Airtable review: a relational database for tracking projects

What Airtable is

Airtable is a relational database with a spreadsheet-like surface. You work in bases, each base holds tables, and each table holds records. Records in different tables can be linked, so a project can point to its action items, its client and its owner.

Airtable is not a ready-made project tool. You decide which tables exist and how they connect, then build views, interfaces and automations for the people who use them. Airtable's template gallery includes project trackers if you would rather start from an existing base.

How project data is organized

Airtable's help center recommends keeping each list, such as projects, action items and clients, in its own table and connecting them with linked record fields. A link is two-way: linking an action item to a project also shows the action item on the project's record. Lookup fields then pull values across the link, so a task can show its project's due date without anyone retyping it.

Linked records can also point to the same table. Airtable gives tasks and subtasks, and projects and subprojects, as examples.

Views decide how a table looks. The help center lists grid (the default), form, calendar, gallery, kanban, timeline, list and Gantt views, and a table can have many views at once. Each view can filter, group, sort and color records. Personal and locked views, which stop others from changing a view's setup, are only on paid plans.

Interfaces for the rest of the team

Interface Designer builds custom pages on top of a base with drag-and-drop elements, without code. Airtable describes interfaces as a way to show each person only the data they need and let them act on it, for example an approval page for reviewers or an overview for stakeholders.

Interface Designer is on every plan, including Free. Airtable notes that some interface features, such as those around permissions, depend on the plan.

Automation and integrations

An automation is a trigger plus one or more actions. Triggers include a record being created, updated, entering a view or matching conditions, a form submission, a schedule, an incoming webhook and a button click. Actions include creating, updating or finding records, sending email, running a script, and sending messages or updates to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Jira, GitHub, Salesforce and Google Workspace.

Plan limits apply in three places:

• Runs per month: 100 on Free, 25,000 on Team, 100,000 on Business and 500,000 on Enterprise Scale. Failed runs count too.
• Automations per base: 75, 100, 150 and 200. Turned-off automations still count toward this.
• On Free, the Run a script action is unavailable and email can only go to base collaborators.

An automation lives in one base and cannot act on another. The help center's workarounds are syncing a table between bases, or a Run a script action that calls the Web API.

Airtable's AI, Omni, can build automations from plain-text requests. AI usage is metered in credits: 500 per editor each month on Free and 15,000, 20,000 or 25,000 per paid user on the paid plans, with extra credit packs available.

Gantt, timeline and roadmap views

The Gantt view is on all paid plans. It draws records as bars between a start date field and an end date field. Dependencies use a linked record field set as predecessors or successors, and records with only an end date can be shown as milestones. Gantt views cannot be printed directly; Airtable suggests a CSV download or the Page Designer extension.

The pricing page lists Gantt and timeline views from Team, and Roadmap view and Exec Summary cards from Business. It also lists date dependencies and a Utilization feature under project management, both marked new.

Record limits and what happens at the cap

Record limits are the number to check first, because they apply per base: 1,000 records on Free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business and 500,000 on Enterprise Scale. A project base with a few tables of tasks, subtasks and requests can grow faster than you expect.

According to the pricing page, when a base reaches its record or attachment limit, Airtable keeps your data and you can still use the base, but you cannot add more records or attachments until you upgrade. Automations and API calls stop at the plan's usage limit.

Large views load differently too. A view with more than 5,000 visible records opens as a 1,000-record preview until you choose to load everything.

Plans and what needs a paid tier

We do not publish prices because they change. Check Airtable's pricing page for current numbers. Paid plans charge for every user with edit permission on at least one base; read-only collaborators are not charged. The capability split we found on 19 October 2026:

• Free: unlimited bases, 1,000 records per base, up to 5 editors, 1 GB of attachments per base, 100 automation runs, one workspace and Interface Designer.
• Team: 50,000 records per base, 25,000 automation runs, 20 GB of attachments per base, Gantt and timeline views, extensions and standard sync integrations.
• Business: 125,000 records per base, 100,000 runs, 100 GB of attachments per base, two-way sync, premium sync integrations, Roadmap view, an admin panel and SAML-based single sign-on.
• Enterprise Scale: 500,000 records per base, 500,000 runs, 1,000 GB of attachments per base, HyperDB, App Library, Enterprise Hub, audit logs and DLP.

Portals, which give guest users access, are an add-on from Team upward.

Who Airtable fits

Airtable suits teams whose projects are really structured data: content pipelines, event logistics, inventories, product launches with many linked assets. It is a good match when one person can design the base and others mostly use the interfaces and forms built for them.

Who should look elsewhere

• If you need shared documents or a wiki next to your tasks, we did not find them among the features on Airtable's pricing page. Notion combines documents and databases.
• If you want Gantt charts on a free plan, Airtable's Gantt view needs a paid plan.
• If you would rather not design tables and relationships yourself, a project tool with a fixed structure may be easier to roll out.
• If your tracker will hold many thousands of records, check the per-base record limit on the plan you can afford.

How to trial Airtable

Start a base with two tables, Projects and Tasks, and link them. Add a lookup field for the project due date, a kanban view grouped by status and a form for new requests. Then build one interface for the people who will update tasks, and one automation, such as a notification when a task's status changes.

Free covers this, but remember the 1,000-record and 100-run limits. To test Gantt and timeline views you need Team; the pricing page offers a Try for free option on that plan.