Free and open source Airtable alternatives

Airtable is super cool, but it's also super expensive. Fortunately, there are some free and open source alternatives to Airtable, and they are pretty good at their job.

Free and open source Airtable alternatives

NocoDB - the best free Airtable alternative

NocoDB - Airtable free alternative

NocoDB is a NodeJS and Vue based Airtable alternative. It's by far the best open source nocode platform that I could find for now. 

Getting started with NocoDB and configuring it is easy as they provide multiple ways to install it:

NocoDB supports SQL databases only, which are:

  • MySQL
  • SQL Server
  • PostgreSQL
  • SQLite
  • MariaDB
  • Amazon Aurora
  • Oracle Database
  • Snowflake
  • Google BigQuery

An important thing to note: NocoDB allows a complete import of your Airtable collections. This feature is in beta, it works but there are some limitations for now.

Another good point: NocoDB provides a JS SDK to integrate it easily with your applications. It is currently limited to Javascript, but it might change in the future. You can also develop an SDK for other languages, it's open source after all.

Just like Airtable, NocoDB provides an App Store referencing different integrations with third-party apps. Check their website for the full list of integrations.

I won't go into details, I strongly suggest you to play around with it by your own and scrolling through their documentation.

 

Rowy - the GCP / Firebase alternative to Airtable

Rowy - Airtable free alternative

Rowy is a NodeJS / React based nocode platform focused on building your backend over Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Firebase. Because of this particularity, you must have a Google Cloud or Firebase project with Firestore and Firebase Authentication enabled. Of course, Rowy doesn't support any databases except Firestore, so your choice is limited.

But if you chose to go with Firestore, this might be what you were looking for...

Rowy is very focused on developer experience, allowing you to customize and extend your project fully. Just like NocoDB, you can import your Airtable collections for an easy migration. Rowy has the same features as the others nocode platfom, but its particularity resides in the capacity to write backend logic directly from your dashboard thanks to Derivatives and Connectors.

Again, I won't go into details so check their website and documentation and play around