Why teams choose Zite over Airtable
Your brand, your layout
Zite apps run on your own domain, with your brand kit and any layout you want.
Brand kit and custom domains
No per-seat fees
Deploy to the whole company without a per-seat bill. Going from 10 people to 500 doesn’t change what you pay.
Granular permissions
Control access by app, table, field, and down to individual rows. Manage people in groups, with audit logs of who changed what.
How access works
As easy as Airtable, as fast as SQL
Anyone on your team can browse and edit it like a spreadsheet. Underneath it’s Postgres, handling millions of rows and 30 API requests a second.
More on Zite Database
Integrations that go deeper
Both Airtable and Zite connect to the usual 3rd party integrations. But Zite workflows can call every endpoint an API exposes, not a fixed list of triggers and actions.
How integrations work
Chat to build
Describe what you want instead of wiring up dropdowns. You still get a workflow you can open, test and edit.
How building works“I never felt like we had to shape-shift or alter how our process worked. Zite existed so we could do what we did best.”
Everything you expect from a modern database…
 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Linked records & relationships | ||
| Views, filters, and sorting | ||
| Generate formulas with AI | ||
| CSV import/export | ||
| User-friendly interface |
…without the limitations
| ||
|---|---|---|
| No per-seat pricing | ||
| Unlimited users on apps | ||
| Built-in roles & row-level permissions | Granular, built in | Limited |
| Editors included | Unlimited | 5 free, then $20+/seat/mo |
| External guests / portal users | Unlimited, included | Portals add-on, from $120/mo |
| Visual workflows | Flowchart-style | Step-list automations |
| Standalone app on top of your data | Full visual editor | Interfaces (inside the base) |
| Public API rate limit | 30 requests/sec | 5 requests/sec |
Every field type your base runs on
Zite’s database has 27 native field types — here’s how Airtable’s map over.
Native Zite field types
A real field type with the same behaviour and configuration — not a text column standing in for one.
| In Airtable | In Zite | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Single line text | Text | Feature parity |
| Long text | Long text | Feature parity |
| Rich text | Rich text | A first-class field type, not flattened into plain text |
| Number | Number | Configurable decimal precision and number formatting |
| Currency | Currency | Currency symbol and precision per field |
| Percent | Percent | Feature parity |
| AI text | AI generation | Available on 18 field types rather than one, with a choice of model. AI fields |
Covered differently
No one-to-one field type — here is how each one is done in Zite.
The Airtable importer maps most of this automatically. A few computed fields are currently imported as text due to Airtable API limitations.
“No alternate solution has excited me as much as Zite has, nor given me the flexibility to structure my forms and have them feed into a flexible database.”
Ready to try it on your own base?
Connect your account and pick the bases. Tables, fields and records come over automatically.
Airtable’s limits, side by side
The numbers that decide when you outgrow a plan.
| Limit |  Airtable | Zite | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Team | Business | Free · Pro · Business | |
| Price | $0 | $20/user/mo | $45/user/mo | Free · $15 · $55/mo — flat |
| Editors | 5 max | Paid seat each | Paid seat each | Unlimited, all plans |
| Records per base | 1,000 | 50,000 | 125,000 | 5,000 · 100,000 · 250,000 |
| Attachments per base | 1 GB | 20 GB | 100 GB | 1 · 10 · 100 GB |
| API rate limit | 5/sec per base | Same | Same | 30/sec |
We ran both APIs on identical data
Same six-field schema, same payloads, each platform at its own documented rate limit.
- Faster bulk create
- 13.7×Faster bulk createZiteAirtable
- Faster full scan
- 15.9×Faster full scanZiteAirtable
- Faster to import 100k rows
- 22×Faster to import 100k rowsZiteAirtable
Bars show time on the same task — shorter is faster.
Sources: Airtable plans overview · Airtable API rate limits · Zite pricing · Zite database API
What each solution costs
Airtable charges per user, and rarely runs alone. See what each solution costs based on your needs.
Users
10Database records
25kPortal guests
5What else is in your stack?
Almost nobody runs Airtable on its own. Add the tools you’d need alongside it.
“In a small rural county, saving $80,000 and bringing in $70,000 in revenue turns heads.”
TL;DR: The short version
Outgrowing Airtable? Zite gives you real apps, no per-seat fees, and everything in one platform. Airtable has a bigger extension marketplace.
Airtable may be better if…
- •You rely on Airtable's third-party extension marketplace
- •You need native iOS and Android apps, not a mobile web app
- •You only need a flexible database, not apps with login or permissions
Zite is best if…
- You need a standalone app with its own login — not a layout inside a base
- Per-seat pricing is blocking your team from getting access
- You want a database, apps, forms, and workflows in one platform
- You want to build on top of your existing tools and data
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn more: Airtable integration · Importing data
Teams running operations choose Zite.
"The built-in database is incredibly powerful. We migrated from Airtable and haven't looked back."
Diana Viglundsdottir
Director of Product, Syn.is
"The granular permissions mean we can safely share and secure data, forms & apps across departments without worry."
Ravi K. Udeshi
Election Manager, Fairfax County
"Zite's database handles all our complex relational data while remaining simple to use for anyone on our teams."
Michael Villenave
Head of Internal Comms, Domino's France
Business reviews
5/5
Product Hunt
4.7/5
Ready to give your whole team access — without per-seat fees?
Start building for free — no credit card required.