Airtable vs Monday.com: Which project management tool should you choose?

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TL;DR

• Compare monday.com (optimized for visual project tracking and chat) and Airtable (optimized for flexible data structures and scalability).
• Analyze critical differences in pricing plans, seat-based costs, record limits, and integrations.
• Learn how to use Softr to turn raw project data into secure customer portals and internal tools. [.blog-callout]

Airtable and monday.com are two big names in the project management space, and both have real strengths and real limitations. monday.com is great for teams with heavy communication and project tracking needs, while Airtable is a better fit for smaller businesses or companies that are scaling quickly and want to structure their data.

Managing your projects efficiently, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks, is essential to running a business well. But which tool fits your workflow best? And what happens when the one you prefer is missing a feature the other offers?

In this article, you'll get a closer look at the pros, cons, and pricing of each platform, plus how you can use Softr to turn either tool's data into a secure custom app.

Airtable vs monday.com: what are the differences?

Airtable is a project management tool and spreadsheet-database hybrid that lets you create and share relational databases. Those databases let teams manage projects in many views, including calendar, Gantt, and Kanban.

monday.com, on the other hand, is a project management platform that helps teams with time tracking, workflow automation, streamlined operations, and collaboration. This highly customizable tool lets users visualize their work as Kanban boards, timelines, or calendars.

Some of the main differences between the two platforms include:

1. Airtable takes longer to set up initially, because of its many integrations and customizability.
2. Airtable's free plan accommodates up to five users, while monday.com accommodates up to two.
3. monday.com has an in-app chat function while Airtable doesn't.
4. monday.com integrates with over 40 third-party apps, while Airtable's robust API and tools like Zapier let you connect with over 1,000 websites and apps.
5. Airtable's Block feature allows for 3D modeling, a feature monday.com isn't designed to offer.
6. monday.com has a limit of 10,000 items per board, while Airtable's limit is up to 50,000 records per base. This makes Airtable much more scalable (more on this later).
7. Airtable is built to focus on data gathering and helping users build custom applications, while monday.com focuses mostly on project tracking and team communication.
8. Airtable integrates with app-building platforms like Softr, so you can turn your databases into custom business apps, portals, and internal tools. monday.com doesn't offer this directly.

monday.com vs Airtable: what are the similarities?

Despite all the differences, monday.com and Airtable do share a few things in common, including:

1. Mobile versions are available for both tools.
2. Both tools offer different pricing plans to help accommodate teams of all sizes.
3. Both Airtable and monday.com have extensive video and written tutorials available in their knowledge bases.
4. You can keep detailed records of revisions and changes with both of these tools, helping your team with transparency and easier project tracking.
5. User access levels can be edited on both these platforms to increase security and data integrity.

Airtable pros and cons

Now that we've covered the differences and similarities between Airtable and monday.com, let's dive deeper into some of Airtable's best features and limitations.

Airtable's best features

If you've worked with spreadsheets before, getting the hang of Airtable is easy thanks to its familiar spreadsheet-like interface.

Some other functions that set the platform apart from Airtable alternatives include:

1. 3D space app. Airtable offers a 3D modeler app that lets you design and visualize rooms or models, effectively extending the functionality of your bases.
2. Integrations. One of Airtable's best qualities is that it integrates with app-building platforms like Softr. This lets you build custom internal tools like CRMs, client portals, and dashboards that stay seamlessly connected to all of your data. With Airtable forms, you can collect data from your app, which then gets stored in your Airtable database automatically.
3. A true all-in-one solution. Airtable allows you to link records, tables, and even bases, and keep all your data projects in one spot. No more switching between countless tabs and losing track of important information. You can also connect it to your other tools to automate tasks and optimize your workflow.
4. Wide variety of views. Airtable offers a wide variety of views, depending on your use case and needs. The Calendar view, for example, is perfect for visualizing deadlines or planning a content calendar. Other views include Gantt charts, timeline view, and Kanban boards.
5. Highly scalable. Another stand-out quality of Airtable is that it’s highly scalable. You can have unlimited bases, even on the free plan. Each base can have up to 1,000 tables, and between 1,200 records, on the free plan, to 100,000 records on the enterprise plan. This means that you won’t have to lose time migrating from one database to another once your business, or team, starts growing. Airtable grows with you.
6. Powerful content planning capabilities. Airtable is perfect for social media companies since it allows you to easily plan and visualize your content calendar, share it with clients with a single link, work on getting approval in real-time, and set up automations to simplify publishing. It even has a content calendar template to get you started.
7. Structured reporting. Since Airtable was designed as a database with a spreadsheet interface, you can use Airtable formulas to compute values and give structure to your data. This is great for presenting stakeholders, investors, and team members with a comprehensive set of information. monday.com lacks this structure when presenting data, especially for bigger projects or tasks.

