I’ve made a video on comparing Baserow with Nocodb for people who are thinking to move away from Airtable.
I wanted to really focus on just how it practically feels different instead of comparing the features we read on the websites.
There’s a few things were Baserow can grow compared to Nocodb to my view:
- Start with empty table 3.42. In Baserow it creates a multi-line field, boolean field and two empty records every single time. Can’t just select Notes and Active both at the same time to delete like in Airtable.
- Easy formulas with colorcoding, shortcuts to keep hands on keyboard 7.36
- Type on keyboard to link a record in the linked field, keeping hands on keyboard. In Baserow you need to grab the mouse to link 16.31
- Rolling up a formula field that is having a special background indicating it’s linked, just works 29.29 except for formatting it in a currency.
Here’s where Baserow shines much better to my view:
- Workspaces to differentiate a group of databases like in Airtable. Nocodb has no workspaces 2.49
- Primary field can be formula just like in Airtable. In nocodb you need to create a new field, set formula and then change to display value 5.51
- Creating new records with shift+enter consistently like in Airtable. In nocodb it’s just enter, but works inconsistently when the last field is a linked field. 10.40 and 18.10
- Currency can be set with decimals. In nocodb it will always show you the full amount with the cents. 12.59
- Simplicity of linked records. Might be lack of my experience in Nocodb, but I still mention it. Nocodb frustration starts at 18.20. Linked field set with One to One relationship, then can’t change it anymore and need to start over again. Where One to One is easy to type and shows the value of the record, that goes away with Many to Many and Has Many relationships as shown in 19.39 Then it shows you only a number of how many records 19.43 The keep-hands-on-keyboard experience went away and formulas to concatenate got extremely complex 25.54
In the end, I’m not going to tell people what to choose. Nocodb and Baserow are both great tools with their specialties. Airtable has its benefits to be easy and quickly creating some proof of concept and work that out. But in the long term Airtable doesn’t add up. And I believe more people will start to understand that at some point as they grow their business.
There’s a huge untapped potential of market here. And I can see more and more people starting to realize that open-source is the way to move forward when thinking long term. But it takes time to change your mind about it. These little things I mention in this video can get Baserow to that luxury feeling that people have grown accustumed to as they might have started in Airtable. The more that alligns, the easier the switch.
I am very happy with Baserow.
