Airtable Pricing: Per-Seat Cost, Credits and Caps
Airtable has four plans: a Free tier, Team at $20 per seat/month, Business at $45 per seat/month (both billed annually), and a custom-priced Enterprise Scale plan. Every paid plan is billed per seat, and the advertised prices are the annual-billing rates. Pay month to month and the same seats run $24 (Team) and $54 (Business).
Those headline numbers are the easy part. What decides your bill is how many people have edit access, which record and automation limits you hit, whether AI features push you past your included credits, and whether you need the Portals add-on.
Airtable plans at a glance
| Plan | Annual | Monthly | Records/base | Automation runs | AI credits/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 1,000 | 100 | 500 per editor |
| Team | $20/seat/mo | $24/seat/mo | 50,000 | 25,000 | 15,000 per paid user |
| Business | $45/seat/mo | $54/seat/mo | 125,000 | 100,000 | 20,000 per paid user |
| Enterprise Scale | Custom | Custom | 500,000 | 500,000 | 25,000 per paid user |
Attachment space runs 1 GB, 20 GB, 100 GB and 1,000 GB per base. API calls run 1,000 and 100,000 a month on Free and Team, then unlimited on Business and above.
Free plan
Unlimited bases, but each base caps at 1,000 records, 1 GB of attachments and 2 weeks of revision history. You get 500 AI credits per editor per month, 1,000 API calls and just 100 automation runs a month.
The real ceiling is people: a Free workspace allows a maximum of 5 collaborators with Editor or Creator permissions and 50 commenters. Read-only viewers do not count, so a Free base can still be shared widely for viewing. The moment a sixth person needs to edit, you are upgrading.
The 100 automation runs deserve their own warning. Any workflow that fires more than three times a day exhausts the Free plan’s automation budget before the end of the month.
Team plan, $20 per seat a month
Team is the plan most small teams land on. Billed annually it is $20 per seat/month; month to month it is $24, so annual billing saves $48 per seat per year. You get 50,000 records per base, 20 GB of attachments per base, 1 year of revision history, 25,000 automation runs per month and 15,000 AI credits per paid user.
The key word is billable. Every user with edit permission on at least one base in the workspace counts as a paid seat.
Team is also capped at one workspace. Business is the first plan with unlimited workspaces, which catches teams who want to separate departments long before they need any Business feature.
Business plan, $45 per seat a month
Business more than doubles the per-seat cost to $45/seat/month annually ($54 monthly). In return you get 125,000 records per base, 100 GB of attachments, unlimited API calls, 100,000 automation runs, 20,000 AI credits per paid user, unlimited workspaces, two-way sync, and admin and security features like SAML SSO and granular permissions.
If you are buying Business mainly for the higher record cap, read the record-limit math below first. It is often cheaper to restructure your bases than to jump a tier.
Enterprise Scale plan
Custom-priced through Airtable sales. It raises the record cap to 500,000 per base, allows 500,000 automation runs, adds 25,000 AI credits per paid user and 1,000 GB of attachment space per base, and layers on HyperDB, the App Library, enterprise governance, audit logs, data loss prevention and enhanced support. There is no public price.
The hidden costs that inflate your Airtable bill
The sticker price rarely matches the invoice. Five things drive the gap.
Every editor is a billable seat
On Team and Business you are charged for every user who has edit permission on at least one base in the workspace, not per base. Add a freelancer to one small project base and they cost a full seat. Airtable prorates seats added mid-cycle, and read-only collaborators, form submitters and share-link viewers are free. Teams routinely underestimate this, so audit who actually needs edit access before you assume a headcount.
AI credits are bundled, then metered
Each plan bundles a pool of AI credits, 500 per editor on Free, 15,000 per paid user on Team, 20,000 on Business and 25,000 at list price on Enterprise Scale, shared across the workspace. Building apps and agents with Omni is free and does not burn credits. Running AI does. A simple field-classification action might cost a few credits; a document-analysis run can cost around 200.
When the pool runs dry, work stops until you buy more. Extra credits are sold in packs of 10,000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 and 200,000, starting at $20 a month for 10,000 credits on Team and Business. Enterprise Scale credit packs are quoted by sales. For an AI-heavy workflow, that overage can quietly exceed your seat cost.
