Airtable vs Bubble
Both are no-code tools. Here is what separates them.
What Airtable is
Airtable is a cloud database that behaves like a spreadsheet. Data sits in a familiar grid of rows and columns, but each table has a defined schema with typed fields, records can be linked between tables, and the same data drives views, automations and an API. Work is organised into bases, and more than one base can sit under a single subscription. Existing spreadsheets and CSV files can be imported when moving data in. Interface Designer is included in every plan and builds custom layouts on top of a base, so people can read and update records without working in the raw table. Portals go further by filtering what appears in a table according to field conditions, which controls what a given audience sees. Airtable integrates with Jira, Slack, Google Drive and Salesforce, among other tools, and connects to assistants including ChatGPT and Claude. A public API lets developers read and write base data from their own applications. The free plan allows unlimited bases with 1,000 records and 1 GB of attachments per base, up to five editors per workspace, 100 automation runs a month and 500 AI credits per editor each month. Team costs $20 per seat per month billed annually and raises the limits to 50,000 records and 20 GB of attachments per base, with 15,000 AI credits per paid user each month. Business costs $45 per seat per month billed annually and adds 100,000 automation runs, 100 GB of attachments per base, two-way sync, verified data, an admin panel and SAML single sign-on. Enterprise Scale is priced on request through the sales team and allows 500,000 records and 1,000 GB of attachments per base, with audit logs and data loss prevention. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time without penalty. Airtable was founded in 2012 by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas. The company reports more than 10 million active users and over 500,000 organisations on the platform, including 90% of the Fortune 100. The product is closed source and hosted by Airtable, with no self-hosted option.
What Bubble is
Bubble is a no-code application builder, described by its makers as a no-code AI app builder for both web and mobile apps. Apps are assembled visually rather than written, and paid plans from Starter upward include custom domains and backend workflows. Plans are priced by which surfaces an app needs. Starter costs $32 per month for web only, $49 for mobile only and $69 for both. Growth is $134, $199 and $249 across the same three splits, and Team is $399, $529 and $649. Choosing web only where mobile is not needed is the single largest lever on the bill. Running the app is metered separately in workload units, shortened to WU, and twelve distinct activity types feed an app's monthly total. The rates are published per action, which makes the cost of a design decision calculable before it is built. A database search costs 0.3 WU, and each thing that search returns adds 0.015 WU. Writing or modifying a thing costs 0.5 WU and deleting one costs 0.1 WU. An aggregate query is 0.2 WU and a group by query 0.3 WU. Loading a page's HTML costs 0.15 WU, a server-side workflow action 0.6 WU, and evaluating a backend database trigger event 0.05 WU. API traffic is asymmetric: an outbound call costs 0.1 WU, while an inbound Data or Workflow API call costs only 0.01 WU. Plugins are charged on time as well as calls, at 0.2 WU per server-side action plus 0.0005 WU for every millisecond it runs, and the SQL Connector charges 0.1 WU per call plus 0.015 WU per row retrieved. The consequences of running out matter as much as the rates. Warning emails go out at 75 percent and 100 percent of the allowance. Workload used beyond the allowance costs $0.30 per 1,000 units where no workload tier has been bought, and if overages are switched off, an app that exhausts its workload goes offline. Workload tiers can only be bought on Starter, Growth or Team, and Free plan apps can neither buy a tier nor turn overages on, so a free app has a hard ceiling rather than a rising bill. Every paid app also gets 100,000 monthly workload units for its Development environment, keeping test runs off the live allowance. Extra file storage is charged at $3 per 100 GB. Read together, the workload model means an inefficient search that returns thousands of things is not just slow, it is a line item. Bubble publishes enough detail to estimate that cost during design rather than discover it in a bill.
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