Grist is an open source alternative to Airtable. Apache-licensed spreadsheet-database hybrid with Python formulas. Import from Airtable without making your base public. Self-hosted or cloud. Apache-2.0 licensed, 11.4k GitHub stars, hosted version available, self-host with Docker, no terminal required to start, and last released 2026-07-29.
Apache-licensed spreadsheet-database hybrid with Python formulas. Import from Airtable without making your base public. Self-hosted or cloud.
In the product
Should you switch?
Teams replacing Airtable who need real formula power. Grist formulas are Python: the entirety of Python's standard library is available. The Airtable importer uses a personal access token and does not require making the base public, unlike Baserow's import method. Data exports as a single .grist file preserving the full relational structure, with no need to export each table individually as CSV.
Teams that depend on Airtable automations at scale: Grist automations are less mature and are not migrated by the importer. Teams needing views, interfaces, or forms imported: the importer explicitly excludes those. Teams wanting a fully no-code experience with zero spreadsheet mental model: Grist's Python paradigm has a learning curve.
The Airtable importer does not migrate views, interfaces, forms, or automations. Those must be rebuilt in Grist from scratch. On self-hosted installs, Python formulas run without sandboxing by default; the pyodide sandbox must be explicitly enabled for multi-user deployments with untrusted formula authors.
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Community proof
Some quotes here endorse the approach rather than report first-hand use, or report a problem. We label those.
"I've been using Grist for quite some time now. It has its limitations but overall it's amazing and, for many things, better than Airtable and effectively any competitor. Being able to write Python with their decent docs is also pretty great."
"...I've also been interested in Grist, which is more like AirTable but programmed in Python and (relevant to your request) self-hostable."
"Grist is more like Airtable, a spreadsheet/database hybrid. Regular spreadsheets give you a number of independently configured cells, which gives you maximum flexibility, but becomes inconvenient when you want tables instead: have a fixed structure, enforce column types and validations, implement row-level access control, or join them together."
Maintenance health
Can you do it today?
docker run -p 8484:8484 -v ~/grist:/persist -e GRIST_SESSION_SECRET=invent-a-secret-here -e GRIST_DEFAULT_EMAIL=your-email@example.com -it gristlabs/gristGitHub
One-click deploy via Grist Cloud: https://docs.getgrist.com
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