# Switchting from airtable **URL:** \ **Category:** Self-Host\ **Tags:** data-import-export\ **Created:** [June 20, 2026, 4:25am UTC](https://community.nocodb.com/t/switchting-from-airtable/2266 "2026-06-20T04:25:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sronline](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@sronline](https://community.nocodb.com/u/sronline)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 4:25am UTC](https://community.nocodb.com/t/switchting-from-airtable/2266/1 "2026-06-20T04:25:58Z")
Hi everyone, We’ve been using Airtable for several years as a central operational database/dashboard for our team. We originally chose Airtable because personally I prefer to avoid using google spreadsheets. We currently have around 30–40 active users working in the system simultaneously throughout the day. We use it primarily as a shared workspace to manage websites, projects, statuses, and SEO-related operations. A few details: - Currently on Airtable Team. - Approaching the 50k record limit per base so we need to switch to Business or keep splitting bases which is annoying - Expected cost will exceed $1,000/month if we upgrade to business plan. - Very limited use of automations, API calls, and webhooks. - No complex app-building use cases. - Reliability is critical since employees work in the system all day. I am considering migrating to a self-hosted setup (hetzner or vultr server and using NocoDB + PostgreSQL. NocoDB seems to offer an Airtable migration path, but it is not entirely clear to me whether this is available in the self-hosted Community plan as well. I had some questions: 1. Has anyone switched from Airtable to self-hosted NocoDB at this scale (30–40 concurrent users)? 2. How stable has it been in production? 3. Any concerns regarding security? I noticed there have been some reported vulnerabilities in the past, although I haven’t seen many recent issues. 4. Is the Airtable migration/import functionality available in the self-hosted Community Edition? Would love to hear from people who made a similar transition from Airtable and whether they would do it again. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Navi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3be4f8/32.png) [@Navi](https://community.nocodb.com/u/Navi)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 5:57am UTC](https://community.nocodb.com/t/switchting-from-airtable/2266/2 "2026-06-20T05:57:22Z")
Hi, happy to help here — this is a migration we see teams in your exact position make all the time, so I’ll go through your questions in order. I’ll take #4 first, since it’s the one that unblocks the rest. **4. Is the Airtable import available in self-hosted Community? — Yes.** The Airtable importer is a core base feature, not a paid add-on. It lives in the standard base flow (base context menu → _Import data → Airtable Base_, or _Import Data_ on the base dashboard), and it’s the same importer documented here: [Import Airtable to NocoDB](https://nocodb.com/docs/product-docs/bases/import-base-from-airtable) And this isn’t a niche path — thousands of Airtable bases have already been imported into NocoDB this way, so you’re walking a well-worn road: [Migrate from Airtable](https://nocodb.com/thousands-of-airtable-bases-imported-to-nocodb-successfuly) A few things worth knowing before you run it, because they’ll save you a surprise: - You’ll need an Airtable **Personal Access Token** (minimum `data.records:read` scope) and a **shared base URL** with full base access turned on. The docs walk through generating both. - **Formula fields do not import** — that option is greyed out. Rollups, lookups, and attachments do import (each is a toggle). Plan to rebuild formulas by hand on the NocoDB side. At your scale that’s usually the bulk of the manual cleanup, so scope it in advance. - Import schema-only first (toggle data off) on a throwaway base to sanity-check field mappings before you pull all the records. For a large base, the full import takes a little while — let it run. So nothing about the migration path requires a license. Self-hosted Community is free and open-source under their Fair Code license and is fine for internal company use, which is exactly your case. **1. Has anyone run this at 30–40 concurrent users?** Regularly — that’s not a heavy load for Postgres at all. The number that matters isn’t “concurrent users,” it’s query patterns and instance sizing. Editors clicking around grids generate light, bursty traffic, and a single well-specced instance handles your range comfortably. On hosting specifically: a lot of our customers run on Hetzner and love it — it’s solid, the price-to-performance is hard to beat, and it pairs well with this stack. Two sizing notes: - Put attachments on S3-compatible storage (Hetzner Object Storage, Backblaze, etc.), **not** local disk. This is the single biggest reliability/scaling decision. - If you ever split the API and worker into separate containers or run replicas, you’ll need Redis for state to propagate. For one instance you can keep it simple. **2. Stability in production?** Solid, with the usual self-hosting caveat: stability becomes _your_ responsibility rather than Airtable’s, so budget for it. Concretely: automated daily `pg_dump` backups (test a restore before you trust them), pin to a known-good image tag rather than blindly tracking `latest`, and have a rollback plan before you upgrade. The software itself is dependable day-to-day; the incidents teams hit are almost always missing backups or an unsupervised upgrade, not NocoDB falling over. **3. Security / past vulnerabilities?** There have been disclosed CVEs in the past, which is normal for any actively developed app of this size — the relevant signal is that they get patched, so staying reasonably current matters. Self-hosting puts the surface area in your control, which cuts both ways. The baseline I’d insist on: - Never expose it directly; put it behind a reverse proxy (Caddy/Nginx) with TLS. - Lock down the admin panel and use strong auth. Note that **SSO is a paid feature** , so if SSO is a hard requirement for 30–40 staff, that changes your licensing math (see below). - Restrict Postgres to localhost / private network, and keep your host patched. **On cost — this is where you win.** Your Airtable Business projection is \>$1,000/mo _and climbing per seat_. Self-hosted Community has no per-seat charge and no built-in record limit — your 50k ceiling disappears. So for your described usage (light automation/API/webhooks, no app-building), Community likely covers you, and your recurring cost is basically the server (Hetzner/Vultr is cheap) plus your time. You’d only buy a **self-hosted Business/Scale license** if you want the gated features — SSO, table/field-level permissions, teams, audit logs, row-level security. It’s self-serve: purchase per editor through your NocoDB Cloud account and activate by pasting the key into _Admin Panel → License_. - Purchase: [Purchasing a license](https://nocodb.com/docs/self-hosting/purchase-license) - Activation: [Activating a license](https://nocodb.com/docs/self-hosting/license-activation) Two things to flag on licensing: it **requires Postgres** (you’re already there, good), and a standard license **checks in with the license server every 6 hours** over HTTPS, with a 48-hour grace window before paid features pause. No application data leaves your box. For Community you don’t deal with any of this. **Bottom line.** Given your profile — cost-driven, hitting record limits, minimal automation, no custom apps — this migration lands firmly in your favor, and plenty of teams have made exactly this move. My honest advice: do a parallel pilot. Stand up the server, import one real base, rebuild the formulas, and let a few power users live in it for two weeks alongside Airtable before committing the whole team. That surfaces the formula-rebuild effort and any view quirks while you still have a safety net. Happy to point you to the docker-compose and Postgres tuning specifics if useful. ---
**Author:** ![sronline](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@sronline](https://community.nocodb.com/u/sronline)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2026, 4:42am UTC](https://community.nocodb.com/t/switchting-from-airtable/2266/3 "2026-06-21T04:42:45Z")
Hi, Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful reply. I really appreciate the time you took to answer each point and explain the practical considerations around migration, hosting, security, and licensing. Your explanation clarified a lot of the questions I still had, especially regarding the Community Edition, Airtable import, and what to expect from a self hosted setup. Based on the feedback I have received and some additional research, I have decided to move forward with the migration and start setting up a NocoDB + PostgreSQL environment. Fortunately, our Airtable usage is fairly straightforward, so I expect the transition to be manageable. No brainer comparing the cost 🙂 Thanks again for sharing your experience and advice. It was genuinely helpful in giving me the confidence to get the migration process underway. Thanks a lot!