Airtable vs Google Sheets vs Excel: Database or Spreadsheet?

Airtable vs Google Sheets vs Excel at a glance

Airtable is a relational database that starts at $20 a seat a month on Team, billed annually. Google Sheets and Excel are spreadsheets. Sheets is free with any Google account, and Excel for the web is free with a Microsoft account. For business use, Sheets comes inside a Google Workspace plan from $7 per user a month on a one-year commitment, and desktop Excel inside Microsoft 365 from $10 per user a month, paid yearly. All checked on 27 October 2026.

Every row comes from the vendor's own pricing page or help center, in USD, read on 27 October 2026. Google and Microsoft prices are list prices, without introductory offers. The last row is our view, not the vendors'.

Sources: https://airtable.com/pricing, https://workspace.google.com/pricing and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/microsoft-365-apps-for-business, plus the help pages linked further down.

Is Airtable basically a spreadsheet?

No. Airtable looks like a grid, but it is a relational database: tables in a base, records in one table linked to records in another, and views, forms and interfaces built on top. Google Sheets and Excel are grids of cells and formulas. They overlap on simple lists and part ways once the data is connected.

In a spreadsheet, a customer's name is typed into the Orders tab, the Invoices tab and the Support tab. Rename the customer and you fix it in three places, or you build lookups to do it for you. In Airtable, each order is a record that links to one customer record. Change the customer once and every linked order shows the change.

Google Sheets and Excel are closer to each other than either is to Airtable. Google says you can convert Excel files into Sheets format, "or you can directly edit Excel spreadsheets, without having to make a copy".

How much do Airtable, Google Sheets and Excel cost?

All three have a free option. Paid, Airtable Team costs $20 a seat a month billed annually, Google Workspace Business Starter $7 per user a month on a one-year commitment, and Microsoft 365 Apps for business $10 per user a month paid yearly. For 10 people that is $2,400, $840 and $1,200 a year. Our arithmetic at list price, before tax, checked 27 October 2026.

The billing units differ, and that changes the totals. Google and Microsoft charge per user on the plan. Airtable charges per collaborator in a workspace: on Team, everyone who can edit or comment; on Business, editors and up. Read-only users, form submissions and share links are free. Airtable's pricing FAQ mentions only edit permissions, but its help center, updated in October 2026, says commenters are billable on Team.

So count who edits. If 4 of your 10 people only read, Airtable Team drops to 6 × $20 × 12 = $1,440 a year. Google and Microsoft would still bill all 10.

Microsoft 365 Apps for business includes desktop Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, but no business email. Without a one-year commitment, Google charges $8.40, $16.80 and $26.40 per user a month for Business Starter, Standard and Plus. Google showed introductory discounts for new customers on 27 October; the table uses list prices.

Sources: https://airtable.com/pricing, https://support.airtable.com/articles/1636857517-how-airtable-collaborators-impact-billing, https://workspace.google.com/pricing and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/compare-all-microsoft-365-business-products, all read on 27 October 2026.

Row, record and file limits

An Airtable base holds 1,000 records on Free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business and 500,000 on Enterprise Scale. A Google Sheets spreadsheet holds up to 20 million cells or 100 MB. An Excel worksheet has 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. Checked on 27 October 2026 on Airtable's pricing page, Google Drive help and Microsoft's Excel specifications.

The units differ. Airtable counts records per base, and every table in the base counts toward the same cap. Google counts cells per spreadsheet, so the row limit depends on how wide the sheet is: at 20 columns, 20 million cells is 1 million rows (our arithmetic). Excel caps each worksheet, and a workbook can hold several.

Airtable's cap is the one a growing team hits first. A 60,000-row sheet with 20 columns fits in Google Sheets or Excel, but not in one Airtable Team base. At the cap, Airtable says "you'll still be able to use your bases and we will never remove your data", but you can't add records or attachments until you upgrade.

Two smaller limits matter when moving data. Converting an Excel file to Google Sheets removes any cell with more than 50,000 characters. An Excel cell holds up to 32,767 characters.

Automations: Airtable automations vs Apps Script and Office Scripts

Airtable has automations built in: 100 runs a month on Free, 25,000 on Team, 100,000 on Business and 500,000 on Enterprise Scale, counted per workspace. Google Sheets has macros and Apps Script, free accounts included. Excel has Office Scripts on business and education plans and VBA macros in the desktop app. Checked on 27 October 2026.

Airtable caps how many automations one base can hold (75 on Free, 100 on Team, 150 on Business, 200 on Enterprise Scale) and stops at the plan's run limit. The Scripting extension needs a paid plan.

In Google Sheets, a recorded macro becomes an Apps Script, and Google says you can run it "based on actions, calendar updates, time intervals, or a chosen time and date". The quotas differ by account. Triggers get 90 minutes of total runtime a day on a free account and 6 hours on Workspace, and one run stops at 6 minutes on both.

In Excel, Office Scripts record your steps into a reusable script in Excel on the web, Windows or Mac. They need a Microsoft 365 business or education plan and are in preview for Personal and Family. Microsoft has temporarily disabled script scheduling and points to Power Automate in the meantime. VBA macros can't be created, run or edited in Excel for the web, only in the desktop app.

