Airtable

Airtable is a spreadsheet that is secretly a database. Every table has typed columns, records link to each other, and there are forms, views and an API on top. People use it like a spreadsheet; code uses it like a database. That double nature is the whole appeal.

How I use it

Small bases that a script reads and writes. One is a component library for video: hooks, frameworks, call-to-action lines, each a record with tags, and a script assembles combinations from it. Another is a test queue, where an idea goes in as a row with a status and comes out with a verdict. A third holds bookkeeping rows that someone else enters by hand and that a script reconciles. In each case the point is the same: a person edits in a grid they understand, and a script reads the result without a parser.

What surprised me is how good the API documentation is, because it is generated from your own base with your own field names in the examples. What annoys me is scale. Each base has a record ceiling, and you reach it at precisely the moment the base has become important. Per-seat pricing means a base shared with a few collaborators costs more than the hosted database it would replace. And the API rate limit is low; a script that walks a large table without pacing itself gets throttled within seconds. I now page through tables slowly and cache the result locally.

Who it is for

Anyone with a table that both a person and a script need to touch, and that stays under a few tens of thousands of rows. For a solo developer, the free plan covers a lot. Skip it if the data is purely for code; a real database is cheaper and has no ceiling. And skip it if the team is large; the seat pricing will decide for you.