Base Captain and Airtable
Written by Base Captain's founder. Checked on .
We build Base Captain, so we are not neutral. Every fact about Airtable below is from its own pages, linked, on the date above; write to us if one is wrong.
In short
Airtable is a flexible database that someone on your team shapes into a tool: tables, views, interfaces and automations. Base Captain builds the software from what you tell it and changes it when you ask, showing every change before it happens.
The difference that matters most: in Base Captain, who sees which records is enforced by the base’s own database, and going back to an earlier version brings the data back with it.
What Airtable does well
- You shape it yourself.
- Tables, many kinds of views and interfaces built on the data, with collaborators who see only the interfaces you share. Airtable’s page
- An AI that builds.
- Omni creates tables, views, fields, interfaces and automations from a conversation, with the permissions of the person asking. Airtable’s page
- Connectors.
- Pre-built connectors to tools such as Slack, Google Drive, Salesforce, Jira and Zendesk, and an open API. Airtable’s page
- History and snapshots.
- Each record keeps its revision history, and a base can be restored from a snapshot, a year back on the Team plan. Airtable’s page
Where Base Captain differs
- Every change shown first.
- You ask in plain words, and the change comes as a card that says what gets added, who sees it and how many records it touches, and any data it would drop. Nothing changes until you apply it.
- Going back includes your data.
- Before each change to how a base works, a copy of its data is saved. Within an hour the base can go back to it, data and all; later, a new change undoes it and keeps the records entered since. In Airtable, “restoring a base from a snapshot creates a new base without affecting your existing one.”
- Rules the database enforces.
- Which records each role sees is enforced by the base’s own database, and a field hidden from a role, or one it may not change, stays that way everywhere: on the screens, in downloads, search and totals, and for the assistant and every agent. Airtable’s own words on its field and table permissions: they “do not affect who can see information in the base.”
- A history you can undo.
- Every change is recorded with who made it and how. A change can be undone from the history, and a deleted record restored.
- Work that moves itself.
- Workflows take a record from step to step, and agents, in Base Captain or on your own machine, do the steps you give them, with an approval wherever a person should decide.
- Everything out at once.
- Every list downloads as an Excel or CSV file, and a builder downloads all of the base’s data in one zip file, with its files, whenever they like. Airtable exports each table as its own CSV: “exporting a full base as a single file is not supported.”
- Going back
- Airtable: A snapshot restores into a new base
- Base Captain: The same base, with its data, within an hour
- Who sees which records
- Airtable: Set by the interfaces you share
- Base Captain: Rules kept by the base’s own database
- Everything out at once
- Airtable: One CSV per table
- Base Captain: One zip of all the data, with its files
Prices
- Free
- $0
- Up to 1,000 records per base
- Team
- $20 per user a month, billed annually
- Each user who may edit a base; 50,000 records per base
- Business
- $45 per user a month, billed annually
- Each user who may edit a base; 125,000 records per base
- Enterprise Scale
- On request
- Set with Airtable
Airtable charges “for all users who have edit permissions for at least one base in the workspace”; “no charges will apply on a Team or Business plan for read-only collaborators.” AI features draw on monthly AI credits.
Airtable’s pricing page, checked on .
Choose Airtable if…
- You want to design the database and its screens yourself, field by field and view by view.
- You need connectors to many other tools. Base Captain connects to other tools through webhooks, in and out, and through the MCP servers of services such as Notion, Linear or Stripe, which you or the assistant set up, and takes payments through Stripe and PayPal.
- Your team already works in Airtable, and the person who built your bases is there to look after them.
- You need to choose where your data is stored: Airtable offers Europe on Enterprise Scale. Base Captain keeps every base’s stored data in Germany, at Hetzner.
Moving over
- Out of Airtable.
- Download each table as a CSV from a grid view with no filters; attachments come out as a file name and a link that expires after a few hours. Airtable’s page
- Into Base Captain.
- Put the tables’ CSVs on the sheets of one workbook and give it to the assistant: it proposes the lists, their fields and the links between them, then brings the rows in and reports any that did not come.
- What stays behind.
- Views, interfaces, automations and permissions; ask the assistant for the ones you need. Attachments’ files do not come over.