When a job needs more runs than the plan gives, or a system none of the three connects to, an external tool like Make, n8n or Zapier takes it over and bills on its own terms. We compare those three in Make vs n8n vs Zapier.

Sharing, permissions and forms

All three let a team share a file and collect form answers into it. They differ on control. Airtable's paid plans can lock individual fields and tables. Google Sheets can protect sheets and ranges, but Google says that protection "shouldn't be used as a security measure". Excel co-authoring needs the file in OneDrive or SharePoint Online. Checked on 27 October 2026.

Airtable: forms and Interface Designer come on every plan. Free keeps the Airtable branding, and custom branded forms start on Team. Team adds "Field and table editing permissions", password and domain-restricted shares, and personal and locked views; Business adds user groups. A form shared with anyone on the web needs no Airtable account. A form built inside an interface needs editor access, which can make the person a billable collaborator.

Google Sheets: people are Viewers, Commenters or Editors, and editors can change permissions and share the file by default. A protected range can warn before an edit or restrict who edits, but people can still copy, print and export the sheet. Google Forms can send responses to a linked sheet. Form collaborators get access to that sheet automatically, and later changes to the form's permissions don't carry over.

Excel: co-authoring works on files stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or a SharePoint Online library, with AutoSave on. On-premises SharePoint doesn't support it. To start a Microsoft Form from Excel (Insert > Forms), the workbook has to be in OneDrive for work or school.

Does Airtable work with Google Sheets and Excel?

Yes, for one-time imports. Airtable imports a Google Sheet once. It has no live sync from Sheets; new rows need an automation or a tool such as Make, n8n or Zapier. Data goes back out as CSV. Airtable's native import takes Google Sheets, Excel, CSV and Smartsheet, up to 5 MB per Excel file and 100 MB per CSV. Checked on 27 October 2026 in Airtable's help center.

On import, each sheet in a workbook becomes its own table, named after the sheet. Google Sheets come in through your Google account. The importer isn't available in Airtable's mobile app. A separate CSV import extension, on paid plans, has its own limits: 25,000 rows and 5 MB.

After the import, the two copies drift apart. Airtable's guide says changes made in Airtable "will not be reflected in the original Google sheet". Airtable's sync integrations only pull data into a base, and Google Sheets isn't on the list. In the other direction, an Airtable automation on a paid plan can append a new row to a Google Sheet.

Getting data out of Airtable means a CSV download from the view menu. Airtable's help center says it can't export Excel, PDF, TSV or Numbers files.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet stops being enough once a team uses it to coordinate work between people. The signs listed below show up in how people use the sheet, rather than in its row count.

What to move to depends on the sign. Linked data that several people edit belongs in a database such as Airtable. Start with a CRM if the sheet is really your CRM: deals and follow-ups need stages, owners and reminders, not more tabs. Approvals by email and copying between tools are a process problem, whichever tool holds the data. That is where we automate the process around it.

• Several people edit the same rows, and one person's change overwrites another's.
• The same customer or order is typed into three tabs, and the three copies no longer agree.
• Approvals happen by email, and the sheet gets updated afterwards, if anyone remembers.
• Nobody looks at who changed a value until a number is wrong.
• Deals, contacts and follow-up dates live in rows: the sheet is your CRM.

Moving from Google Sheets or Excel to Airtable

The data moves easily: Airtable imports Google Sheets and Excel files directly, one table per sheet. The structure around the data is yours to rebuild: field types, links between tables, and whatever the formulas and scripts used to do. The import rules here were checked on 27 October 2026.

Field types come first. Airtable can guess field types on import ("Auto-select field types"); check them before you build on the data. Then turn repeated names into links between tables. That step is what makes it a database rather than a spreadsheet in a new place.

Budget time to rebuild formulas, Apps Script or VBA macros, conditional formatting and charts. That's our planning rule, not a line from Airtable's guide. Watch the size limits too: 5 MB per Excel file and the records-per-base cap of your plan.

Most of the risk is in the mapping, not the import button. We've written up what breaks in a migration from our own migration work.

Airtable, Google Sheets or Excel: which one to choose

Choose Google Sheets or Excel for numbers one person owns or a team edits lightly, and Airtable when several people work on linked records with forms and views on top. Then check the bill: Airtable charges per seat that edits (and comments, on Team), while Google and Microsoft charge every user on a plan that also covers the rest of their suite.

Not sure whether the sheet should become a database or a CRM? Take the 6-question CRM picker.

• Choose Google Sheets if your team already works in Google and needs a shared list or a budget: free with a Google account, $7 per user a month in Workspace Business Starter on a one-year commitment.
• Choose Excel if the work is heavy number crunching in the desktop app or runs on VBA macros: desktop Excel comes with Microsoft 365 Apps for business at $10 per user a month, paid yearly.
• Choose Airtable if the same customer, order or shift shows up in several tabs and different people need their own views and forms on it. One Team base holds 50,000 records.
• Few editors, many readers? Airtable doesn't bill read-only users, so 6 editors in a team of 10 cost $1,440 a year on Team, billed annually.
• More than 50,000 rows of data? That outgrows one Airtable Team base. Sheets holds 20 million cells and an Excel worksheet 1,048,576 rows.
• The downsides of Airtable, in two lines: you pay per seat that edits or comments, and each plan caps records per base.

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