Airtable vs Monday.com: Database Meets Project Management

Airtable and Monday.com occupy overlapping territory in the work management space, but they come from different starting points. Airtable began as a relational database with a spreadsheet-like interface. Monday.com started as a visual project management tool. Both have expanded toward each other over the years, adding features that blur the line between database and project management platform.

That convergence makes the comparison tricky. Depending on what your team actually needs — structured data management, visual task tracking, workflow automation, or some combination — the better choice can go either way. This comparison is based on extended use of both platforms across operations, marketing, and product teams throughout 2025.

Overview

Airtable launched in 2012 with the premise that spreadsheets are powerful but limited. By adding relational linking between tables, rich field types, and multiple views on top of a familiar grid interface, Airtable created a new category. It appeals to teams that need to model complex data relationships without writing code. Content calendars, product catalogs, inventory systems, CRM-like workflows — Airtable handles all of these because its underlying data model is flexible enough to represent almost anything.

Monday.com launched in 2014 as a team management tool focused on visibility and simplicity. Its board-based interface makes it easy to see who is working on what, what the status is, and where bottlenecks exist. Over time, Monday expanded into a work operating system with products for CRM, software development, and marketing. The core experience remains centered on colorful, visual boards that non-technical users find approachable.

Feature Comparison

Pricing

The pricing gap is significant. Monday.com is substantially cheaper per user across every tier. At the team level, Monday costs $12/user/month compared to Airtable's $20. The gap widens further at the business tier: $17 versus $45. For a 20-person team on the mid-tier plan, that is the difference between $340/month and $900/month.

Airtable's pricing reflects its positioning as a more technical, data-centric platform. The record limits on lower tiers can also become a real constraint — teams with growing datasets may find themselves forced into higher plans sooner than expected. Monday.com does not impose row limits on paid plans, which removes a common pain point.

However, Airtable's free tier is more generous in some ways: unlimited bases with up to 1,000 records each, compared to Monday's 2-user limit. For solo users or small experiments, Airtable's free plan goes further.

Data Modeling and Structure

This is where Airtable has its most decisive advantage. Airtable bases are relational databases. Tables can link to each other, and those links carry meaning. A "Projects" table can link to a "Tasks" table, which links to a "People" table, which links to a "Departments" table. Rollup and lookup fields let you aggregate and display data from linked records without duplicating anything.

Monday.com boards are flat by comparison. Each board is essentially an independent list of items with columns. You can use mirror columns to pull data from connected boards, but this is not the same as true relational linking. There is no equivalent to Airtable's rollup fields that aggregate data across linked records. For teams that need to model complex data relationships — product catalogs with variants, multi-entity CRM setups, inventory with suppliers and orders — Airtable is significantly more capable.

If your data is relatively flat (a list of tasks with properties), Monday.com handles it well. If your data has meaningful relationships between entities, Airtable's relational model saves you from workarounds and duplication.

Project Management

Monday.com was built for project management, and it shows. Creating a project board, assigning tasks, setting due dates, and tracking status all feel natural. The visual design — color-coded statuses, progress bars, timeline views — makes it easy to scan a board and understand where things stand. Workload views help managers see who is overcommitted. Time tracking is built in as a native column type.

Airtable can be configured for project management, but it requires more setup. You need to create the right fields, choose appropriate views, and build the workflows that Monday provides out of the box. Airtable's Gantt and timeline views work, but they are not as polished as Monday's. There is no native workload view. Time tracking requires a third-party extension or manual entry.

For teams whose primary need is project management — tracking tasks, deadlines, dependencies, and team capacity — Monday.com gets you productive faster and with less configuration.

Automations

Both platforms offer automation capabilities, but the experience differs. Monday.com uses a recipe-based system with natural language descriptions: "When status changes to Done, move item to group Complete and notify manager." Over 200 pre-built recipes cover common scenarios. Building custom automations is visual and does not require technical knowledge.

Airtable's automations follow a trigger-action model with conditional logic. Triggers fire when records match certain criteria, and actions can create records, send emails, run scripts, or call webhooks. Airtable's scripting extension adds a layer of power — you can write JavaScript to transform data, call external APIs, and perform operations that no-code automations cannot handle.

For straightforward workflow automation, Monday is easier and faster to set up. For complex, data-driven automations that involve multiple tables and conditional logic, Airtable's combination of automations and scripting provides more flexibility. The scripting capability in particular gives Airtable an edge for technical teams that need to do things the visual builder cannot express.

Interface Design and Customization

Airtable's Interface Designer is a standout feature that Monday.com does not directly match. It lets you build custom, purpose-built interfaces on top of your data — dashboards, data entry forms, record detail pages, and filtered views tailored for specific roles. A marketing manager might see a content calendar interface. A warehouse team might see an inventory management view. Both are powered by the same underlying data.

Monday.com offers dashboards with customizable widgets and Workdocs for collaborative documentation, but these are not the same as purpose-built application interfaces. Monday's approach is more about visualizing data across boards than creating tailored user experiences.

For teams that want to build lightweight internal tools on top of their data, Airtable's Interface Designer is a compelling reason to choose the platform. It effectively turns your database into a custom application without writing code.

Collaboration and Team Experience

Monday.com has the edge in day-to-day team collaboration. Updates on items create a threaded conversation. Mentions notify team members. The My Work view aggregates everything assigned to a person across all boards. The experience is designed for people who need to know what to work on today and want to communicate about tasks without leaving the platform.

Airtable supports comments on records and mentions, but the collaboration experience is less developed. There is no centralized "my tasks" view aggregating assignments across bases. The platform assumes users will navigate to specific bases and views rather than receiving a personalized feed of their work. For teams where individual task management and team communication are priorities, this gap matters.

Integrations and Ecosystem

Both platforms integrate with the standard set of tools — Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Jira, Salesforce, and more. Monday.com has a broader native integration library and its marketplace includes pre-built apps that extend board functionality. Airtable connects well through its API and has partnerships with tools like Zapier and Make for custom integrations.

Airtable's API is notably well-designed and documented, making it a preferred choice for teams that build custom integrations. Monday's API has improved significantly with its GraphQL interface, but Airtable remains the more developer-friendly option. The Airtable scripting extension adds another layer of extensibility that appeals to teams with some technical capacity.

Scalability Concerns

Airtable's record limits are a real issue for growing teams. The Team plan caps bases at 50,000 records. The Business plan raises this to 125,000. For teams managing large datasets — thousands of products, contacts, or transactions — these limits can force you into expensive plans or architectural workarounds like splitting data across multiple bases. That fragmentation undermines the relational model that makes Airtable powerful in the first place.

Monday.com does not impose item limits on paid plans, which means your boards can grow without running into artificial ceilings. For teams that expect significant data growth, this is a meaningful advantage. Performance can degrade with very large boards (tens of thousands of items), but the absence of hard limits provides more headroom.