How to decide between Airtable, Coda, Notion, and Sheets if you need a database

Explore

Use Cases

Use this page to understand what tool is the best one depending of your use case.

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Airtable

Good use cases

✅ CSM (Content Management System)

✅ Large Databases (20K+ rows)

✅ Submission forms

Challenging use cases

🚫 Serving as a single source of truth—limited integrations, no writing surface, no embeds

🚫 Editing and collaboration for larger teams

🚫 Writing surface for write-ups, PRDs, strategy docs, and more.

🚫 Powerful formulas and calculations

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Notion

Good use cases

✅ Simple tables

✅ Small Databases

✅ Writing surface and simple tables

Challenging use cases

🚫 Serving as a single source of truth—limited integrations, issues at scale

🚫 Editing and collaboration for larger teams

🚫 Powerful formulas and calculations

🚫 Data visualization

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Coda

Good use cases

✅ Single source of truth—bring docs, tables, apps, and your team into one place

✅ Powerful formulas in tables or in text

✅ Integration & management for other platforms

✅ Collaboration for big teams

Challenging use cases

🚫 Financial modeling

🚫 CMS for websites

🚫 Database with 100K+ rows

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Google Sheets

Good use cases

✅ Flexible surface with individual cells

✅ Free platform

✅ Easy to share and collaborate

Challenging use cases

🚫 Serving as a single source of truth—constantly linking out to docs, apps, etc.

🚫 Writing surface

🚫 Data dashboards

🚫 Relational databases

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Coda brings all your words, data, and teamwork into one powerful doc.

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