The Ultimate Airtable vs. Coda Evaluation Guide in 2024

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The Ultimate Airtable vs. Coda Evaluation Guide in 2024

Cost

How much will each tool will cost, or save, your team?

When comparing Airtable and Coda, cost is an obviously crucial factor to consider. Over the past year, I have noticed that many teams have been focused on reducing expenses due to economic challenges. As a result, they are actively searching for more affordable alternatives and trying to simplify their workflows by minimizing the number of tools they use in response to the common problem of tool sprawl.

Broadly, Coda can help you save money in three distinct ways that Airtable cannot. I’ll review each of these below.

Billing model

The most obvious point of comparison is the top line number on your contract and what all comes included.

Coda and Airtable have two very different billing models. Airtable charges like most SaaS providers on a per-seat basis. In August 2023, Airtable made changes to its pricing plan which affected many teams and their

trust of the platform⁠

. Airtable’s Pro plan (now called Team) had its feature limits cut in half, forcing many teams to upgrade to the Business pricing tier, which cost more than double ($24 vs. $54 per month) the previous plan. During a time when many teams are cutting back, paying $54 per seat each month just to have access to your data can be difficult (and importantly many team members only need to view data, never even needing to make changes).

In comparison, Coda has a unique billing model that charges only for makers—those who create docs or add pages to existing docs—every other member of your team is free. This means that most of your team can enjoy all the privileges of being an editor (writing text, adding tables, syncing data from Packs, and everything in between) without spending a dime. You can share a doc with a team of five or with the entire sales team of 500, and it’s the same price.

To get a rough sense of how these two different billing models compare, try our Airtable vs. Coda pricing calculator.

Team size:

⁠

0000

500

⁠

Doc makers:

⁠

0000

160

⁠

Coda:
`$5,760`
⁠
⁠

At $36/maker per month

Airtable:
`$27,000`
⁠
⁠

At $54/seat per month

Tool consolidation

Airtable primarily serves as a database or spreadsheet for your team, but for most use cases–even the most data driven ones–you’ll need unstructured data to add context, run meetings, and properly communicate with your team. Because you can only stretch Airtable’s unstructured capabilities so far, you’ll end up needing another tool to cover the essentials, like running your weekly stand up, writing PRDs, drafting campaign briefs, etc. Even if you decide to do this in Google Docs, the cost of having two tools to do the job of one comes at the expense of your team’s productivity.

Coda’s is an all-in-one doc for your team, meaning it looks to replace a variety of tools across a range of

Use cases⁠

. In other words, Coda saves you money by consolidating the big, horizontal tools your team is using–like Airtable, Notion, Confluence, and more–and by cutting out long tail, niche tools your team is using–like Wrike, Productboard, Slido, SurveyMonkey, and many, many more.

And Coda can even replace–or at least reduce spend on–third-party integrators like Zapier and Tray.io. More on seat reduction below.

Seat reduction

Coda can also help you save money by reducing the number of seats that you purchase for expensive apps like Salesforce, Asana, Jira, and more. Every team has a few heavy users who leverage its full functionality, but much of your spend may be allocated toward underutilized seats. You shouldn’t pay full price for someone who simply needs to view a Salesforce report, create a new task in Asana, or change the status of a Jira issue.

I’ve worked with countless companies to replace these seats with Pack-enabled Coda templates that give their team access to information without the cost.

What’s also helpful is Coda has two-way integrations with many of these expensive tools, so you can pull information like Salesforce account records or Jira tickets into Coda as well as push updates back to the respective tool. Not only does this save money but it also saves employees from switching tasks, simplifying their workflows.

Airtable can’t help you reduce the number of seats in other applications because well, you’re paying for every person to access Airtable, whereas in Coda you’re only paying for doc makers.

Summary

Because of Coda’s unique billing model, you shouldn’t simply compare per license pricing. Especially given Airtable’s new feature limits, you should examine how each tool’s pricing and included functionality fit your team’s needs. I’d also recommend considering what other apps you’ll be able to cut out and how many seats in apps like Asana, Salesforce, and Jira that you can reduce by switching to Coda. This

cost savings calculator⁠

can help you estimate how much you can save, but I’d recommend

speaking with someone from Coda⁠

to get a better understanding of your savings.

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`Features The expansive capabilities of two all-in-one workspaces.`⁠

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