against Airtable.
Re-think your decision please.
At the very least, the proposed API restrictions should be paused until Airtable is able to display API usage. You'll be potentially killing business-critical functions while giving zero visibility. We can't plan for it if you can't show us.
As an aside, I'd have hoped such significant changes to plans would have been applied to forthcoming customers, allowing current customers to continue on the previously agreed terms for an extended time at least.
@airhead Yes, an a la carte option would be ideal for me (and other light users, I assume). I would easily pay $5-10 a month to enable (AKA keep using) the one extension I have. And along that route, purchasing add-ons to enable colored columns, synced bases, etc. might work in a lot of scenarios. For me, the gap between the free plan and the upcoming lowest paid plan ($20 or $24 a month) is such a huge gap, not just in price but offering far more features than what I've ever used or will need with my current plan. Airtable was such a great tool for light users and that's what caused so many people like me to evangelize it in the first place.
@Jonathan11
Thanks for the list of alternatives you've been looking into. Just played around with SeaTable and it has so many features that I've been waiting years for Airtable to implement (things as simple as grouping dates by month, or a LOOKUP function in a formula field).
SeaTable looks appealing, it provides a way to avoid lock-in as well, with on-premises licences.
Really interesting, especially when Airtable is so limited with anything in regard of EU regulations (GDPR, Health data, etc.)
Edit: Oh, and SeaTable also provides a free Enterprise plan, self-hosted (in addition to their cloud offering).
Good to know for those who would like to try it out, I sure will.
I wonder if Airtable is getting ready for an IPO. This pricing move will probably increase their short term revenue from customers with vendor lock-in as they upgrade to Business.
By the time those customers eventually switch to a competing product and are ready to start cancelling Airtable subscriptions, it may be a public company.
Funny though, since there are other ways to increase customer spend without losing them - a la carte rows and storage upgrades for example, as some of you have mentioned.
I use Stackerhq.com with a client. I did a quick audit of who is controlling my client’s data in Airtable (needs editing) vs. who is consuming it via Stacker (needs minimal editing which Stacker provides). Airtable’s quick trigger chaos just saved us 6 Airtable seats which will more than cover the admin upgrades. Now I’ll spend the time making our Stacker site is even more functional via editing capabilities and cut some more seats.
Downgrading isn't an option which is why I'm completely shocked Airtable handled it this way. But, there is a positive outcome for our company and I hope you can find one for yours too. Especially if it means driving traffic to Stacker while enjoying the Airtable upgrades.
Yeah, an IPO has been discussed for a while now. I'm not sure what's going on with the company in general, but it seems like there's a real disconnect between leadership and team members. Feedback is acknowledged but never acted on. The Product Ideas board has never been groomed, as far as I can see. Glassdoor reviews (not always accurate, but you can see what specific complaints employees have) don't paint the best picture.
There's a lot to like about Airtable as a product, but as a service... I gave up hope a long time ago that they're going to get better at communicating sweeping changes that affect users.
@Robert_William1
I'm in a similar situation with a client, and looking at this the same way I guess the additional cost per airtable seat going from the new "team" to the new "business" will probably be offset. I'm just disturbed by the lack of notice (my client just bought an "annual" Pro plan three weeks before the announcement), and the inability to provide access to details on the API call usage.
Stacker is concerned, they're making a lot of api calls and their clients are the ones who have to pay more to airtable. If they (and other partners) were only notified of the changes at the same time we were how can we expect better.
I believe Airtable handled the API key transition very well, providing users and partners ample time to plan for the change and deal with it. I guess it got my expectations too high.
Stacker is concerned, they're making a lot of api calls and their clients are the ones who have to pay more to airtable. If they (and other partners) were only notified of the changes at the same time we were how can we expect better.
Indeed, they are. And I can confirm they were told at the same time as everybody. Same goes for Noloco, Softr, etc.
It's currently unknown how the update will affect people using those tools. Hopefully, it only concerns people who aren't on the Business plan (I plan to upgrade), so it shouldn't be too bad if you can afford to migrate to Business.
Well, I guess this disappointing announcement is an opportunity for other businesses.
Migrate to business, remove most Airtable users and use a different tool to build your UI seems to be the way to go for cost saving!
