Baserow is a free self-hosted alternative to Airtable. Here you can use to manage tabular data related to almost anything. Just like Airtable, here it offers you spreadsheet databases and you can use them for storing any kind of data. The databases and tables that you can create can be accessed over an API and you can integrate custom apps with it if you want to. It offers you a simple interface where you can manage all the data with filters and tags. It supports most common data types for tables such as email, URL, boolean, date, etc.
Airtable is a hybrid spreadsheet database that you can for various purposes. The limitation is that it is not completely free and also not open source. If you need a self-hosted solution for spreadsheet database system then you can try Baserow. It is easy to install and you can get it up and running in a few minutes on any VPS. It also supports installation via Docker in case you want to run in as a container. Right now, it has the core functionality of Airtable but not so many other features but I hope they will be available in the coming updates.
Free Self Hosted Alternative to Airtable: Baserow
Right now there is a hosted version of Baserow is also available that you can try. You just sign up for a free account there and then you can simply take a look around on its UI and core functionality. After signing in, you will reach the main interface where it creates a default database for you. The spreadsheet databases here are called “Groups”. You can create as many groups you want for multiple purposes. However, only one group can be accessed over the API.
After you create a group, you can start creating tables in those groups. To create a table, you just give it a name and then simply create. If you want then you can create a table from an existing tabular data such as CSV. Or, you can also directly paste the spreadsheet data by copying it from some other place.
Now, you can start adding data tables in any way you want. It has filters and views that you can use to organize your data. You can also add new columns and choose a data type. It has the most common type of data types already available for you.
Next thing you can do in Basertow is create an API token. In case you want to access data from a specific group that you have created her you can easily do that. Just create a token in the API section in Settings. Select a group for assigning a token to and specify the access type. After that, you just go to the API docs and learn how to access data from your database.
Right now this is all you can do in Baserow. It is powerful and all you need to do is just set it up on your server or use the hosted one to try it out. The entire project is available on GitHub and the installation instructions can be found here. The Docker installation is the easiest and you can just set it up by running few commands on any cheap VPS such as DigitalOcean, Linode, etc.
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Closing words
If you are looking for a free Airtable alternative then you can simply give a try to Baserow. The hosted version is good for small case use but for large scale, you can just host it on your server. Or you can even run it locally on the server of your organization. Just create as many spreadsheet databases you want and then manage the data with tools that it provides. With the simple API, it is easy to access data from the groups and use that in your applications.
