A million records. On the free plan.
Grist sizes a document by plan: five thousand records free, a hundred thousand on Pro, a hundred and fifty thousand on Business — counted across every table in it. Ours is a million per database, and paying doesn’t move it.
How to read this page
We made this page, so read it that way. Every Grist price and limit on it is from their own pricing page and help centre, read on 5 September 2026 — and there is no speed comparison anywhere on it, because we haven’t measured theirs.
A hundred and fifty thousand records, at the top.
Grist counts records across every table in a document rather than per table — their own note on the pricing page says so — which makes their document and our database the same container, and the comparison an exact one. Business, at $24 a seat billed annually and $30 billed monthly, holds a hundred and fifty thousand of them.
Paying the most buys 150,000 records.
Grist lists Enterprise as “Custom”, so 150,000 is the largest record figure they publish. Both numbers count one container — their document, our database — which is what makes them comparable at all.
Their record limit is also a size limit.
Grist’s help centre puts a document’s data ceiling at the record limit multiplied by 2KB — 10MB free, 200MB on Pro, 300MB on Business — and separately recommends staying under 20MB for performance. The example they give of a document at that recommendation is a hundred thousand rows and twenty-four numeric columns, which is where Pro’s record ceiling already sits.
Records
Data size
API calls
Business starts at five seats, whether you have five or two.
Grist’s annual rates against ours. Their Business card carries a five-user minimum, so a pair of editors pays for five. Ours stops climbing at twenty-five editors — editor twenty-six onward is free, not capped.
Business is $600 a month at twenty-five people, and holds 150,000 records in a document. Ours is $184, and holds a million in a database.
Grist’s published rates: Pro $8 and Business $24 per user per month billed annually; $10 and $30 billed monthly. The five-user minimum on Business is theirs, so the two- and five-editor rows both bill five. Tabla’s annual schedule: first editor free, then $6 for editors 2–10, $8 for 11–20, $10 for 21–25, and nothing after that. Viewers are free here at any number; Grist bills team members and gives every document two free guests on every plan, so this table counts everyone listed as billable on both sides.
Self-hosting — by design. Grist’s core is open source and runs on your own server. We’re hosted only, on purpose: one product done properly, kept fast, with a one-click export of everything you have put in — which is what self-hosting usually protects you from needing.
The small stuff only a builder would bother with.
Not a comparison — just the details we sweated. None of it wins a chart. All of it is the difference between a tool you use and a tool you fight.
- ✓Paste two hundred records into a table that already has some, and it asks — add, or replace?
- ✓Change a field’s type and it warns you first — a conversion happens only when every value fits.
- ✓Filter on a linked field — and on lookups and rollups through the links.
- ✓Undo, and a trash that holds records and tables for seven days.
- ✓One filter syntax — the same in the grid, the API, and your webhooks. Written down.
- ✓Every webhook delivery is logged with what was sent and what came back — and can be replayed.
What we do differently.
Grist is a serious tool, and a great deal of it is there on their free plan. So here’s what it does that we don’t — some by design, some simply on the way.
- By designPython formulas — Grist runs Python inside a document, with the full standard library, on every plan they sell. We ship a formula language rather than an embedded runtime — a smaller surface, deliberately.
- By designAn automation engine — Grist runs automations inside the product. We ship webhooks instead: signed, logged with what was sent and what came back, replayable, firing into Make or n8n or your own code. That job belongs to tools built for it.
- By designAI in the product — Grist ships an assistant that writes formulas for you, with its own allowance on each plan. It’s a bet they’ve made further than we have, for now.
- On the wayAccess rules down to the cell — Grist lets you say who can see or edit which tables, columns and records, on every plan including the free one. We ship owner, editor and viewer for each database today; finer permissions follow as we grow into bigger teams.
- On the wayMore ways to see the same data — charts, card lists, custom widgets and drag-and-drop page layouts. We shipped four views — grid, calendar, gallery, kanban — the ones teams open every day. Others can follow as people ask.
Export a CSV. Bring it here. Leave the same way.
Bring the CSVs over
Grist’s pricing page promises no data lock-in, and they mean it — a document comes out table by table. Ours imports CSV and Excel, and Airtable directly, so a Grist document arrives as a CSV per table: a rougher on-ramp than we’d like. A CSV is read in your own browser and sent up as records, so how big the file is never comes into it.
And leave the same way
The day you want to leave us, the whole database comes out in one zip: every table, every record, every attachment, with a manifest. One click, no waiting for an email. Free, always.
The door swings both ways. It’s the only honest way to ask you to walk through it.
See how your data stays yours →Bring the document that outgrew its plan.
Run your real data through it and check our arithmetic — every feature, free while we’re in beta.