"Though monday.com offers social media templates, Airtable takes planning to the next level with easy-to-use integrations directly to Facebook or LinkedIn. You can even archive relevant posts to track trends and plan your publishing schedule." - John Li, Co-founder and CTO of Fig Loans

Airtable's limitations

1. Only available in English. Like monday.com, Airtable's interface is only available in English, which makes it harder for multilingual teams to collaborate. With Softr, you can set your preferred language and add multilanguage support if needed.
2. Limited in-app communication. monday.com has a solid in-app chat function that lets team members communicate easily, almost like they're on Slack. On Airtable, you can comment and tag team members, but the communication capabilities are limited. Softr fills this gap with native record commenting, so your team can discuss work directly on the relevant records.
3. A higher learning curve. Airtable's complexity is often a selling point, but it also makes the platform harder for new users to get started with.

However, once you get past the learning curve and grow familiar with Airtable terminology, you'll have a far more capable platform on your side. There are also templates you can copy, a strong community, and plenty of tutorials to lean on.

How much does Airtable cost?

One of Airtable's advantages over monday.com is that its free plan is more generous and accommodates more seats, making it easy for smaller teams to get started. Let's take a closer look at what each pricing plan includes.

Airtable free plan

Airtable’s free plan is perfect for individuals and teams of up to 5 people who are just getting started with Airtable. This plan offers

1. Unlimited bases
2. Up to 5 creators or editors
3. Unlimited commenters and readers
4. One app per base
5. One sync integration
6. 1,200 records per base
7. 2GB of attachments per base

Airtable paid plans

Airtable’s paid plans include Plus, Pro, and Enterprise. The Plus plan is great for slightly larger teams and costs $10 per seat per month.

The Pro plan is suitable for companies and organizations who are looking to create workflows and apps that run their most important processes. This plan’s pricing begins at $20 per seat per month.

Airtable enterprise pricing

According to Airtable itself, the Enterprise plan is perfect for “departments and organizations who have advanced customization, scale, security, control, and support needs.”

This plan includes everything in Pro and then some! These additional features include:

1. Unlimited workspaces per organization
2. Unlimited apps
3. Salesforce and Jira on-prem sync integrations
4. 100,000 records per base
5. 1,000GB of attachments per base
6. 3-year revision and snapshot history
7. SAML-based single sign-on
8. Enterprise-wide admin panel
9. Ongoing success program
10. Included professional services
11. Add-on professional services

Airtable pricing for non-profits

In their efforts to make the platform accessible to as many people as possible, Airtable offers a special pricing plan for non-profits and educational organizations. To qualify, organizations must not

• Discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, political affiliation or beliefs, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression
• Be a government office or department
• Be a hospital or other care provider organization
• Be a private grant-making, independent, or operating foundation

For more information on Airtable pricing, best practices, and some pro tips, check out the video below.

monday.com pros and cons

monday.com's all-around project management solution is great for teams that rely heavily on communication outside the office, like hybrid and remote teams. The platform is also helpful for companies that work with freelancers or contractors and need to keep track of a lot of due dates.

Let's take a closer look at some of the pros and cons of monday.com.

monday.com's best features

monday.com is built for complex team interactions and brings a certain agility to any team. Some of its best features include:

1. Complex task management capabilities. monday.com is, in some ways, the queen of task management. One of its best capabilities is the "status" option, which lets team members cut back on unnecessary communication and keep each other updated on each project's status. Users can also attach pictures, videos, and links to better explain the status of tasks and solve problems faster.
2. 24/7 customer support. A big selling point for monday.com is its 24/7 customer support. Users fill out a simple form and get contacted by a representative regardless of the time or day, which is perfect for night owls who hit a problem at 3 AM.
3. In-platform chat. Another strong capability of monday.com is its in-platform chat. As mentioned earlier, this feature provides context to issues and saves users the trouble of sending countless emails or heading to Slack.
4. Automations. The platform's extensive automation options are a real time-saver. Users can automate notifications and task status changes when certain conditions are met. For example, if a team member is late to a deadline, an automated reminder gives them a nudge.

