Side-by-side comparison · Databases & Backend
Airtable vs Appwrite vs PlanetScale
Everything that matters when choosing between them, in one place: our rating, what each can do, what they cost, and the trade-offs.
Comparing 3 tools, the maximum.
At a glance
Airtable
3.9Pick it if: Small marketing and ops teams who need a shared database and don't have a developer.
Appwrite
3.7Pick it if: Builders who want Firebase-style convenience without being tied to one company's cloud.
PlanetScale
3.9Pick it if: Teams running a real product who need their database to stay fast and never go missing.
Overview
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| In one line | Spreadsheets that behave like a database, with forms, views and automations built in. | An open-source, all-in-one backend with a database, logins, storage and hosting. | Fast, serious databases for apps that have outgrown the free tiers. |
| Pricing model | Freemium | Open source | Paid |
| Starting price | $24/seat/mo | From $25/mo | From $5/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | No |
| Works with Claude Code | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Rating breakdown
Our scores out of 5. The higher bar in each row is highlighted.
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall rating | 3.9 | 3.7 | 3.9 |
| Ease of useHow quickly someone non-technical gets value from it. | 4.5 | 3.5 | 3.0 |
| FeaturesHow much it can do, and how well the pieces fit together. | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.5 |
| Output qualityHow good the results are before you fix them. | 4.0 | 3.5 | 5.0 |
| Value for moneyWhat you get for the price, including the free plan. | 3.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Speed & reliabilityHow fast it is and how often it falls over. | 4.0 | 3.5 | 5.0 |
Feature comparison
A tick means it does this today. A dash means we haven't checked.
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access & platform | |||
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mobile app | Yes | No | No |
| Desktop app | Yes | No | No |
| Browser extension | No | No | No |
| API access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Teams & business | |||
| Team workspace | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise plan or SSO | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Connects to other apps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open source or self-hosted | No | Yes | No |
| AI abilities | |||
| Works with your files | Yes | Yes | No |
| Understands images | No | No | No |
| Makes images | No | No | No |
| Makes video | No | No | No |
| Writes code | Yes | Yes | No |
| Runs agents or automations | Yes | Yes | No |
| Learns your brand or style | No | No | No |
| Works in many languages | Yes | – | – |
| Capabilities score | 11/ 17 | 9/ 17 | 4/ 17 |
Pricing
Plans as listed on each vendor's site when we last checked. Confirm before you buy.
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plans | Free Free One person or a tiny team with a small list. | Free Free Learning and small personal projects. | Postgres, single node From $5/mo Staging and small apps that can tolerate a restart. |
TeamOur pick $24/seat/mo, or $20/seat/mo billed yearly Most small teams. | ProOur pick From $25/mo Live apps and small teams. | Postgres, high availabilityOur pick From $15/mo Production apps with paying users. | |
Business $54/seat/mo, or $45/seat/mo billed yearly Bigger teams syncing data from other systems. | Enterprise Custom Companies with compliance needs. | Metal From $50/mo Apps where database speed is the bottleneck. | |
Enterprise Scale Custom Large organisations with many workspaces. | Self-hosted Free (your own server costs) Anyone who wants full control of their data. | Vitess (MySQL) From $39/mo MySQL apps that need to shard as they grow. | |
Enterprise Custom Single-tenant or fully managed setups. | |||
| Which plan to pick | Free is only for testing; you'll hit the 1,000-record cap fast. Team is the plan for nearly everyone, and billing yearly saves about 17 percent. Keep editor seats to the people who actually change data, since viewers and form fillers are free. | Free is enough to build and show a prototype. Pro at $25 is good value because the price covers your whole team rather than each seat. Self-host only if you already run servers; the time it takes to keep one patched quickly costs more than $25 a month. | Don't start here for a weekend project; Neon or Supabase are free. When a product has paying customers, the $15 high-availability Postgres is the sensible entry point. Only go to Metal once Insights shows the disk is the slow part. |
Key features
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
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Pros and cons
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
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Who each one is for
| Attribute | Airtable | Appwrite | PlanetScale |
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| Best for |
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How we compare
Ratings are our own, from using each tool, across ease of use, features, output quality, value for money, speed & reliability. The "Visit" buttons may use affiliate links, which never affect a score.
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