The record cap forces upgrades
Each base caps records by plan: 1,000 on Free, 50,000 on Team, 125,000 on Business. Hit the ceiling and you cannot add new records until you upgrade or delete data. This is the most common reason teams jump from Team to Business, not because they need SSO but because one base outgrew 50,000 rows. Before you pay 2.25 times more per seat across the whole workspace, see whether splitting or archiving data keeps you under the cap. The mechanics are in our Airtable record limit guide.
Portals are an add-on, and they are not cheap
Guest user access through Portals is sold separately on Team and Business, in packs of 15, 25, 50, 100 and 200 guests. It starts at $120 a month for 15 guests on Team and $150 on Business ($127.50 a month on Business annual billing). On Enterprise Scale it is quoted.
Read that against the seat price. Fifteen external guests on Team cost $120 a month, which is six Team seats. If your plan is to share a base with clients, price the Portals add-on before you price the plan.
Annual billing is the default advertised price
Every price Airtable advertises is the annual-commitment rate. Choosing monthly billing adds 20% to each seat. That is a legitimate discount if you are confident in the tool, but it means the “$20 Team plan” is a 12-month commitment and the flexible option is $24.
Is Airtable free?
Yes, genuinely. The Free plan has no time limit and no credit-card requirement. It is workable for a solo user or a small side project: unlimited bases, Interface Designer and 500 AI credits per editor.
The three walls you will hit are the 1,000-records-per-base cap, the 5-editor limit and the 100 automation runs a month. All three arrive faster than people expect once a base becomes a real system of record. If you are bumping the record ceiling specifically, our Airtable record limit guide covers how the count works and how to stretch the Free tier further before paying.
When Airtable isn’t worth the price
Airtable’s per-seat model punishes two situations: teams where lots of people need edit access but only lightly, and use cases that are really just a spreadsheet. If your data fits in rows and columns and you do not need linked-record relations, interfaces or automations, a spreadsheet is far cheaper. See Airtable vs. Excel and Airtable vs. Google Sheets. If you want a connected-docs workspace instead of a database, compare Airtable vs. Notion. And if the seat math does not work, we round up cheaper options in Airtable alternatives.
There is a third case the plan table cannot show you. Plenty of Airtable bases exist because something needed chasing: a client who has not replied, a proposal waiting on a signature, a booking that needs a time agreed. The base records the state. A person still writes the email and finds the slot, and on Team that person costs a seat and their automations draw on 25,000 runs.
Carly is built for that half of the work. Its Zapier-style workflows are free, so a rule like “when this record moves to Waiting on client, draft the follow-up and offer three times to talk” costs nothing to run. Booking pages and connected calendars are unlimited, so the meeting gets agreed in the same message instead of a second thread. Every Gmail and Outlook account connects as its own authorized connection, so replies go out from the address that owns the conversation. The AI assistant that reads the thread, writes the reply and books the meeting starts at $35 a month rather than per seat, and Carly connects to thousands of apps, Airtable included, so the base stays the source of truth.
FAQ
How much does Airtable cost per month? Team is $20 per seat/month billed annually ($24 billed monthly) and Business is $45 per seat/month annually ($54 monthly). The Free plan is $0 and Enterprise Scale is custom-priced.
Does everyone on my team count as a paid seat? Only users with edit permission on at least one base in the workspace are billable. Read-only viewers, commenters, form submitters and share-link recipients are free.
Are Airtable’s AI features included or an add-on? Included, up to a point. Each plan bundles a monthly pool of AI credits: 500 per editor on Free, 15,000 per paid user on Team, 20,000 on Business and 25,000 on Enterprise Scale. Building with Omni is free, running AI consumes credits, and extra packs start at $20 a month for 10,000 credits.
What happens when I hit the record limit? You cannot add new records to that base until you delete data or upgrade. The caps are 1,000 (Free), 50,000 (Team), 125,000 (Business) and 500,000 (Enterprise Scale) records per base.
How many automation runs does Airtable include? 100 a month on Free, 25,000 on Team, 100,000 on Business and 500,000 on Enterprise Scale.
How much do Airtable Portals cost? Guest access is an add-on starting at $120 a month for 15 guests on Team and $150 on Business, or $127.50 a month on Business annual billing. Packs go up to 200 guests, and Enterprise Scale is quoted.
More: Airtable alternatives · Airtable record limit · Airtable vs Notion · Airtable AI · Best Airtable integrations
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