NocoDB vs Baserow

NocoDB and Baserow are the two self-hosted tools people reach for when they want Airtable without Airtable: a spreadsheet-style grid over a real database, with linked records, views, forms, sharing and a REST API. On the surface they do the same job. The differences are in three places: the licence each one ships under, which features the free self-hosted edition keeps, and where your data actually lives. Settle those three before you compare screenshots.

Two licences that moved in opposite directions

NocoDB changed licence in January 2026. Its docs say that "as of January 09, 2026" the project is "transitioning from AGPL-3.0 to a Sustainable Use License (SUL)", and the LICENSE.md in the repository now puts both the master and develop branches under it. That is the same fair-code licence n8n uses. You may use and modify the software "only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use". NocoDB's licence page adds that a commercial licence is needed if you "offer NocoDB as a hosted or managed service" or "provide direct NocoDB access to external customers". It is source-available, not open source, and NocoDB says so itself: SUL "is not OSI-approved".

Baserow is open core. Everything outside two directories is MIT ("Baserow Open Source Edition"). The code under premium/ and enterprise/ has its own licence, which allows production use only with a paid subscription "for the correct number of users". The free edition is permissive open source. The paid features ship in the same image and unlock with a licence key.

For a team running either one internally, both licences are fine. The difference matters if you want to build a product on top: offering it to paying customers is allowed under Baserow's MIT core, and it is exactly what NocoDB's licence reserves.

What the free self-hosted edition keeps

This is where the two differ most, and it runs the opposite way to the licences.

NocoDB Community keeps the views most people come to Airtable for. Its edition table marks grid, gallery, form, calendar, kanban and map views as available in Community, along with webhooks, the core REST API, API tokens, row comments, role-based permissions and Airtable import. The self-hosting FAQ adds that there is "no limitations to number of bases, records or fields". What Community leaves out is the governance layer and a lot of polish: SSO, 2FA, audit logs, SCIM and the admin panel, field-, table- and record-level permissions, realtime collaboration, timeline and Gantt views, custom scripts, AI fields and integrations, and more than one workspace. Its workflow engine is capped at "2 workflows per base, core nodes only" on Community.

Baserow's free self-hosted edition has no usage caps. Its pricing FAQ says the self-hosted version "will never have row, storage, or API request limitations". But the views are the catch. Baserow's kanban, calendar and timeline view types live in the repository's premium/ directory, and so does the row-comments module. Its pricing grid lists "Kanban, Survey, Calendar, and Timeline views" and "Row comments & coloring" from the Premium tier up. The free edition gives you grid, form and gallery views. SSO, audit logs, role-based and field-level permissions sit in the enterprise/ directory. In Baserow's favour, two-factor authentication, webhooks, dashboards, the application builder and the automation engine are all in the MIT core (with paid extras on top).

In short: NocoDB's free tier holds more of the Airtable interface; Baserow's free tier holds more of the account security and the building blocks around the database.

Where your data lives

NocoDB can put a UI on a database you already have. Its data-sources docs cover connecting an existing PostgreSQL or MySQL database. Schema editing on a connected source is off by default and upstream "strongly advises against enabling" it, but you can still add lookups, rollups, formulas, views and webhooks on top. For NocoDB's own metadata and bases, the plain docker run defaults to SQLite, while the installer uses PostgreSQL. Stay on PostgreSQL: a paid licence "requires PostgreSQL", and "SQLite and MySQL cannot activate a license".

Baserow stores everything in its own PostgreSQL database; its supported- versions table lists PostgreSQL 14 or later, with pgvector. It does not sit on an arbitrary existing schema. Instead, its data-sync feature can pull a PostgreSQL table into Baserow, and synced tables are "read-only in Baserow". The two-way sync that pushes edits back lives in the enterprise/ directory.

If the point is a spreadsheet UI over a database another application already writes to, that is NocoDB's job, not Baserow's.

Footprint and setup

NocoDB's recommended path is a script. install.nocodb.com/noco.sh asks for a domain and writes a Docker Compose stack: the app, a worker, PostgreSQL, Redis and Traefik with Let's Encrypt. Upstream publishes requirements: 2 GB of RAM and 2 vCPU as the minimum, 8 GB and 4 vCPU recommended for production. The first user to sign up becomes super admin.

Baserow's quickest path is one docker run of the baserow/baserow image, which runs the app, PostgreSQL, Redis and a Caddy reverse proxy in a single container. The docs pin a version tag and upgrade by starting a new container on a newer tag. Baserow's DigitalOcean guide says you need "1 vCPU and 2 GB RAM 1 container at minimum". That figure is for an app container with PostgreSQL and Redis hosted elsewhere, so give the all-in-one image some headroom. For production, upstream recommends pointing DATABASE_URL at an external PostgreSQL.

We rate both 2 out of 5 to deploy. Neither is hard. NocoDB is a guided script that writes a five-service stack; Baserow is one container running four services inside it.

Which to choose

Choose NocoDB if you want kanban, calendar and gallery views, webhooks and the REST API without paying per seat, or you want a spreadsheet UI on an existing PostgreSQL or MySQL database. Be sure its fair-code licence fits your use first: internal use is free, but reselling access to it is not.

Choose Baserow if an OSI-approved open source core matters, if you might build a customer-facing product on it, or if you want 2FA, an application builder and automations in the free edition, and grid, form and gallery views are enough (or you will pay for Premium). Neither wins outright. The choice is which half of Airtable you are unwilling to pay for.

Choosing between Baserow and NocoDB

Put the other way round, start with Baserow if licence freedom is the requirement, since its core is plain MIT. Move to NocoDB when free kanban and calendar views, or connecting an existing database, matter more than the licence.

Not the only two options

If what you need is less a database than a place to write things down, the wiki and docs tools cover Notion-style pages. If you really want task boards rather than tables, see the self-hosted project management tools.