monday.com's limitations

1. Not as cost-effective for smaller teams. monday.com's free plan is really only useful for individuals planning their own workflow, while Airtable's free plan already supports a small team of five. monday.com also only lets users pay for five seats at a time, which is a loss for smaller businesses that hire the occasional contractor.
2. Limited integrations. If users can't find the integration they want on Airtable, they can use its robust API to solve the problem. monday.com doesn't offer that flexibility, so users are limited to the integrations already available, which caps how complex the platform can get.
3. Not as scalable. monday.com has a limit of 10,000 items per board. So while users save time getting started, they often spend that time later migrating to a different solution as projects grow.

"Airtable won me over because of one major advantage, scalability. Airtable lets you hold 50K records in a single table, while monday.com is limited to only 10K on each board. This isn't a big deal at first, but ongoing projects get larger over time and outgrow monday.com much more quickly than Airtable. As our business grows, Airtable can grow with us." - Anthony Martin, Founder and CEO of Choice Mutual

How much does monday.com cost?

So Airtable's free plan is more cost-effective than monday.com's. But what other features does monday.com offer to make up the gap? Let's take a look.

monday.com free plan

monday.com's free plan accommodates up to two seats and is best for individuals trying to keep track of their work. The offering includes:

1. Unlimited boards
2. Unlimited docs
3. 200+ available templates
4. Over 20 column types
5. iOS and Android apps

monday.com paid plans

monday.com's paid plans are Basic, Standard, and Pro. Here's what they offer:

monday.com enterprise pricing

monday.com's enterprise plan outshines the other plans by offering:

1. Enterprise-scale automations and integrations
2. Enterprise-grade security and governance
3. Advanced reporting and analytics
4. Multi-level permissions
5. Tailored onboarding
6. Premium support
7. The ability to create a dashboard that combines up to 50 boards

monday.com pricing for nonprofits

Similar to Airtable, monday.com also offers a special discount for nonprofits. Eligible nonprofits can access their first 10 seats for free and receive a 70% discount off the Pro plan.

The nonprofit plan includes all the features of the Pro plan, plus:

1. 1000 GB of storage
2. 5 years Activity Log
3. Up to 250,000 automations and integration actions
4. 50 boards per dashboard
5. Private workspaces
6. Pivot table

Which project management tool is right for you?

With Airtable, you can create and share relational databases that power custom applications and other platforms. It's highly scalable, offers sophisticated blocks and features, and has a robust API. monday.com, on the other hand, is a great fit for teams with complex interactions who want to automate their workflow, streamline operations, and improve collaboration.

Some of the key differences to weigh:

1. Airtable fosters a stronger community through Airtable Universe.
2. monday.com takes little time to set up, but is less flexible.
3. Airtable's learning curve is a bit steeper than monday.com's.
4. monday.com's in-app chat lets users communicate in context.
5. Airtable is more cost-effective and lets individuals and small businesses get started for free.
6. monday.com focuses more on task tracking and project completion, while Airtable supports building custom applications on top of your data.

How Softr turns either tool into a real business app

There's one thing neither Airtable nor monday.com does well: giving outside users (or even your own team) a clean, secure interface that shows only what they should see. Share a base or a board directly and people get broad access you can't easily control, and per-seat pricing climbs fast as you add users.

This is the gap Softr fills. You build a custom business app, portal, or internal tool on Softr Databases first, or by connecting Airtable and 17+ other data sources. On top of that data, you get a visual interface builder, granular users and permissions, and native Softr Workflows triggered directly by actions in your app. If you'd rather skip the manual setup, describe what you need to Softr's AI Co-Builder and it generates the database, pages, and logic for you, ready to refine by hand.

Teams use this to replace scattered spreadsheets and overpriced tools with apps tailored to how they actually work.

"I find Softr very intuitive and easy to navigate, which is great for someone who is not a programmer by nature. It integrates very nicely with Airtable and other databases we are already using, making it nice that it just sits on top of the systems we have. I also love the ability to control access globally, which is really important for data security and privacy." - Natalie S., Director of Operations, G2 review

If you want task tracking, CRMs, and client-facing tools built off the same data so they all work together seamlessly, pairing Airtable (or Softr Databases) with Softr is the answer. For more options, compare the best Airtable alternatives, the top monday.com alternatives, and the best no-code databases before you commit.